Time Well Spent

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Collin Hansen
We become what we practice. When I want to change my life, lose weight workout, read the Bible and pray more often. I don’t make much progress until I change my habits. Good thoughts and new year’s resolutions don’t last without a plan. Jen Pollock Michel offers eight habits for reimagining productivity, resisting hurry and practicing peace. And her latest book in good time published by Baker, she invites us to seek wisdom that is more concerned with ethical practice than type A respectability. She helps us recognize that we detest waiting because we have to believe that God is acting when we are not. But since we live according to God’s sovereign plan, we have every reason for hope, in all circumstances, generates this. If you only live once your hope lasts only as long as this life, but if your life can be incorporated into the God who makes all things new, if you can hold to the vision of revelation 21 of a world from which mourning and pain have passed away, you have time for hope. And I love that from Jen, you have time for hope. That’s significant because Jen observes that time has replaced place as the primary context for modern life. And so I’m eager to talk with Jen about this book. But first, I’m going to surprise her want to share another reason I’m inviting Jen on this podcast, she doesn’t know I’m going to do this. But in 2019, I stood at a crossroads. I didn’t know whether to focus more on reading books, or start a podcast, she recommended a podcast. And here we are episode 100 of gospel bound more than 4 million downloads and counting. So to mark the occasion, want to invite Jen to join the podcast. So thank you, Jen, for giving me the nudge that helped convinced me to start Gospelbound.

Jen Pollock Michel
Oh, my goodness, that’s really great news. Congratulations on 100 episodes.

Collin Hansen
All right. Well, I appreciate it, John. So let’s let’s talk about in good time, and these eight habits. Okay, so was this a book that you planned before the pandemic? And adjusted in light of those conditions? Or did it arise from the particular challenges of COVID-19?

Jen Pollock Michel
That’s a great question. I had a contracted a contract for a book. Prior to the pandemic, I wasn’t exactly sure what that book would be about. I think I was circling around these ideas. I also kind of wondered if it was a book about calling. I mean, I have a couple of different outlines. But certainly once the pandemic came, arrived, you know, and then then it was just the delay, delay, delay, delay delay, because it was hard to get work done, it was hard to really just decide truthfully, and finally I decided, okay, it’s about time, it’s going to be about these, it’s going to be a habit structure. And yeah, but it took me a long time to land there.

Collin Hansen
It seems like Jen, no matter what, for all of us, that pandemic is going to be a turning point in our lives. Yeah. Let me give a little bit more background and how that, that that experience has been a turning point for you and your family.

Jen Pollock Michel
For sure. I mean, I was one of those people that I mean, I’ve been a lifelong reader of time management books, and I talked about that in the in good time. And so when time was such a weird thing, in the pandemic, the first thing I did was kind of like, go back to my time management books, like, surely there’s something more that I have to learn, maybe there are ways that I can get more productive and feel better in this global crisis. And, you know, I started to read new pandemic, pet new productivity books, and I think it was just, you know, it was two, two months in that I just realized, like, this is not the answer. I have a lot of time anxiety, but I don’t think productivity is actually answering the essential question here. And maybe they’re just there’s an invitation to learn to live differently in time. And so that’s what started to happen for me. And the cool thing is, is that I was keeping a very meticulous journal of the pandemic. So early in the pandemic, if you remember, you know, people were saying, Keep a keep a record, keep a plague journal. And I was one of those people that, you know, that makes a lot of sense. Like, I think it’s really important to remember things. And as a writer, I like to keep a record of things. So I started to do that. And it was really just in reflecting on that pandemic journal that I realized how things really started to shift for me from productivity, to just a way of just starting to receive life with a lot more gratitude and a lot more surrendered trust, I would say.

Collin Hansen
Well, one of the changes for all of us at some level, or at least many of us, I shouldn’t say all of us because they’re definitely it’s noteworthy how many people’s worked it could not change did not change during the pandemic, those people those essential workers who kept us fed and and are going through this whole thing, but what are the implications Jen of working from home I’m on the popular wisdom from productivity and time management.

Jen Pollock Michel
Yeah, well, absolutely. Well, the first thing is, is that productivity and time management advice is very individualist. You know, it just sort of assumes this kind of life without any contingency. And so I get a little grumpy in the book about some various sources of that, usually, truthfully, to be honest, male sources, you know, who kind of like get this life? Because

Collin Hansen
I think what you said about, and what you need to do is always go work out at five o’clock.

Jen Pollock Michel
Exactly, 5pm. And I’m, like, I’m making dinner, who’s monitoring homework, I mean, if, again, if you have children, so yeah, I did get a little bit grumpy about that. So, and, you know, it’s just, the pandemic, all of a sudden, just returned us to a very contingent way of living like, Oh, my goodness, all of a sudden, you know, again, not for everyone. And I certainly don’t want to assume that. But for me, and certainly for my husband, who was one of those people who did enjoy a fair degree of autonomy, you know, I go to the office, you know, I have a partner who generally is managing things at home. And so he was suddenly home. And that means that you’re home, and you’re, you know, you’ve got kids kids underfoot, and people that needs to be fed, and you’ve got computers that aren’t working for virtual schooling, and I can’t work, I can’t do that. So all of a sudden, my husband’s kind of called in to do that. And so I think that was the first thing that kind of shifted is that, we started to realize that we’re living very collectively. And so an individual kind of ethos, just it just doesn’t work. And not to mention that it’s not very biblical. So just embracing a contingent life. And then this whole idea to that I think time management is is very, it assumes the kind of hero of the story that you get to, you get to perform these heroic acts, you know, you multiply your minutes you squeeze, you know, productivity from this limited resource called time. And so at the center of that story is this hero and to live very heroic Lee means that you always have to be in good health, you know, you’re always getting a decent amount of sleep. And so to realize that, we don’t get the perfect ideal conditions of time management most of the time, and certainly in the pandemic, we did get them.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. Well, I guess that related to that point, then Jen is my next question. You write that our to do lists, hedge against mortality? And on that, on that,

Jen Pollock Michel
yeah, I mean, that was a, that was actually, I think, a realization from a couple of people who were coding productivity app. And they were just sort of realizing like, people, just they people love to have to do lists. But when you really dig into it, the fact is, is that people are never getting the things done on their to do list. And so there’s there’s this aspirational quality about to do list. And why are we so aspirational, it’s because we are faced all the time with the shadow, lurking of our own mortality, that we’re never going to get everything done. And our lives are so brief. And of course, this is such a beautiful thing that the biblical writers have given to us, they’ve already given us these images of life as a mist of vapor, a shadow, you know, grass that blooms and flowers that bloom in the morning and wither by the afternoon. And so that is what is happening so often with time management is and I think I want to credit Oliver Berkman here to who’s not a Christian writer, a British writer who wrote another time management book, that really he I think, like me, walked a very parallel journey, believing in the promises of time management, and then suddenly realizing, Wait, wait, this actually doesn’t work. And in and what is this really about? This is really about his book is called 4000 weeks. This is really about the fact that we have 4000 weeks, and that’s not very much time.

Collin Hansen
Well, I could relate to this Jen from the book, you say I wanted motion, because I had always counted motion as meaning. Mm hmm. And later you write who can slow down when there is so much to prove. I’m betting some folks listening here can relate to it’s a bit of a softball question, but if meaning is not found in busyness, where is it found?

Jen Pollock Michel
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a lot of monastic wisdom here that I found to be kind of an important answer to this question. And this idea that getting busy with the wrong things is, is not what God’s calling us to do. Getting busy with the things that God called us to do. And sometimes he’s just not even calling us to be busy. You know, he busyness is a measure of what you get done. Or maybe the fact that you have a lot to get done, but it actually says nothing for the quality of your own obedient, obedience. Are you getting the right things done? And not only? Are you getting the right things done, but are you getting them done with the right heart and attitude? You know, I talk a lot about irritability in the book. Because I think productivity, again, just that urgency of like, I’ve got to get things done. And please don’t get in my way, because there is so much to prove. And I’m gonna have to feel good at the end of this day by having gotten a lot of things done. And just that idea can often just make us so irritable. So whereas meeting found, I mean, I look at Jesus, I look at the vocational obedient response of Jesus, here I am, you know, I’ve come to do Your will. Your law is written in my heart, on my heart, this is what I delight to do. And so we find the meaning of our lives when you’re just we’re just responding obediently to God’s calling to each of us.

Collin Hansen
I think there’s a related then to the concept of higher time that you described. Could you explain what you mean, by higher time?

Jen Pollock Michel
Yeah, I’ve had, I’ve actually had a really interesting email exchange with another writer on this, who wrote about Kairos versus Chronos. And, you know, we do have these two different words in Greek Kairos, being the kinds of time that you can’t measure with the clock, this idea that there’s a time that exist, that really does suggest an eternal frame. Whereas Chronos is really just those those minutes those those hours, it’s the time that elapses, the time that can be counted and measured. And so in this email exchange with another writer, you know, we were just talking a little bit, how do we make sense of the fact that while Kairos is a last time today, in terms of like, if you look at productivity and time management, the time management literature, they’re not granting Kairos time generally, they’re thinking purely in Chronos time, they’re thinking about, you’ve got so many minutes and hours, you got to make use of them today. But but in the Bible, when we talk even about time and the New Testament, it’s not as if the only time that’s baptized as good is Kairos time, you know that Jesus came in Chronos time. And so the words are very, they’re not systematically used in the New Testament, which is what I was talking to this other writer about. So I think there’s this invitation for us as Christians, one, to recover a completely different kind of timekeeping, time measuring time, accounting Kairos time, allowing us to see a life time that exists beyond the veil of this life. But that isn’t to say that God isn’t very much involved in Chronos time, and he very much is, and actually, he made it to look at the Genesis account is to see that God made time and said it was good, and that Jesus came in time, and yet suffered. I think under Chronos. Time and me thanks. What we know about Chronos time is that there is an expiration date that we only get so many hours in this life. And so I think I’d be curious, I’m not a New Testament and not a Greek scholar, not a New Testament scholar. So I think these are probably best left to people who know more than me, but I’m very interested for Christians to recover Kairos time hire time, time that exists beyond just the minute, the hour, the day, the week, the year.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, you’ve already alluded to this, Jen, but the time management and productivity literature tend to assume a certain level of physical and mental ability. One of the things you write though is that suffering has a way of eroding all our pieties and platitudes. Can you tell us more about how caring for your mother has changed your perspective on what you can or should accomplish? Mm hmm.

Jen Pollock Michel
So as I mentioned, during the pandemic was just this real, this realization, sobering realization that really all of life is can contingent, and that one of the things that God is calling all human beings to do is to care diligently for their neighbor, and that is not just you know, the starving child in another part of the world. You know, so often we think, I think social media and the digital landscape often forces us at Think about the furthest person sometimes, and not the closest person in terms of who is my neighbor, who am I called to care for. And one of the things I realized in the pandemic was that that my neighbor was actually going to become my own mother. So we didn’t see her for the first 18 months of the pandemic, because of the international border between the Canada, Canada and the United States being closed. Us being in Toronto, she being in, in Ohio, and when we saw her for the first time, is when I realized, I we’re gonna have to have, we’re gonna have to think seriously about the next season of life. She was at the time still married to a man who was suffering from Parkinson’s, and he actually has since passed away. But we knew that that would be imminent. And we knew that there really wouldn’t be that there needs to be a plan in place. And it was interesting, because after that visit coming home, and just in my Bible reading various sort of serendipitously I’m reading all the Proverbs, I mean, I don’t think you can actually miss them in Proverbs, you know, all the Proverbs that say, you know, honor your parents care for them when they’re older, don’t despise them. And so we made the decision to move from Toronto back to Ohio, my mom, we’ve moved my mom close to us, she’s eight minutes away. And it’s changed the landscape of my life dramatically. Because I’m the one who takes her to doctor’s appointments. I’m the one who now is has assumed kind of all the administrative paperwork for her life, the financial, you know, paying her bills, looking at the accounts, all of that. I mean, if she needs anything, she’s pretty much I’m the one that she’s texting. And and it’s it’s not easy. I think, specifically because, well, first of all, like, I want to get things done, right, unlike anybody else, I don’t want to necessarily have an interrupted life, I think the other challenge about it is that I haven’t necessarily had an a close relationship with my mother. And so this is actually drawing close to someone who is, maybe, for me more difficult to draw close to. And so it’s now about trusting God. And I think this is the thing that I’m really realizing productivity, so often tells you to make time, multiply time by your own efforts. Whereas I’m trying to now live a way of time where I’m receiving time where I’m trusting God for the time that’s necessary to do the work that he’s called me to do. At this stage of my life, it’s now not just caring for my mother continuing to care for my children, you know, being present as a neighbor in a new community, but continuing the work of writing, how all of that was put together? I don’t exactly know. But I’m trusting.

Collin Hansen
Now, it’s easy to see that with all these responsibilities we have technology makes us more productive. But it also gives us more work to do certain technological developments, we wouldn’t be able to have this discussion. How do you find wisdom for making technology work for us, not us for the technology?

Jen Pollock Michel
I think one of the things that is so often omitted in a discussion of technology is how it forms our desires. And maybe you’re not surprised to hear me talk about desire, because that’s something that I’ve you know, I’ve, I’ve written about. But I think for, for example, one of the things when we think about technology, it forms in us not just a desire for speed, which in and of itself is something that we should pay attention to, you know that the fact that we become so accustomed to accommodated to moving through the world quickly. And so we become irritable when anything sort of impedes us getting something done quickly. But it’s not just quickly, it’s also effortlessly. It’s as the technology forms in us a desire for a life without burdens. And I think that’s something that’s really, really important. I think it’s how do we deal with the technical kind of technological environment? Well, I think one of the things we have to do is just proactively practice other things, practice slow things. And I think we have to practice burdens, burdens, ways of living, you know, where we take up caring for somebody I talked about this too in the book too, that I have had a long standing friendship with someone who is you know, as James would say, in the the Apostle James would talk about the widow and the orphan, you know, she’s the widow and her children are the orphan. But it was really during the pandemic where it was like, Oh my gosh, James doesn’t just say like, pray for them, give them money, you know, call them occasionally he says to visit them. And that kind of that is that is something very interruptive you know, it’s it’s, and so as Christians, how do we take up way ease of living, where we actually take up meaningful burdens, for love of God and love of neighbor. I mean, I think that is one way we sort of counter the seduction of technology.

Collin Hansen
More questions here with Jim Michelle talking about in good time, her new book with Baker, you’ve already alluded to this a little bit, Jen. But I love your perspective on waiting. And you write that endurance is an expression of faithful waiting, it requires remembering the real length of God’s time. What helps you remember to live by God’s time so that you can endure what you’re going through at that time,

Jen Pollock Michel
I would say, I have to rehearse. That’s the story that Scripture is telling. And I and I do that I do do that in the quiet of the morning, when I just open up not just you know, some devotional book, which is great, but really committing to reading the scripture from Genesis to Revelation, every year, that just has been a practice for me for a long, long time. And I think that just to see that story, again, and again, and again, it reminds like, it just takes me out of like this immediate sort of circumstance of my own life, lifts my eyes to the mountains reminds me that from everlasting to everlasting, You are God, you know, Before the mountains were ever formed, You are God. So we can’t have the wisdom to number our days, right, unless we tell that story. But I don’t think we just learned to tell that story, rehearse that story in the quiet of our home, I think we have to do it in church. I think that week after week, after week, after week, we do have to show up in the community of believers. And just hear that story told again, and again and again and again. Because I don’t know how you feel Colin, but I certainly feel my own heart to be like a sieve, you know, where the truth is just sort of like, just every day like they don’t I never stay fully filled up with the truth of the story of time. So those are a couple of the ways that I think for me, I’m learning to tell a different story different than, you know, I better get things done, and I better prove something with my life. And oh, my gosh, time is so scarce. On the one hand, it is and on the other hand is not?

Collin Hansen
Yeah, good. Good point. Yeah. Is that is that basically the same way you answer the question of what helps you slow down and find perspective and enjoy? Jesus, I have a lot of respect and admiration for my friends and family members, who seemed to do this, well, I am not one of them. So I’m eager for that I experience Christ most through actions, but that tends to and through other people. But that tends to lend itself toward a lot of the productivity, idolatry, all the working for Jesus, rather than say, with Jesus, or from Jesus, the all these different prepositions, but so what is it that helps you slow down and find perspectives? And enjoy Jesus? If you haven’t covered that already?

Jen Pollock Michel
Yeah, well, it’s interesting, because just over the last couple of months, like it from a variety of different sources, and you know, that’s kind of you when you know, when God’s speaking to you, because you hear the same thing from about 18 different sources, and it really has been enjoy Jesus, just enjoying his presence, you know, so an example would be, our pastor mentioned John Flavelle, a Puritan writer and his book, keeping the heart. And he was talking about the spiritual practice of keeping the heart and the purpose of it being our sweet and free communion with Christ. And I thought, Oh, wow, that idea of just enjoying sweet and free communion with Christ. I don’t know much about that. And another book was talking about, you know, just the practice of solitude, you know, that actually, even in our times with the Lord, often they can be very productivity driven, you know, reading the right kinds of things and praying for through our lists, and all of those things are really good, but actually beginning that time with Jesus that is just that you just enter into that with just quiet silence, you know, even just creating some room for God to speak. Sometimes that’s just reading scripture and pausing. I’ve, I’ve actually had to just make that time longer because it just doesn’t all fit. But I also think it’s not just a morning time, I think the practice of again just sort of returned to the monks and the nuns who prayed the offices and Christians who throughout the centuries have prayed the hours There’s different set times throughout the day to return to prayer so that those returning things actually make it possible to experience sweetened free communion with Christ throughout the day. But it’s not easy. I mean, I think temperamentally, Colin, you know, you and I are probably very similar. And I think that there is a wonderful way that we’ve been made to that. I think there are ways that God uses our temperaments our type, a kind of craziness. But I do think that invitation is important for us, especially I’ve been thinking about this, and in the context of caring for my mom, because productivity is not going to be possible, the older that we get, you know, we’re gonna have to practice these things so that when we enter into Lord willing, if God gives us time to age and, you know, become the matriarchs and patriarchs of the faith, like we need to have the capacity to enjoy that with God.

Collin Hansen
Absolutely, absolutely. That seems to be woven into some what God does to prepare us for eternity through the fallenness of this world, and the great tragedy of death is it gradually, and sometimes then suddenly introduces us to our utter and complete dependence on Christ, whether we like it. Yeah. Last question, Janice, something that came up just as I was reading your book, I’ve been surprised by the popularity of certain self help and productivity books, among some many Christian women in the last decade. And you write this that self help is an industry that in thrones, the self and others can at times feel empowering, it’s ultimately defeating. Your problems are always yours to solve through your efforts and cunning and self discipline. Self improvement is an exhausting, thriving business. I just love for you to maybe recap here as the last answer how you understand your book, as a contrast, especially in light of the gospel.

Jen Pollock Michel
Hmm. Well, I think that there’s a big tree on the cover of it, which is to figure the person in Psalm one is this flourishing human life that grows its roots down deep into the groundwater of God’s love this person who meditates day and night, on on, on God’s words, you know? So first of all, like the self self help is, again, it’s always about your own wisdom, you know, it’s about or maybe it’s about the wisdom of that Instagram influencer. And rather than on God’s words, and God Himself. So I think that’s a huge difference that I think what I’m trying to do in this book, is I’m actually trying to whet people’s appetite for the life that is going to grow deeply and slowly in time. And that’s the thing too is that self help is, you know, self help, doesn’t say, here’s a strategy for solving your problems in 20 years, it’s like, no, I need I need, I need help now. And I and I also need you to distill it in about five, you know, quick ways of approaching a problem. And so I think that Psalm one interesting to learn that, in the in the Middle Ages, there were a group of women, the begins, who and maybe others who really saw Christ as that man that blesses man of Psalm one. And so I think the difference between self help and my book I hope is going to be pretty apparent because I’m suggesting that you’re going to have to submit to the practices of wisdom, which mean wisdom, the fear of the Lord first principle of wisdom, wisdom, being a community enterprise, it’s not simply that it’s something that you can just sort of think of and it’s intergenerational. It’s something that you’re gonna have to look to not just your ancestors, but your, you know, your, your elders to learn from and it’s just gonna take a lot of time. You don’t grow the kind of life the someone life overnight. You don’t grow it because you know, you took a few hacks from tick tock, you grow it incrementally from from a seed of faith. And and that fruit of the of the Wise Life is not just meant to feed you know, yourself. You’re feeding the world and you’re feeding generations to come.

Collin Hansen
Oh, my guest has been Jen Michelle talking about her latest book and good time published by Baker. It wouldn’t be appropriate for the 100th episode if I did not run through my final three here real quick. First one I normally asked Jen is how do you find calm the storm? I think that’s kind of been What this whole interview? So I think we’ve got that one covered. Number two is where do you find good news today?

Jen Pollock Michel
I find good news. I think, honestly, in the community of the saints, I believe in the communion of the saints. I love being in relationship with other believers who just remind me even if I’m not seeing God at work in my own life, I’ve always seen God at work in other people’s lives. So I would say that

Collin Hansen
one of my favorite things every week is just to watch everybody go forward for communion. Just a lovely thing. And then finally, what’s the last great book you’ve read?

Jen Pollock Michel
This will probably surprise you, but I just finished Dante’s Inferno. I love it so much, and I want everybody to read it. And now I’m on obviously to the Purgatorio. But Baylor Honors College offers something called 100 days with Dante, and they will send you email reminders, or you can get in a variety of other ways, and lectures, free lectures that are like seven 810 minutes long to help you understand each of the cantos. So I’ve had help reading it. And I think because I’ve helped really have had help reading it. I have enjoyed it. Just immensely. Yeah.

Collin Hansen
That’s great that you are the first, you’re the first 100 episodes in and you are the first.

Collin Hansen
Again, my guest on this 100th episode of gospel bound has been Jen Pollock Michel, take a look at her book, in good time knew from Baker. Jen, thank you so much for this interview, as well as being a big part of the inspiration behind this podcast to begin with.

Jen Pollock Michel
Yeah, you’re welcome Collin.