Maximizing your Potential

Today I have some thoughts on how to maximize personal effectiveness.  A common pitfall for leaders happens when they wrongly allocate their time and energy.  We are each uniquely created with gifting and talents and have a responsibility to manage these gifts.  Joy and fulfillment comes in our labor when we connect our calling with the careful management of our time and resources.  This process begins by discovering and understanding individual strengths.  The creative person is most effective being creative and the administrative person is most effective being administrative.  Each finds value in his or her gifting while also being called upon to perform outside of their gifting from time to time.

The person who maximizes their abilities structures their time so that their best energies are spent developing their strengths.  For example, the creative person should allocate their time toward creativity when they are most creative.  All too often we spend our best energies on our weaknesses and "get by" with our talent.  As a result we never reach our full potential because we devote so little time to develop our gifts.

I believe a slight change in thinking can be very helpful to a person struggling in this area.  This happens when we see that time spent on necessary tasks, that fall in areas of weakness (ie. administration for the creative) enable us to be our best when we need to be our best.  For example, the creative person spends time on organization so that when they are being creative they can be their most creative.  They are not organizing to be more organized, they organize to be more creative. 

We see this played out in the life of the best professional athletes.  Their entire lives are structured for small moments of time.  The food they eat, the time they go to bed, the friends they associate with are all factors that lead to the success of their performance.  They understand that managing those areas of their life let them be their best when they need to be their best.

Each of us is given a short period of time and a measure of gifting and talent.  Father, help us to manage the time and the gifts that you have given us.  May we learn to honor you with all of our time and talents.