“I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” – Ephesians 4:1b
This past Sunday, I told our church that we should “resolve to put Jesus first this year.” What I shared came out of some of my own convictions about how God wants me to reorient my life around faithfulness to Jesus. I’ve realized that I have become complacent in a couple areas of life that reflect that I am not totally surrendered to Christ.
The first area that I need to put Jesus first in is my personal organization and time management. Those who know me are aware that I am chronically disorganized, forgetful, and I often lose track of things, such as emails, appointments, and tasks that need to be completed. While a certain amount of that can be chalked up to personality traits or mental limitations that I can’t change, some of it is just because I haven’t put in the effort to get better, even though I believe Jesus would expect more faithfulness from me. I need to become more organized, not just because I want to be a better person or have a better life, but because I want Jesus to be first in my life.
In the past, I’ve always tried to come up with new methods or systems to get my life in order, but it has never worked, at least not for long. At this point, I think it’s not so much a matter of finding a new system or method, but of actually using the tools that I already have effectively. For others who are looking to become more organized, here are some of my favorite tools that I love and can’t live without:
- Evernote – Definitely one of the best applications out there. I use it for keeping meeting notes, school notes, shopping lists, you name it. And it syncs effortlessly between all of my devices, which is one prerequisite for any application that I use.
- Google Calendar – This is great not only for keeping track of personal appointments, but also for sharing calendars for church, family, and other interests, allowing me to collaborate and keep various areas of life in harmony. Again, effortless syncing works great.
- Google Tasks/Astrid – Google’s tasklist solution is great, but they still don’t offer syncing with mobile devices. Astrid is one of many solutions that uses Google’s API to take care of syncing, and it’s the best out of the options I’ve tried for Android.
- Dropbox – I love Dropbox! I use it to store all of my sermon notes and other critical files, which keeps them safely backed-up, and also available on my phone or anywhere else I need to access them away from my laptop.
- YouVersion – This might not seem like an organizational tool, but YouVersion.com’s Bible application is incredibly useful for keeping me on track in my most important discipline: reading the Bible! It has many different reading plans available, and can remind you to read every day!
Hopefully I can make some progress, and remain focused on keeping Jesus first in my life.
Next: “Jesus First – Part 2: Health”
