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Struggling with busyness? Discover how intentional Christian living frees us from endless to-do lists and helps us pursue what matters most.
S3E4 – Clarifying Your Mission: Influence, Ministry, & Your Why – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast
In Season 3, Episode 4 of A More Beautiful Life Collective podcast, we're exploring why clarifying your “why” is the keystone to living with purpose and avoiding burnout. We unpack how hustling without direction leads to overcommitment, comparison, and exhaustion, while a God-given mission statement provides traction, focus, and freedom to say no. Learn to align gifts, burdens, and seasons with your calling, filter decisions through a simple mission, and turn everyday influence—parenting, ministry, creative work—into fruitful Kingdom impact. Perfect for Christian women seeking intentional living, faith-centered productivity, and clarity of purpose.Read the full post here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/clarifying-your-mission-influence-ministry-your-why/Get the 30 Days to a Life You Love Challenge here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/30-days-to-a-life-you-love-challenge-tracker-slow-living-printable-tracker-faith-simplicity-peace/Get the Full Life You Love Toolkit here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/a-life-you-love-toolkit-christian-intentional-living-planner-toolkit-for-women/Get the Build a More Beautiful Life: 5 Days to Align Your Faith, Family and Work here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/build-a-more-beautiful-life-faith-and-family-devotional-workbook-5-day-christian-pdf-to-align-faith-family-and-work/Get The Faithful 12 Goal-setting Kickstart Planner Here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/your-12-week-year-pdf-guide/ Get Cultivate: A Faithful Framework for Aspirations, Goals & Habits here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/cultivate-a-faithful-framework-for-aspirations-goals-habits-christian-goal-setting-workbook-faith-based-planner-printable/ …Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop.Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.
When Productivity Becomes a Distraction
Once I was driving down the road, I got a text about a prayer need. As it pinged through my Apple watch, I was thinking about papers to grade, bathrooms to scrub, and laundry to fold. I muted the watch and forgot about it. I was too busy being productive to focus on that.
Once I was having a conversation with a friend. She was telling me how challenging this season of her life was. I nodded, hugged her goodbye, and shifted my focus to my to-do list.
Once I was listening at church to the challenges a certain mission field was having. With just a few dollars and moments of my time, I could make a sizeable impact on the lives of those brothers and sisters in Christ. I sat admiring what a good idea that was and then picked up my phone to make a grocery order for pick up later that day.
I could tell you more examples, too. Examples of times when I was in the right place at the right time, hearing about an opportunity to follow God’s righteous way. But, instead of choosing to go right, I went left into the path of self-centeredness and mindless, endless productivity. I could have chosen to serve, but the weight of all the things that I needed to get done kept my head down, looking just at my own two feet – my own desires and goals. On being seen as a productive person.
In my heart and in my quiet times, I was puzzled by my actions. Many times, on the way to my job, I would pray for God to use me for his glory. But then, in the hurry of the day, it’s like I forgot God existed. I moved on to the next thing and the next thing, without ever thinking of the main thing I wanted my life to be about.
I felt like Paul, choosing to do the things I do not want to do while not doing the things that I want to do. I wanted a beautiful picture of life in service to him, but I found that I was caught up in the hectic pace of modern life.
Why Busyness Can Keep Us From Serving Others
Last year, I read a book called The Gospel Comes with a Housekey by Rosaria Butterfield. It’s a compelling picture of the ways that hospitality can make an open door for the lost to come to Christ. She describes nightly dinners, neighborhood church, and evening family worship time that is open to anyone. The life she described – of meals delivered, needs met, sick cared for, prisoners visited – it was a life that truly seemed to be following Jesus. A life where the church walls meant nothing because everywhere you enter is a place to worship God, a place to love your brother. Even if it wasn’t necessarily the most productive.
As I read, I felt a little hopeless. I thought about the way I struggled nightly to get dinners made, kids fed, kids cleaned up, the kitchen cleaned up, and everyone in bed. I had even tried to divide my evenings into 30-minute increments in hopes of getting it all done. If dinner wasn’t started by 5:30, there goes the night. It would be 7:00 before we ate, 8:30 before the kids were asleep, and there would be no catching up on the chore list happening. Where in this lineup was I supposed to pencil in family worship? When was I able to cook dinner for the person who needed it, much less take it to them? How was I going to even know that someone needed dinner when I left text messages on read and phone calls unanswered?
I was caught up in the pace of everyday life, and there was no rest for the weary.
The Problem With To-Do Lists
It’s in the busyness of being a working mom with two, two and under, that I began to see the benefit of slowing down. Of refusing. Not the refusing to be present or to serve. But, of refusing to let life be dictated by a schedule or a to-do list. In fact, I noticed that the more that I wrote down tasks or ideas I wanted to do, the more likely I was to not do them, and then be left feeling defeated. It was almost like the action of writing the to-do list got the fire to do something out of my bones. Then, my focus would turn on something different with the item on the to-do list never getting checked off.
The book, In Good Time by Jen Pollock Michel, discusses the West’s concern with time management in her book. She writes quoting Clive Thompson, “To-do lists are, in the American imagination, a curiously moral type of software… With to-do apps, we are attempting nothing less than to craft a superior version of ourselves. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that when we fail, the moods run so black.”
She goes on, “In other words, our to-do lists catalog more than ambition. They inscribe the meaning we need to eke out of our lives. They give us the assurance that if we keep the hours productively, our lives will achieve some lasting value, something that the tides of time can’t carry away. To say it most forcefully, our to-do lists hedge against mortality. ‘Every single time you write down a task for yourself,’ writes Thompson, ‘you are deciding how to spend a few crucial moments of the most nonrenewable resource you possess: your life. Every to-do list is, ultimately, about death’” (p. 30-31).
I wanted to write down good ways to live my life to make an impact. However, it seems like the act of writing those tasks down worked against me doing something to actually make a difference. No amount of managing my time was going to change my actions or my attitude. I could not plan my way into being someone who serves other people.
As she discusses her past as a serial reader of time management books – a past I sympathize with completely – she explains that time management does not lead to a more righteous life. She states, “There are, of course, glaring differences between the technique of time management and the long-haul learning of biblical wisdom. In many ways, time management offers a facsimile of real wisdom. The Wisdom Literature of the Bible imagines the good life as a life submitted and surrendered to God; the humanist wisdom of time management, by contrast, is preoccupied with different questions entirely. It relies on no moral or philosophical framework. Productivity is a measure, not of good, but of output.” (p. 39).
I may be producing a lot of checkmarks in my planner, scratching off items on my to-do lists. But, I wasn’t living a righteous life for others.
Faith in Action > Productivity
In James 2:14-17, it says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
When I did not help those that I saw needed help, I had fallen prey to this idea of productivity being an end, a righteous end, in itself. Output is not a goal. Only the good that we can do with our lives is.
Steps Toward Intentional Living
Busyness will always compete for our attention. But if we choose intentional living, rooted in God’s wisdom, we’ll not only be more at peace—we’ll also be more available to love and serve others.
If you are looking for ways to add more intentional habits into your life so that you can be productive and also love your neighbor well, check out my post on habits. If you need encouragement in your days that are spent doing mundane tasks for others, check out my post on the margin people.
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Spotlight
My Beautiful Things
It’s time for some things to make life a little more beautiful. Each post on the blog features an item, book, show, or idea to bring some beauty to your life. These are things that I am currently using that I love and wanted to pass along to make your life a little easier.
This week, my favorite thing is my Simply Modern 40 oz Tumbler. This is the perfect way to keep hydrated during the hot summer months. It keeps drinks ice cold (even when left out in the hot car). It also has a convenient straw and fits nicely in cupholders. It’s even dishwasher-safe! All of the above are reasons why it has made my list of favorite things for this week!
Another thing I have been loving is the 1,000 Hours Outside Podcast. The host, Ginny Yurich, is trying to match screen time with green time by encouraging families to get outside for 1,000 hours throughout the year. Through a variety of hosts and lots of great ideas, this podcast is sure to help you make the most of these summer months.
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