I've been in youth ministry since 1999. For the first 10 years or so, youth ministry equaled massive amounts of stress for me. Oh, don't get me wrong: I loved working with teens. Youth ministry was and is my passion. But it was tough to combine a full time job with being a youth leader. And even when I became a paid youth pastor, the stress was always there.One huge stress factor for me (being the perfectionist over-achiever that I am) was my to do list. Or maybe I should say: my do do lists. The endless list of actions I felt I had to do for my job, my personal life, and my youth ministry was so overwhelming, I felt I was drowning in to do's half the time. Whatever I managed to get done at the top, was immediately replaced with new items at the bottom. It was so discouraging.Even worse, because my list was so long, I sometimes forgot to do important things, while wasting time doing stuff that really didn't make that much of a difference.Does this sound familiar? If I asked you to name the three most important things on your to do list right now, would you know them?A few years ago, I was done with the stress and with working like that. Surely there had to be a better way to organize my to do's than by just dumping them all on a sheet of paper, with some Post its thrown in for good measure. So I started researching and experimenting until I had created a to do system that actually worked.Ever since, I've been using this method and it has reduced my stress big time. I didn't fully realize how much stress my faulty to do list was giving me until I got it sorted out! Not only do I have oversight at any given time of what I have to do, but I also know what's most important and what I need and want to do next. It's not a unique system that I came up entirely by myself: I combined various methods and systems of others to create something that worked, yet didn't cost and arm and a leg and was easy and fast to maintain.I created a short and sweet e-book that describes my to do system: The 7 Keys to An Effective To Do List. And it's completely free. I already sent it out last week to subscribers of my weekly newsletter and posts and here's what one youth pastor emailed me:
"Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this! When I was reading the intro about "if this is you", it was me! (nice intro). I read your ebook and realize I am making some costly mistakes. I am looking forward cleaning up my many to-do lists."
Anyways, the e-book is yours for free. Just sign up for our newsletter below (it's usually weekly but less frequent over the summer break) and we'll send it to you![et_bloom_inline optin_id="optin_6"]