You have had these moments. You probably have them on a regular basis.
You’re in the middle of doing the same necessary task you’ve done time and time again. You know it has to be done. It’s part of what keeps things running.
You’ve done it so many times that you could do it in your sleep. In fact, you suspect that you may have actually done it in your sleep. You know it inside and out, backward and forward.
It requires almost nothing of you except time.
Simple, right? No biggie. Just do it.
As much as it pains me to say this, sometimes that’s the right answer. Just do it. Take a deep breath and git ‘er done.
It would be great to delegate
It would be great if we could delegate all that stuff to someone else, but the truth of the matter is that we don’t always have someone else to delegate it to.
Sometimes someone else has already delegated it to us!
Because much of my work is done with leaders, I address the issue of delegation often. I challenge them about the importance of identifying tasks that they can delegate to someone else and identifying the right persons to whom to delegate those tasks.
But the truth of the matter is that sometimes the right person for this task doesn’t exist within the church, organization, business, or family (yet). And it still needs to get done, so …
But this post is not about delegation.
Now, hold on there a minute! Why would I even bring it up, if that’s not the subject for today?
An important lesson
I bring it up because of another important lesson that I didn’t learn nearly early enough in this forty year journey of “church work.” I kept thinking the goal was to get to the point where other people were doing the “have to” things and I could just do the “want to” things.
My problem was that “want to” didn’t have much clarity or purpose. And there was that pesky problem of not having enough people to pass off the “have to.”
Here’s the lesson: when you understand your “sweet spot” it changes the way you do everything.
When you understand your “sweet spot” it changes the way you do everything. Click To Tweet
The mistake too many people make is not understanding the difference between a “comfort zone” and a “sweet spot.” In the comfort zone, we eliminate things. In the sweet spot, we transform things because we do even the “have to” things with a sense of the bigger picture of God’s creative purpose.
Instead of asking how to avoid those necessary-but-uninspiring tasks, we can begin strategizing how to bring our sense of calling, purpose, and wonder into those very tasks.
So, here’s the question of the day: Do you know your sweet spot? Have you identified what was present in those moments when you thought, “This is why I’m on this planet!”?
If not, there’s your starting place.
Let me know how I can help. I’ve written several posts addressing sweet spot. Just type “sweet spot” where it says “Search my blog” at the top right hand corner of this page.
If you’ve got your sweet spot figured out, how can you bring it into the “have to” tasks?
Your life matters to God. Make the most of it.
