Could Practicing the Virtue of Prudence Give You More Time In Your Day?

First Key to Spiritual Growth: Taking Control of Your Life through the Virtue of Prudence

In the last two articles we explored the need to take control of our lives. We saw how we can make simple choices that slowly build up our inner sanctuary. Then we looked at the importance of embracing change in areas you can control rather than making excuses for your lack of spiritual growth based on factors outside of your realm of influence.

I gave you a simple formula for getting started taking control.

1. Recognize that the only change you can make is to change yourself. Make holiness your goal.
2. Bring your desire for conversion to prayer
3. Make a plan to overcome these two obstacles
4. Take control of your time
5. Take control of your environment
6. Start small and build good habits

Given our frantic culture and ridiculous level of busyness, the fourth step deserves a special focus. We are the most overwhelmed, overloaded society in history. Most of us cannot imagine adding one more thing to our busy daily schedules.

Unfortunately, this busyness is not the happy productivity we would really like it to be. Too often we find ourselves spending our entire day reacting to sudden “urgent” demands on our time.

How often do you feel like you spent the entire day working on busyness and got absolutely nothing done? I can’t even count how many times I have made this comment to my wife.

So where does busyness leave us in the areas of spiritual growth and Catholic learning? All too often it leaves us dissatisfied. We find that we are not taking time out for relationships, family, prayer, or learning about our faith.

So, before we can even begin to make a plan for spiritual growth, we are going to need to tackle the concept of Catholic time management. And our solution may surprise you – our solution is the virtue of prudence.

What is your biggest obstacle to growing in your faith?

• Distractions from my goals.
• Too many things–job, family, volunteering for church, trying to find time to maintain health with exercise and home cooking, trying to keep connected with friends. All the demands make it hard to focus on what is most important and find time for God and really LISTEN and HEAR what He has to tell me. I’m too busy to be able to do this.
• The pressures of kids sports, work requirements and not having personal time with my spouse.
• The world is so fast paced and non-religious it is hard to stay focused on what is important, God’s Will and to let mine go.
• Frustration w/self…seem to need more “quiet/think time” than my daily obligations allow (or so it feels). Then I don’t “work through” things adequately and they pile up creating spiritual and general grumpiness.
• to many committments in life that distract me from what I ahould be doing.
• [I need to] spend more time reading my Bible and living our faith.
• This year, I am working on grounding myself and everything I do in my faith. That means trying to lead a more balanced life that consists of the things we have to do to survive (like work, negotiate with co-workers, etc.) but yet find some time for God, personal relationships, nature, fun, etc. I’m working on setting some personal goals that will include reading a faith based book at least every 2 months.
• [I need] quiet time to myself
• I need time and peace! If I had more time, I’d be able to reflect more, pray more and balance my life out more. I’m working hard on finding that time wherever I can so I can increase my faith.
• time
• I work really hard (like many other people) and I’m driven often by secular demands–so I’ve tried slowing down and finding more joy in my life. Reading more faith based information and reminding myself that the secular world issues while important do not define who I am.

Boiling it Down: the Need for Margin

And the good news is that I have been doing some serious thinking about a Catholic time management solution – and I have found one I think you’re going to love!

What I discovered is a Richard Swenson - Opens in a new window" rel="noopener noreferrer">life management concept called “margin.” Margin can be understood as the amount of personal resources that we have available to dedicate to what we are doing. This energy is directly proportional to the amount of control we feel we have over our time. Busyness doesn’t only cheat us out of minutes and hours. When we don’t feel in control of our schedule, we get drained of energy. We have no “margin” – no emotional, psychological or spiritual resources – to deal with anything else that might come up unexpectedly.

With a sense of control over our time, we feel that we can take the time to do what is truly important. When something unexpected pops up, we have the personal resources to deal with it. We may not avoid stress, but we are at least not thrown completely off balance just because we have to pick the kids up from school when we were counting on being home early to get the bills paid.

Sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it?

The Surprising Solution: Virtue of Prudence

The discovery of this concept of margin has led me to do quite a bit of thinking about the virtue of prudence and its relationship to busyness and Catholic time management. Prudence is the virtue of identifying what is truly good and important, then making a plan to get it. I realized that prudence is really the key to creating margin in our lives. If we could take the time to plan out our lives – to consider what our most important values are, to think about what kind of person God wants us to become and what we need to do to become that person, to decide to grow in virtue and to get rid of life-draining vices in our lives – we could take back control of our time. We could stop the busyness. We could direct our personal resources, including our time, to what is truly important.

Does this sound like a bit of a pipe dream? Does it sound like something that might be good to try . . . after things calm down a bit (whenever that may be)? Does it sound unrealistic in “today’s world?

My Personal Experiment

I was afraid of that. So, I decided to put it into practice while I was developing the idea. And what I found was that . . .

It is really hard!

Catholic Time Management requires discipline. It requires commitment and perseverance. And I have to admit that the area of life management is far from a strength of mine, so I have a lot to overcome to make something like this work. In fact, my own mother even laughed at me when she heard that I was thinking about developing a course in time management (shame on you, Mom)!

It is Possible!

But I also found that implementing Catholic time management and getting rid of busyness is possible. I am struggling, but I have made progress. And the little progress I have made in planning my life and following through with that plan has already reaped some major rewards!

It is Rewarding!

• I am on the way to losing 20 pounds by practicing discipline toward my health goals
• I have improved my prayer life! I’m not up to a regular prayer schedule yet, but I’m entering God’s presence much more regularly than I used to
• I have created more time to write and to work on my projects because I am no longer being bullied by the “urgent” things that pop up every day. I am disciplining myself to sit and work for longer periods of time. Not perfect yet, but improving! 

  Here’s a great resource for Catholic productivity oriented especially to Catholic professionals! This is one we’ll be exploring more in the future.

• I’m getting more sleep . . . most nights . . . because I am disciplining myself to go to bed instead of staying up to “catch up” on work I should have gotten done during the day!
• In general I feel much less stressed, hurried and harried than usual, despite adding a full-time substitute teaching position to my schedule for the past month.

And I really have only just begun the experiment. I’m still developing the course and it will take me a while to implement the whole thing.

Look, if I can do it anyone can do it. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife . . . or my mother. They’ll tell you that I am approaching this project at a great handicap. Yet, what I am discovering in my research, reflection and prayer is really changing my life! I think it’s something that you could really benefit from.

What Do You Think?

We can get rid of busyness. Then we can get rid of the excuse that we don’t have time to study, pray, grow in our faith. We can focus on what is truly important. And we will find true fulfillment in life when we do.

What do you think, you want to join me in exercising a little prudence in our lives and gaining some margin? Is this an area of concern in your life? Please leave your comments at the bottom of this article!

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