A Minute of Margin

Restoring Balance to Busy Lives - 180 Daily Reflections

This 2003 case-bound book offers 180 daily reflections on the general topic of margin and life balance. Each reflection is two pages and includes a quote, reflective comment, practical prescriptions, and international proverb.

Topical index: availability, balance, boundaries, busyness, contentment, emotional health, expectations, finances, freedom, information, limits, margin, media, overload, pace, physical energy, possessions, priorities, relationships, rest, simplicity, solitude, sovereignty, stress, technology, time, waiting, and work.

See reviews and excerpt below

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Reviews

Gordon MacDonald:
If you're always seeking (as I am) for encouragement and wisdom to say a few thoughtful yes's and a lot of gutsy no's in order to live effectively and joyfully, you're going to love A Minute of Margin.

Leith Anderson:
Imagine: a minute every day to learn to improve for the rest of your life. A Minute of Margin is positive, practical wisdom to make daily life more meaningful.

Paul Meier, MD:
A Minute of Margin gets us in touch with the painful truth about our chaotic, busy lives. If you're tired of living like this, you need to read this book.


Excerpt

REFLECTION 1: Priorities

One September Morning on the 103rd Floor
 
If you attempt to talk with a dying man about sports or business, he is no longer interested.  He now sees other things as more important.  People who are dying recognize what we often forget, that we are standing on the brink of another world.
-William Law
 

The skies were partly cloudy, the temperature was 68 degrees, the wind was out of the west at 10 mph.  A beautiful day.  At 8:45 AM, people working on the 103rd floor were pouring their morning coffee, straightening their desks, reviewing their Tuesday appointments, bantering with office mates, glancing at the harbor . . .

One minute later, none of that mattered.  Twenty floors below, a 757 transected the building leaving the 103rd cut off, trapped, hopeless.  But not yet dead.

When you have ten minutes to live, what are your thoughts?  What is important in the last seconds?  As a tribute to those nameless faces staring down at us from the smoky inferno, can we stop what we are doing long enough to listen to them?  Seeing death from this perspective is not morbid: on the contrary, it can help us see life.

Those who found phones called--not their stock brokers to check the latest ticker, not their hair stylists to cancel the afternoon’s appointment, not even their insurance agents to check coverage levels.  They called spouses to say “I love you” one last time, children to say “You are precious” one last time, parents to say “Thank you” one last time.  Through tears they called best friends, neighbors, pastors and priests and rabbis.  “I just want you to know what you mean to me.”  And surely those standing on the brink of another world thought of God--of truth and eternity, judgment and redemption, grace and the Gospel.

Imminent death has a commanding power to straighten life’s priorities with a jolt.  At such dramatic moments, people suddenly realize that priorities matter.

Tragically, however, chronic overloading obscures this truth.  How we live influences how we die, and misplaced busyness leads to terminal regrets.  If we don’t move to establish and then guard that which matters most, the breathless pace of daily overload will blind us to eternal priorities, until one day we too stand at such a window and look down.  Perhaps with regret.

Rx: Slow the pace of living until you again remember that day.  If that were you on the 103rd floor, what would have been important?  Live it.  Don’t hide behind the excuse of overload.  Daily make space in your life for the things that matter most.
 

The afternoon knows what the morning never dreamed.
-Swedish proverb