Tag Archives: clarity

“Making Myself Behave”


When I wake up in the mornings, time is already moving, in fact it was moving all night long. The only thing that I can do is to get up and move with it. You hear a lot of talk about managing time, and not to look down on the topic, I just want to talk about it in a different light. Time management seminars, classes and practices are very beneficial. How many people would come to a “Me Management Seminar” or “Me Management Class?” In reality, at the end of the day (or beginning hopefully) we are not really managing time as much as we are managing ourselves.

I have never actually seen time stand still, although there may have been times when it felt like it was standing still. I have seen clocks stand still, but only because the batteries were dead. In fact we have a clock in our kitchen that just stands still, it never moves. But even with a clock standing still or a person standing still, time keeps on moving. If time never stops them maybe, just maybe, our concern is not about managing time, but about managing ourselves. That challenge is one that sometimes becomes a difficult task.

You only get 24 hours in one day until that day is gone. Time is your greatest resource; it may be the only resource that you cannot get more of. Being a great manager of yourself will help you to become a more productive person allowing you to eliminate the excuse that “you didn’t have time,” because you will focus on the more important things first. You will also learn to make time work by making yourself accountable to plan before you get started.

Here are my thoughts on managing YOU:

  1. You must plan ahead, knowing what you are going to do with YOU in the time that is given.
    1. Managing YOU is telling YOU where you will spend your time before the hours arrive.
  2. You have to be disciplined to make sure that YOU do what you planned.
    1. Remember that time is going to pass whether YOU use it or not, so you have to be disciplined to use time correctly instead of wondering why nothing got done.
  3. Know and plan that everything will not work in the timing that was planned.
    1. Not planning for this will get you discouraged and off your plan quickly.
  4. Keep a log of where YOU spent your time.
    1. We are creatures of habits, but you cannot change what you do not measure.
    2. A log of your time will tell YOU what you with the time that you spent

What are your ideas concerning “You Management?”

What do you take away from this?

What do you have to add to it?

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Why I Write


This is my official hello blog post; my name is Brian Ives, husband to a great wife, father of two great kids, a Youth Pastor and someone who loves to think.  I thought I would take a post and explain why it is that I write.

I would have to go back many years to find a time when I did not have a thought running through my head. Sometimes they have been hard for me to get them on to paper. To get them to a place where they can be hashed out, defined in a clearer manner, and could be stored, but for years the thoughts have been there.

I think it makes a big difference in people’s life when they write or use some form of communication to record their thoughts.  I believe that everyone has beneficial information to share. One man suggested that every person has at least one book in them; their autobiography. But I do think it makes a difference in why we write.

For me, I write for several different reasons, here are the 5 I value as of now:

  1. It helps me to think through and remember the lesson(s) that I am currently learning.
  2. It helps me to understand how I feel about those lessons and be able to look back on them for years to come.
  3. It helps me to clear up my thinking and sharpen what I have to say.

Michael Hyatt says: “Thoughts disentangle themselves over the lips and through fingertips.”

One of the best things I have started lately is Twitter https://twitter.com/BrianKIves

Where else do you get a strict diet of 140 characters to say what you got to say? It has been a challenge for me, but one that I am enjoying.

4. It helps me to be a better communicator and a better preacher.

Most of the time when I preach it is hard to “hear” myself getting off of my topic.  But when I write I can clearly see when I start getting off subject.

I will never forget the day I learned this lesson.  I was proofing a devotion I was writing; I realized that I had gotten off subject for about 5 or 6 lines. I had to erase a few lines and start back up the paper. My thoughts had the chance to become like an arrow shot at a defined target.

5. I hope people read my content, my stories and the lessons that I learned and be able to learn from them also.

So there are the reasons that I write, I understand that most of the reasons that I write sound like they are just for me, but I do hope that it impacts the people that hear me speak and the people that read what I write.

So do you write, and if you do you find that it helps to see clearer the thoughts that you have in your head?