How to Protect Your Time

Drendra Keesee, family, Happy Life, marriage, Parenting, The Laundry Moms, The New Vintage Family

How to Protect Your Time

By Drenda Keesee

Women are multitaskers, and that ability comes with pros and cons. The main hindering factor multitasking brings to the table is that it’s easy to get distracted.

We are fixers, always dropping what we should be doing for someone or something else. But flexibility shouldn’t mean you’re “always available.” You should do personal favors outside of your scheduled work hours.

Unless you have a plan—a list of your priorities to do—you’re planning to fail. Develop an action plan that has yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily must-dos.

You need three to four things you do…

…every single day that propel your business forward. I’ve found that it’s not the amount of time you spend, but how you spend your time.

Is it productive or wasted time? I want to tell you a secret that will transform how you work: working is the supreme driving force behind procrastination.

That may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s true. You can spend hours “working” and somehow manage not to check off one thing on your to-do list, because it’s easy to use miscellaneous, unimportant tasks as an excuse not to work on high priority tasks This is actually a biblical principle.

Second Thessalonians 3:11 says, “We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies.” Time is your greatest asset.

You must set boundaries around your time and relationships. If you attempt to solve everyone’s problems and be available 24/7 to people, you will neglect your children and business. You can’t do it all, so do what matters most.

Break up with bad clients—the ones who cancel over and over, who require far more from you than the return. No amount of money is worth a client who doesn’t respect you or your time. Break up with draining friendships that want to steal your future by their demands and intrusions.

Real friends propel you toward your destiny and encourage you toward your dream instead of draining your energy and wasting your time.

Surround yourself with people who make positive contributions to your life, and then you can reciprocate and encourage one another. Decide who and what you will give priority to in order to prevent burnout in your life.

It’s crucial that you set and honor work and life boundaries, especially if your business is run strictly out of your home. “Off ” must mean “off .” Set aside a family day, and let that be a day where you rest with your family and turn off the business side.

Some of your best ideas and direction will come from the day you stop, trust God, and seek His rest. By the same standard, “on” means “on.” When it’s time to work, discipline yourself to focus on the task ahead of you and get the job done, or you will sabotage your success and train those you love who are watching you to do the same.

Remember: your time is your greatest asset. Protect it and use it wisely, or someone will take it from you. You don’t want to look back with regret at the wasted time and lost opportunities you left scattered behind you. There is a time for everything, but is this the time?

~Drenda

ps…Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!

(*Excerpt From the Book “The New Vintage Family” by Drenda Keesee)

Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional, and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.

A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.

Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.

Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary and Drenda.

Through their own life experiences, the Keesee’s have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.

That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.

She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then the irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.

Gary and Drenda pastor Faith Life Church at The Now Center in New Albany, Ohio, and also are the CEOs of Forward Financial Group.