A Matter of Time

The jovial fellow from the Parish Development Office suggested that, for my own interest, I do a time-recording exercise and compare what I actually do day-by-day with what I think I do. I picked two weeks back in September.

Over that time I worked 57 1/2 hours each week, which breaks down as follows:

Admin and dealing with emails                                           11.5
Services and immediate service preparation                         7.0
Meetings and preparation for meetings                                 6.9
Morning & Evening Prayer                                                  5.2
Preparation for services and sermons                                  4.9
Private prayer                                                                  4.0
Work-related travel                                                           3.4
Outreach and outreach preparation (mostly school work)        3.0
Reading and study                                                            2.8
Pastoral work, including home communion                            2.3
Church maintenance and preparation                                  1.8
Funerals and funeral administration                                     1.8
Post-service interaction with congregation                           1.1
Bible study                                                                      0.9
Planning and reviewing church activities                               0.9
Marketing and fundraising                                                   0.6
Ecumenical business                                                          0.1

Some of these categories of activity are on the edge of work and non-work; if I were not a priest I would still be praying and probably doing a bit of Bible-reading. It's a relief to discover that, although at the moment I'm collecting Ms Formerly Aldgate from work most days and when I carried out this exercise we were going out for driving practice almost every day, I'm still doing a respectable amount of work around that, even taking into account the fact that I work six days out of seven. It's not an excessive amount of work compared to many other professions, although were I not in a relationship I would certainly be working more.

Whether this means I am giving proper attention to the right things I'm not sure. We're encouraged to consider whether our work activities are more orientated towards maintaining the Church as it is or towards developing it, and it's not easy to see how the above headings break down into those broad areas. Some meetings, for instance, will be more focused on one or the other. Perhaps that's the way I should think about it the next time I do it.