The more routine in my life the more I get done. If I write everything that I do in a month down on a list, it is a pretty long list. Some of the things that I do, I do once a month, others once a week, then daily, and then multiple times a day. If I do the list of daily things at the same time every day I am becoming organized routine and then I pick up even more speed. Some of the things on my list are locked in like church services, leadership classes, and accountability groups, so those get written down first, and then everything else gets written in around it. There is 168 hours in a week and I want to stuff as much in that time as I can. Some people like slow and easy, not me, I get super bored with slow and easy, I want fast and hard with periodic rest times plugged in. I like my rest times to be productive but sitting, like reading and writing. So I try to mix up “on my feet” activities with “sitting activities.” My list of daily activities get a number, 1, 2, or 3. Activities with a 1 are very important and can’t be missed like my Bible reading. Activities with a 3 have more flex in them and if things happen that I wasn’t expecting the 3’s can be sacrificed, such as writing in my journal or working on some of my projects. My journal writing is important, but my goal is three times a week, so it can move. If you play a game on your smartphone while flying on an airplane, you try and win. I have a game of trying to accomplish as much as possible in a week so I am always thinking about how I can improve my organization. Back in the days when I ran I had a wrist GPS that had a virtual running partner on the screen. I could program him to run at a certain speed so there would be him running on the screen and another runner that represented me. I could look and see if I was winning or losing the race as I ran, and it motivated me to pick up the pace if I was behind Gunner, the name I gave to my GPS running partner. My pages of daily activities scheduled throughout the day is my running partner, as it were. At the end of every day I can declare myself the winner or the loser. I have established some value statements so that I can maintain a fast pace, but not frantic. One of those is “interruptions in my schedule that are conversations with people get extra points, and if they are conversations with “vfp’s in my life they get even more points.” A vfp is a “very filling person.” Some people in my life fill up my gas tank, they encourage me, motivate me, make me smile, so I consider time with them in a week very important. Those times are seldom on my list, they happen accidently, but very easily, because I am always on the lookout for them, and will readily sacrifice several 3’s and even some 2’s to allow them to happen.

I work really hard to control my eating with good days and bad. I exercise all the self-control I can muster to speak only words that edify and give grace to those who hear. I struggle big time with not allowing reading, listening to, and watching the news, and current event experts eat up a bunch of my time, it is so addictive. Speaking of addictive, it is so easy to let NFL and NBA games and all the Sports Talk stations eat up huge amounts of time, and then justify it under the guise of relaxing and recovering from the stresses in life. I set goals and set stopwatches with alarms, and establish consequences and rewards for success and failure. And then the real challenge is taking every thought captive so that all that I think about is pure, right, true, and honorable. Every morning I make commitments to the Lord to exercise self-control in every area of my life and I pray and ask God to give me the strength to keep my commitments. I sincerely hunger and thirst for righteousness, I press on toward the goal of becoming like Jesus in every area of my life and character, I examine my life and my motives every night and confess all known sins and bad attitudes to the Lord.

I am growing in self-control in all these areas, but it is so stinking slow! If I live to be a thousand years old I may be able to say that I have finally acquired the character trait of self-control, maybe! Oh well, maybe it will get easier when I get older 😂🤣