We focus so much of our attention on the things that make a visible difference, and the maintenance things tend to get squeezed out. As someone said, “Something has to give, somewhere.” And usually it’s the things that don’t provide immediate payoff.
I remember a house my dad bought when I was a kid. He had found it abandoned. The house had been framed, but the deal had fallen through and construction stopped. The skeleton of the home and stood for several months and because the builder had so much sunk cost in it, he was eager to get it off his hands. My dad got the house for a fraction of what it was worth and had it finished.
I remember that he didn’t like the way they were insulating it. He had a load of insulation delivered and spent a weekend putting insulation up himself. I spent part of a weekend over there helping. I was about 13 or 14 at the time. Like most kids that age, I was smarter than anyone else. I thought the insulation stuffing was sheer idiocy. Why waste all the time and money on this insulation? You’re not even going to be able to see it. His explanation didn’t register with me. If you get too hot, just turn the air-conditioner up. I couldn’t see the point.
If you built a house and left out the sheet rock it would be immediately obvious. It would make a visible difference at once. But if you skimped on the insulation it would not be obvious right away. And once the walls were in place and painted, adding more insulation would take major surgery. They only time to insulate is before the walls are up, long before the insulation will be needed.
This is what is wrong with our busy lives. We concentrate on things that have immediate effects. We focus on what yields visible results right now, and the things that don’t show get squeezed out of the schedule. But those things often make a huge difference over time.
At work, a few months ago, I spent about a week going through the bins, pulling out all the materials, sorting, eliminating tons of it—materials of limited use, old, outdated stuff—counting and measuring all that was left and reconciling the inventory, modifying the storage bins to keep materials better sorted, and reorganizing the arrangement of it all. I had been putting the job off for a long time, because it wad so time-consuming. But the outcome has been that it is much easier to find and store materials, and to maintain inventory. The inventory is more accurate. I know right where everything is. They don’t get jumbled up together, or damaged because they are better supported. In just a few months, I have already saved the time I spent reorganizing.
When I am organizing, sorting, preparing, culling, etc., I don’t feel like I’m being productive. I am a light switch: I’m either all the way on, or all the way off. I’m not a dimmer. And all that routine maintenance stuff feels like wasted time to me. I’m champing at the bit to be out the gate and down the straightaway. I need to reeducate myself to the truth that those activities are productive. The payoff is not immediate, but they yield immense dividends over time.
Famed Polish pianist, composer, patriot, and statesman, Ignacy Paderewski said: “If I don’t practice for one day, I know it; if I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it; if I don’t practice for three days, the audience knows it.”
Last week a friend wrote me with a prayer request, saying, “I am trying to stay focused on Bible study every day and keeping up with my prayer life. I am so worn out at the end of every day I sometimes let it slip and I should not.” Then this morning another friend whom I met for breakfast was talking about how much he liked everything to be orderly, but that his life and environment doesn’t reflect that. He said his wife told him it was because he was over-committed. He didn’t set aside time for those things. He agreed to do so many things, and felt like he had plenty of time for them, because he had not accounted for the time it takes to do routine maintenance. (After breakfast, we stopped to look at a house he was building; thus the inspiration for this meditation.)
One of them suffers from neglecting routine maintenance of his physical environment, the other from neglecting routine maintenance of her spiritual environment. In both cases the cause is the same: focusing on the things that payoff now, and squeezing out the things that yield long-term results. I am often guilty of both. My environmental maintenance routines are atrocious. (Translate: I am a slob.) I have finally developed a study and prayer routine that is comfortable. If I don’t do it, my day doesn’t feel right. It’s like going to bed without brushing your teeth. Yucky. Nevertheless, I expect to do more as I work myself up to it. I am a long way from the kind of discipline I would like to have.
In my early 20’s I had a friend who owned a vintage European sportster—basically a high-performance race car. It was awesome to ride in that thing, winding through the Hill Country west of Austin with the top down. But the car required constant maintenance. The timing, the carburetor, the spark plugs—it seemed practically everything had to be adjusted almost every day. Without maintenance it quickly became a coughing, rattling heap. But when the maintenance was done right, it purred and it roared like the cat it was named for. Sheer ecstasy! So with our lives.
It would be nice if I had some pithy remarks about diligence and discipline here to wrap all this up and tie it neatly with a bow. This is a rambling narrative that aims at its subject from several directions, and never really closes in on it. Still, it’s the meditation of my mind today. It’s kind of messy, like my life. But I got it done.
