ARE WE OVERWORKED?
Habitual busyness may be more a state of mind than a reality.
Donald Gerig
July 1, 1986
At a meeting recently I heard another pastor say with a big sigh, "Boy, what I wouldn't give for a regular forty-hour-a-week job!" He was fishing for sympathy-as we all have done at times. I find such comments common among my colleagues. Stress and burnout are catchwords. Although the demands made on us and our time are a concern, I wonder if we may not at times be fooling ourselves. Since coming to my present church, which includes many executives, my thinking has undergone some alteration on this subject. I found myself much more prone to grouse about my hours until I started trying to schedule time with some of these execs. Lunches were booked far ahead, and they regularly hit the office at 7:00 A.M. and didn't get home until supper was cold. I began to realize that every successful person I knew put in long, disciplined hours (and usually without complaint). Then I remembered that I was asking these very same successful people to volunteer additional time, outside their already-heavy schedules, to help in the work of our church. And they were doing it! Their dedication put me to shame. If they could devote themselves to their work with such vigor and still be willing to volunteer extra time for our church shouldn't I be able to face fifty to sixty hours of work a week without feeling overworked? The more I thought about it, the more I had to conclude I was not really overworked. What ends up causing stress and burnout for many of us begins with faulty assumptions and mistakes in our organization. I decided to be honest enough to recognize this and try to correct the mistakes rather than plead for pity. In my own experience, I find most "overwork" turns out to be mistakes of expectation, concentration, or delegation.
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