Do you ever have days where, when it’s over, you look back on the day and think to yourself, “What did I even accomplish today?” I had one of those moments just a little bit ago. It’s 7:30 on Saturday night, and I’m sitting in a Starbucks, completing my teacher homework for the class I have tomorrow morning. I know what you’re thinking…party animal. In all honesty, I’m quite content to sit and sip coffee, with the most eclectic selection of music playing softly in the background, at any time of day, but I did catch myself wondering how I got to this point of spending this Saturday night doing work. What did I do all week? Some might say I was procrastinating, and, while I have been known to “work better under pressure,” I know that’s not the case tonight.
I actually had a GREAT week at work this week. I love my job so much, but not every week can be full of fun. Sometimes your list of things to get done is just too long. More often than not, it seems that the less fun, just checking things off the list, kind of weeks are the ones that feel the most productive, while the weeks that are a blast are the ones that have you feeling like you wasted a week, because you have nothing concrete to point to when someone says, “What’d you do this week?”
What did I do this week? This week, I taught all the classes and attended all the meetings on my calendar, but ALSO, I ate lunch with students, got involved in a game of “hand tag” with 4th graders, saw ALL the things the Pre-K class was creating and building, celebrated co-worker birthdays, played several games of knock out, attended a livestock show to support a couple youth, and watched some of my middle school youth compete in the state basketball tournament. This week was all about relationships, and I loved every minute of it.
I have to give myself this pep talk often. A day, or even whole week, with no concrete evidence of productivity is not a wasted work week. I might take weeks, months or years before I see the fruit of the work I did this week, but I know that my relational week this week was just as important to ministry as a week spent at my desk in the office.
I don’t know what you do for a career, and I don’t know what the expectations are, but my guess is you have moments that are similar. Days that don’t feel productive may have been much more effective than you think.
So, I’ll gladly sit here, in this empty Starbucks on Saturday night, prepping for Sunday morning.