In Good Time: 8 Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace

by Jen Pollock Michel

Overview

"'Time belongs not to us but to God,' contends Michel. Lambasting time management strategies that prioritize productivity, Michel argues that readers must instead accept that 'there is always enough time to do what God has planned.' Michel succeeds in putting earthly concerns in cosmic perspective. These insightful musings are worth a look."—Publishers Weekly

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Whether we're trying to find time, save it, manage it, or make the most of it, one word defines our relationship with the clock: anxiety. Yet is productivity really the only grid for the good life? Have you ever imagined a life without hurry, relentless work, multitasking, or scarcity? A life that is characterized instead by presence, attention, rest, rootedness, fruitfulness, and generosity?

This is the kind of life we are meant for, says Jen Pollock Michel. But if we want to experience freedom from time anxiety, we have to reimagine our relationship with time itself.

In the pages of In Good Time, she invites you to disentangle your priorities from our modern assumptions and instead ground them in God's time. Then she shows you how to establish 8 life-giving habits that will release you from the false religion of productivity so you can develop a grounded, healthy, life-giving relationship with the clock.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781540900548
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/13/2022
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jen Pollock Michel is the award-winning author of Teach Us to Want, Keeping Place, Surprised by Paradox, and A Habit Called Faith. She holds a BA in French from Wheaton College and an MA in Literature from Northwestern University, and she is also a student in Seattle Pacific's MFA program. Jen is a wife and mother of five and hosts the Englewood Review of Books podcast.

Table of Contents

Part 1 On Time Anxiety

In the Year of Our Lord 2020 13

YOLO 23

Life Hack 33

On Living the Lord's Time 45

Part 2 On Time Faith

Habit 1 Begin 59

Habit 2 Receive 81

Habit 3 Belong 101

Habit 4 Offer 123

Habit 5 Wait 143

Habit 6 Practice 163

Habit 7 Enjoy 183

Habit 8 Remember 203

Afterword: In Which I Don't Give Up Reading Time Management Books 223

Acknowledgments 233

Notes 237

Editorial Reviews

10/17/2022

“Time belongs not to us but to God,” contends Englewood Review of Books podcaster Michel (A Habit Called Faith) in this pensive meditation. Lambasting time management strategies that prioritize productivity, Michel argues that readers must instead accept that “there is always enough time to do what God has planned.” The “eight habits” she recommends might more accurately be called general principles to follow, and they include exercising patience as God’s plan unfurls and offering one’s time and attention to God. She frames her advice with personal anecdotes about how the Covid-19 pandemic affected her conception of time, recounting how she took weeks to savor Saint Benedict’s The Rule of Saint Benedict and imparting its lesson that learning to worship God is “like a handcraft” and takes time. She closes with an elegiac and elliptical exhortation to “remember that you die,” waxing poetic on living with one’s mortality: “Wear your yeses to a nub. Let your brimming cup of joy, even in the long, dark valleys of no and wish I could, bear witness to the God who enjoys you.” What following this advice looks like in practice remains unclear, but Michel succeeds in putting earthly concerns in cosmic perspective. These insightful musings are worth a look. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly