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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses practical strategies for getting more work done in ministry leadership. He shares eleven actionable steps that help leaders overcome overwhelm, boost efficiency, and maintain balance as they tackle daily tasks.
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Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.
Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.
From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, welcoming you once again to our continuing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. On the podcast today, I'd like to talk with you about a very specific issue and that is how to get more work done. Now if you've heard me teach before on time management, you know that I take a more holistic approach to the theme of time management than just the singular issue of getting more work done. When you think about time management, you need to think about it in terms of all aspects of time management including taking care of yourself physically, sleeping appropriately, getting the rest that you need to pull away from your work from time to time.
Jeff Iorg:All of those things are a part of effective time management for leaders. But today, I don't wanna talk about any of those kinds of things. I wanna narrow it down to one very specific niche about using time well, and that is I wanna talk about how to get more work
Jeff Iorg:done. How to
Jeff Iorg:be more efficient and more effective at just cranking out the tasks. Now, again, let me bring some balance to this. This is not a fully orbed perspective on time management. I've done that on other podcasts. I teach it at the doctoral level.
Jeff Iorg:I have a strong conviction about a fully orbed theology of time expressing itself in our use of time and all aspects of how that plays together. So I'm not doing that today. I'm really just trying to focus very narrowly on this one idea, how to get more work done. And in order to do that, I'm gonna give you practical steps that have helped me over the years and I continue to use even now to help me get more work done.
Jeff Iorg:Number one, and I've always liked this one because it's kind of funny. Grab a root and growl. Now, I know what you're thinking. Jeff just lost his mind. What possibly does that mean?
Jeff Iorg:Grab a root and growl. Especially,
Jeff Iorg:what in the world does that have to do with time management and with getting more work done?
Jeff Iorg:Well, here's the story. Many years ago when I was
Jeff Iorg:a younger pastor, I was lamenting, to one of the men in our church about how much I had to do and how overwhelming it all seemed and how I wasn't even sure where to start. And he smiled and said, well, pastor, you
Jeff Iorg:just need to grab a root and growl. Now,
Jeff Iorg:I kind of pride myself on my down home upbringing. I I grew up in a hardscrabble family with a lot of cliches and sayings,
Jeff Iorg:but I had no idea what my friend was talking about.
Jeff Iorg:I had never heard the phrase grab
Jeff Iorg:a root and growl. No idea what that meant. And in fact, was so baffled, I couldn't even fake it. So I said, you know, I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. And then with a twinkle in his eye, he said, well, I grew up on a farm,
Jeff Iorg:and one of the hardest jobs on a farm is clearing a stump out of
Jeff Iorg:the ground to create more productive farmland. And getting a stump out of
Jeff Iorg:the ground, he said, is one of the hardest things imaginable because you don't really know where all those roots go and how it's all tentacled in under the ground and what it's really gonna take to get
Jeff Iorg:that thing out, and it's gonna be a job. And he said, pastor, you can just pace around that stump and talk about it all day
Jeff Iorg:long, and that stump is not going to move.
Jeff Iorg:Or you can dig down little ways and grab a root and start to growl.
Jeff Iorg:Try to get that stuff out of the ground. And you're likely not to be successful on the first try.
Jeff Iorg:But he said, if you'll just keep moving around, digging a hole here and there, grabbing onto this particular route or that particular place, eventually, he said, you're gonna find the right spot. You're gonna have done enough work to be able to get the project finished, and you're gonna get that stump out of the ground. What he was saying was this, when you've got a lot to do, a lot that seems overwhelming, a
Jeff Iorg:lot that's really challenging, a lot that you may not even know where to start, what my friend was saying was this,
Jeff Iorg:get started. Just get started. And it is amazing how once you get started, you'll find the true leverage points you need to get a project done. You'll find what really needs to happen to be effective in your work. Man, I have applied this in so many ways over the years.
Jeff Iorg:For example, if I'm trying to write an article and I I'm not really quite sure what to do with it, I'll just start throwing some words or some ideas on a page and writing a few sentences about those and trying to find that magic starting place that will
Jeff Iorg:get me moving on the writing. Same thing
Jeff Iorg:with writing something larger like a book. A book doesn't come to you fully orbed in your mind with every aspect of it perfectly outlined. No. You'll get a thrust or an idea or a direction, and you'll start working on that for a while, then you'll realize that's not really the beginning of the book. That's more like the middle or that's more like the end, and then you'll go
Jeff Iorg:back and start working on something else or putting something into place, and pretty soon it starts to take shape. Same
Jeff Iorg:thing on planning a budget or something like that. Sometimes it's hard to know exactly where to start, but you pick a line item and you and you start on that one, and that one may lead you to another one, to another one, to another one, and eventually get to the place where you really know you're finally down to the issues that need to be
Jeff Iorg:resolved. My friend said it this way,
Jeff Iorg:grab a root and growl. Stop walking around that stump and talking about how much you wanted to get it out of the ground and just grab onto it somewhere and start getting after it. And then, keep adjusting the effort. Keep looking for the leverage point until the project really starts to gain momentum,
Jeff Iorg:and you finally get it done. So the first thing I would say to get more work done is to get started. Stop pacing around talking about how
Jeff Iorg:hard it's gonna be, how you don't
Jeff Iorg:know what to do, how you're not quite sure the order of which to tackle the problem. Stop pacing around either physically or in your own mind and get started. Number two. Another thing that helps me get more work done is to group tasks. What I
Jeff Iorg:mean by that is, as you're laying out the day and the work that you're planning to do, plan to group your tasks and do them in sets, if you will, or in groups. For example, spend one section of time responding to email, another section responding to voice mail or voice messages, or maybe if you're in an office situation and you have an assistant, maybe the messages that she's collected or he's collected for you. Set aside another time to group your study time together, to group your counseling time together, to group the meeting times that you have together, to set aside time for planning and to focus just on that. Now, know there are probably some of you out there that function best by going randomly from project to project to project, but while there may be a few very rare individuals where that's true, for the most of us, we need to focus on one thing at a time. So set aside on your schedule.
Jeff Iorg:This is the time of the day that I work on email. This is the time of the day that I study to preach or teach the Bible. This is the time of day that I work on planning for the responsibilities I have for the ministry that I've been assigned. This is the time of the day that I set aside for counseling appointments, or I set aside for one on one meetings with employees or with people that I supervise. This is the way to group your time.
Jeff Iorg:Now, in doing this, you'll find yourself being much more efficient and less distracted because you won't be going from one thing to the other to the other. You'll be focusing on one kind of issue at a time. That's why I normally wake up in the morning and spend the first section of my morning reading the Bible and praying. Then I normally have some breakfast time and look at some news feeds, and then I move into my day. And the first thing I typically do when I move in my day is email, responding to the previous afternoon and more an overnight email.
Jeff Iorg:And then when those are finished, I try to move into to meetings or to to, to appointments that I may have. And those meetings or appointments may start late morning and go through the early afternoon. That's the way I'm talking about grouping the events or grouping the time that you're working on certain projects so that you're able to be more efficient at what you're doing. Now some of you are already thinking, but what about the drop in stuff? What about the stuff I can't control?
Jeff Iorg:What about stuff that impacts my schedule that I don't really know how to, limit or to group? Well, hold on to that question because I'm gonna come back to that near the end of this podcast, but it's a very important question, and I've got
Jeff Iorg:a solution for you that I think will encourage you. So a second way to get more done is to group your tasks.
Jeff Iorg:Third, make what I call bumper appointments. Bumper appointments. And that is stack your appointments one after the other. I I know a lot of people, if they have an open day and someone asks for an appointment, we'll just stick it in the middle, like, at 10:00 in the morning or 03:00 in the afternoon. I never do that.
Jeff Iorg:I want my appointments to bumper up against something so that there's a fixed time that that appointment has to end as well as one when it needs to start. So it's appropriate when someone asks you for an appointment to ask them, how much time do you think you'll need to talk about this issue with me? And if they say $15.30, 45 an hour, whatever, block that amount of time, and that'll let them know coming in that's the time expectation that you have for getting to
Jeff Iorg:the point and moving on to the issue. Ask people how much
Jeff Iorg:time they need or how much time they think they'll need to talk through the issue with you. And then if you're a pastor especially, listen to this part. You know that you have some people who may mean well, but they just consume an unusually large amount of your time. Now, they don't always do this maliciously. They're they're not trying to wreck your day or control your schedule, but they just consume more of your schedule.
Jeff Iorg:And so because of that, you need to be very careful about scheduling them in such a way that you give them the time that they need as a member of your church or a person that you work with on
Jeff Iorg:a regular basis, but they don't overwhelm your schedule or, if you wanna say it this way, hijack it during the day. For example, when I was a pastor, I had a
Jeff Iorg:season of ministry at a church where there was a on Friday mornings, one of
Jeff Iorg:the men at the church would drop by, and
Jeff Iorg:he would wanna stay for a couple of hours and just sit around and talk with everybody. Well, when he first started doing this, it was fine. But after a while, it became clear that we really didn't have two hours every Friday just for chitchat. I asked him as he was coming by after several times, what what's got you going where you what's got your schedule worked out where you're coming by here so consistently on Fridays? And he said, oh, he said, every Friday morning, I take my wife to the beauty shop, and and while she's there, I I just need a place to kill a couple hours,
Jeff Iorg:so I come down here and do do it with you fellas. It's like, well, okay.
Jeff Iorg:Surely, we would wanna give him a little bit of time when he came by on Friday morning, but we were not obligated to entertain him for two hours. And so that's what I'm talking about when I say people mean well. They're not trying to hijack your day. They're not doing anything malicious, but they're just people who just think you've got unlimited time and wanna just come by and visit with you. Well, you gotta learn how to manage those people and manage them well.
Jeff Iorg:And one of the things I've done is when people are like this, I give them what I call bumper appointments. And then as I say, hey, look, I got about fifteen minutes here. Why don't you come in and visit for a few minutes? I've got another appointment at eleven I need to get to, but let's talk for a little bit. Something like that helps people understand that, yes, you have time for them, but, yes, you also have another commitment that you need to move on to.
Jeff Iorg:So making bumper appointments helps me to control when appointments start, when appointments end, and the time length of appointments because I ask people, what do you need what do you wanna talk about when you come? Not in detail, but just generally speaking. How much time do you think you'll need? And then as especially if I know the people well or if I'm working with them well, I'll bump them up against something so that we both know that I need to move on to my next appointment. Now this is harder to do with some people, I understand, but it's essential to do, especially if you're with people that you know well and come by often and fill up your days.
Jeff Iorg:It's important to learn how to manage those folks and manage them well.
Jeff Iorg:So number four. Number four helps me get my work done is to work all the time that I'm at work. Work when you're at work. When I'm at work, no computer games. No surfing the Internet.
Jeff Iorg:No playing an app on my phone. No standing around in the hallways just talking. When I'm at work, I wanna get my work done. Now, it's helpful, I think, if
Jeff Iorg:you can separate some workspace and some non workspace, if at all possible. Now, I know I'm talking to a lot of you that are in a younger generation and, man, you just think work happens everywhere, and in a sense it does, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because our work is somewhat portable and we can take it with us and do it wherever we need to be. But that also means that leisure time or off time is also everywhere. Meaning that this all blends together so that if you're not careful, just like you find yourself at 10:00 at night doing email at home,
Jeff Iorg:you can find yourself at 02:00 in the afternoon messing around on your computer rather than getting your work done. One of the things that really helps me to get more work done is to recognize that when I'm at work, I'm working. When I walk away from work, I'm not working anymore. You may think, well,
Jeff Iorg:I don't really have a fancy office or an assistant. Man, I haven't always had that either. When I was a church planter for years, our church offices were at our house, and I had no pastor's study or pastor's office or building that I could go to. I had one downstairs room that had to double as a storage place, a workspace, a study space, all of it. And so we had to tell our children who were young children, preschoolers even, hey, listen.
Jeff Iorg:When daddy's downstairs, he's working. When he's upstairs, he's not. And I had to discipline myself that when I was downstairs, I was working so that when I went upstairs, I was not. Make the commitment to work all the time you're
Jeff Iorg:at work. And if possible, separate your space and your time so that you're able to make some distinction and keep your attention focused on getting work done. Number five, learn to work while you're waiting. Work while waiting. Now, of
Jeff Iorg:course, I'm gonna talk about this more in a minute. You can use your phone to do this by answering short email, returning texts, or returning phone calls. I get that. But sometimes when you're waiting, you're not waiting in places where it's conducive to have a phone conversation or even to really sit down and think through an email. So I like to carry with me, especially when I'm traveling, things that I want to do as a part of my work that really don't require that much concentration.
Jeff Iorg:I'll give you just one example. This is where I read magazines. I use magazines to fill in the time while I'm waiting so that I'm using that time productively. So I only take a few magazines, but when they do come, I don't sit down at my desk and read them. I toss them
Jeff Iorg:in my bag to take with me on my next trip. And the next time I'm at a gate waiting fifteen minutes for a flight, pull out
Jeff Iorg:the magazine, read an article or two, put it back in the in the case. I get on the plane. Now I'm waiting for all that preliminary announcement stuff to go by, I can't really focus on, you know, hardcore email. Can't even have my computer open. What do I do?
Jeff Iorg:Pull out that magazine, read a couple more articles. Now this is another thing I'm gonna talk about in just a minute too, but when I finish with a magazine, unless it's something really compelling, I just throw the thing away. If I read something in there that is compelling, I tear it out, and I bring those pages back that I might wanna use on a podcast, for example, or something like that, but I throw the rest of it away. So I learn to work learn to work while waiting, and one of the ways I do that is by taking some reading material like magazines and newsletters and things like that with me, and I never sit down at my desk and read through that kind of material. Instead, it's light concentration kind of reading.
Jeff Iorg:It's things I'm just usually gonna browse through or skim through or read over fairly, lightly. I make sure I carry that stuff with me, read through it in my waiting time, and then toss it as soon as I'm finished with it. Now as I was saying, you can also use this for texting back, calling back, or emailing back, but oftentimes those things take more concentration than is available in a waiting time. When I'm either sitting at an airport gate waiting or I'm in a dentist office waiting or I'm somewhere waiting for my wife to finish some appointment that we can do something together. When I'm in those waiting modes, that's when I wanna have these little projects that I can take with me that don't distract me from the more productive time I can have in my office when I'm alone and working and trying to get things done.
Jeff Iorg:Number six, use a
Jeff Iorg:smartphone and use it well. Now I
Jeff Iorg:know, gosh, almost every one of you would already do this. You have your phone. It's linked to your vet your email, your voice mail, your calendar, your contacts, all of that stuff. But I need to confess something to you here. I I haven't used it as efficiently as I could have over the years, and actually, it was my wife who pushed me into more efficient use of my smartphone.
Jeff Iorg:And was in the habit of having all of the information about every event put on our calendars. Now, I didn't do that. I I would put the key things about the time and the place and stuff like that, but not a lot of the detail. I just felt like it was too much. It was too too cumbersome or too difficult.
Jeff Iorg:I I realized I was wrong about that. And a couple years ago, I started having much more information put in my phone, on my calendar about all kinds of events. Now this has been substantial time saver for me because as most of you probably imagine, I I probably have, in terms of meetings I'm attending or places I'm speaking or places I'm traveling to to participate in something like that, around 75 to a 100 of those a year. And so to have all of that information in one location rather than in a calendar and on files and in other places has been really helpful for me. So while it might seem like an overwhelming amount of information to put in those little calendar reminder tabs on your phone, don't move away from that too quickly.
Jeff Iorg:And recognize that part of being efficient and getting more done is just having information available so you're not wasting time looking for that kind of information. Number seven, delete all of your spam email and throw away all of your junk regular
Jeff Iorg:mail. Delete it all and throw it all away and don't open any of it. I have a very simple measure. If I don't recognize the sender, I delete it automatically. Automatically.
Jeff Iorg:I
Jeff Iorg:get a lot of unsolicited junk email. My email address is out there, and people are trolling for it, and they're sending me all kinds of business proposals and ministry opportunities and things like that. If if I don't recognize the sender,
Jeff Iorg:I just delete it. Occasionally, I'm
Jeff Iorg:sure I've missed out on something, but I've been able to save myself time in two ways. Number one, I don't waste time reading frivolous stuff that I'm really not interested in. And number two, I don't open myself up to opening emails that are gonna bring damaging viruses and other intrusions into my computer that then take a time away from me and make me less efficient because I have to have IT in here reworking my machine. You get the idea. Delete all spam email and throw away all junk mail without opening any of it.
Jeff Iorg:If you don't recognize the sender, don't open it. And then discipline yourself to what I call reverse deadlines. Now,
Jeff Iorg:if you wanna get more done, do this.
Jeff Iorg:Put something on your to do list when it's assigned to you, not in the order of the deadline, but in the order of the assignment. Now, you'll have to massage this a little bit to make sure you don't miss any final deadlines. I get that. But when something is assigned to me, I put it on my to do list that day. You say, well, it's not due for three months.
Jeff Iorg:Don't care. It's going on the to do list.
Jeff Iorg:And as soon as I can get to it as the next priority on my list,
Jeff Iorg:I wanna get it done and get it off my table, off my plate, get it off my list. This has helped me to always be working ahead. You know, I'm I recognize what I'm up against here. I I worked for a school
Jeff Iorg:for twenty years, I watched a lot of students, hundreds of students. You'd tell them that something was due on May 1, they would turn it in on May. And they wouldn't start working on it until two or three days before because it really wasn't due until May, so I work on it until close to the
Jeff Iorg:deadline. Then they get the flu. Their kids are sick,
Jeff Iorg:their wife has something she needs them to take care of, their church has a crisis, and now we got a problem. So when I would get that assignment, if it was due on May 1 but I got the assignment on March 1, I put it on my to do list on March 1. And if it came up on the rotation about by the April or by the March or the April, I just got onto it and started working on it and actually finished it so that it was finished and done and moved on from long
Jeff Iorg:before the deadline. Reverse the deadlines. Things are not due on the day of the deadline, they're due on the day of the assignment so that as soon as you
Jeff Iorg:get them, they go on your to do list.
Jeff Iorg:Now,
Jeff Iorg:obviously, you're gonna have to prioritize your to do list every day based on something, and one of the somethings is the deadline, and I get that. But why wait? If you've got time to work on projects and there's time that opens up on your schedule, why not just keep working? Because we already said, work all the time you're at work. You get that idea.
Jeff Iorg:So discipline yourself to reverse deadlines. Something is due when it's put on your to do list, when it's assigned, not on the day it's supposedly to be turned in.
Jeff Iorg:And then number nine, you'll get more done if
Jeff Iorg:you get rid of everything on your to do list that someone else can do for you. Now, it might seem like you're being inefficient here, but if you recruit people and train them, yes, that takes time. But if you recruit people and train them, once they're in place and you've delegated certain responsibilities to them, now it becomes a time saving mechanism for you. So on the front end, this process might sound like it's not really saving you time, and you're not getting more work done because you're having to spend more time recruiting and training so that you can then delegate. But once you've really invested in the recruiting and the training, and then you can just delegate, think of all the time that that saves.
Jeff Iorg:Man, I'm thinking about one relationship I had with a person that worked with me at the seminary. It took me a little while to get him trained and oriented to how we wanted to do a certain kind of work, but once we got there, after that, for the next several years, I hardly ever had to think about that again. I would just say, hey, we need to get on this, and
Jeff Iorg:he would say, I'm I'm on it, and it would be taken care of because I had recruited and trained and then over the years reaped the benefit. Then number 10, schedule your family commitments and keep them. Now you
Jeff Iorg:may say, well, how does that make me more efficient?
Jeff Iorg:How do I get more done? Well,
Jeff Iorg:because you're gonna eliminate all family conflict over you missing family events. You're gonna eliminate all the arguments, the downtime, the disappointments. You're gonna eliminate all that. You're gonna eliminate the disappointment of you not showing up for things. You're just gonna eliminate it all.
Jeff Iorg:And instead, you're gonna replace that with time well spent with family and with the joy that comes out of knowing that you're making the proper investment along
Jeff Iorg:the way. So when your children come home and say, this
Jeff Iorg:is the dance recital schedule, this is the ballgame schedule, this is when the chess tournament is, this is when I'm going to be working on this project and will need your help. When your children come home and tell you something and you say, let's put that on my calendar, they know you're making a commitment to it. You know you've just prioritized it, and that's gonna eliminate so much trouble down the road because you will
Jeff Iorg:have kept your family commitments. You know, this is such a paradoxical kind of thought, really.
Jeff Iorg:I'm telling you that if you commit to spending a couple of hours following through on a family commitment, it may eliminate days of tension, frustration, and argument, and disappointment that comes out of you saying, oh, I completely forgot about that. I know I said I would be there, but I've scheduled these other things. Now I can't come. Oh, I'm so sorry.
Jeff Iorg:Well, eliminate all that. Just schedule family commitments and keep them. Now listen, friends.
Jeff Iorg:I've been doing this for a long time, and I will tell you that in decades of scheduling my family commitments, I have had very rare instances where something came up that was of such consequence or was of such a genuine emergency that I had to break that commitment. When I've had to break those, you know what the response to
Jeff Iorg:my family has been? No problem, dad. We know you've
Jeff Iorg:got a job, and we know you've got demands. We get it. Because they knew that breaking one of those commitments was rare and that honoring them was the pattern of life. And in doing that, much more efficient life has been lived. Now, finally, I promised you this earlier.
Jeff Iorg:Here's the last thing that'll help you get more done, and that is schedule your time every day in ministry with what I call the six hour rule. Now, don't hear me wrongly. I'm not saying you only work six hours a day. Wouldn't that be a dream come true? I'm saying that you only schedule six hours of work a day.
Jeff Iorg:I've done this for years. I schedule six hours of work every day. You say, well, what do do with the rest of the time?
Jeff Iorg:It usually walks in the door. It usually calls me on the phone.
Jeff Iorg:It usually shows up in
Jeff Iorg:the form of a problem that needs my attention that day. And if it is
Jeff Iorg:one of those rare days that the other hours of my workday are not filled up, then I go to that to do list I've been describing earlier, and I keep working because I'm committed to working all the time I'm at work. When I first started out in ministry, I was really frustrated by people who would interrupt my day. And I would say, man, these interruptions, I could get more so much work done if the people would just stop interrupting me. And then a wiser minister once said to me, aren't these interruptions the whole reason that you're in ministry?
Jeff Iorg:And I realized, man, I've got the wrong attitude on this. But then I thought, well, how
Jeff Iorg:do I balance this out? Because I've gotta be intentional about my work and plan my day and get things done, while at the same time I've got to accommodate these people who walk in the door on me. Well, what I realized was I was scheduling eight or nine hours of work a day with appointments and commitments and phone calls and study times. I wasn't scheduling any time what I call the interruptions of ministry which are the people that we're really supposed to be all about anyway. So let me challenge you today.
Jeff Iorg:Intentionally, aggressively set out six hours of focused intentional work every day believing that you'll need some other time buffered throughout your day to respond to these heavenly interruptions that come our way because of the people that we're responsible to serve. And then if on those days when those interruptions don't happen, what do you do? You just stay with that to do list and you keep working, filling up the rest of your day with meaningful work because you have more to do than you schedule for that day, you can always reach forward and pull things back to the day at hand. Well, today's podcast is about getting more stuff done. This is not again a global perspective on time management.
Jeff Iorg:It's about how to just simply execute more task, how to get it done. Being an effective leader today is challenging because there is a lot of work involved. It's it's important to us to be able to work our schedules, make our plans, use our time in the most efficient way possible to frankly just get things done. Hopefully today, I've given you some ideas about how to do that on this podcast. Put them into practice as you lead on.