A wise sage once shared with me the secret to being a stress free man, he said every job requires– The Four T’s.

I could share them all in one post but I’m going to go through them one at a time to build suspense and emphasis. I’m nothing if not blunt.

The first T is “Time.”

For any job or endeavor the proper time must be set aside to finish. Rushing against a clock is the first enemy of the craftsman. Haste indeed makes waste, but planning, mapping, and study builds a masterpiece.

Setting expectations: Tell a client that you’ll be finished by noon and see how they respond when you haven’t finished by 2. Tell your wife you’ll spend the afternoon with her and then spend too long browsing at Home Depot. Start tuning up your truck with two hours before you’re supposed to be on a date. If you haven’t set aside the proper amount of time for the job to get done, or you’ve given someone else an expectation of time and you don’t deliver the outcome is frustration.

When my wife and I decided to host a small group in our home we thought all we had to do was post it on the church’s website and people would be lining up in the street. We didn’t see any interest for 3 months. But we pushed on through the dip of discouragement and found some of our closest friends.

There will come a time when you’ll feel as though God has told you to do something, or to follow a path, or to love the unloveable, or to do nothing and wait. Then a time will come right after that when you decide to take him at his word and follow through on the task. Then next another time will come when you don’t get the result you thought you would so you don’t want to become frustrated and quit you’ll have to reset your expectation of the time it will take to get the job done and commit to God’s timetable on the matter. “No matter how long it takes I will see it through.” And then the time right after that… that’s called freedom, my friend.