Life is not getting any slower. If you are reading this, you probably feel stressed, overloaded, and tired more often than not. You probably know that you need to take more time off, more time for your family, more time for yourself. The problem is, you don’t know where to find that time. In our current world, discretionary time seems to have disappeared. But what we are missing is not time. What we are missing is margin.

I want to begin this blog series on margin with a simple post. Really, the idea here is to introduce the problem, and in following posts discuss some solutions. The problem we experience in our lives today is a lack of margin. What is margin?

Margin is the space between ourselves and our limits. It is the space between what you DO and what you CAN do.

MARGIN = POWER – LOAD

In our lives today, we live at 100%. In the formula above, our power (100) minus load (100) = zero. We have no margin left. We live our lives to the max, with no room for error. When we have no margin left we have no time for unexpected life events, no time to help a friend, no time to ponder events in our lives, and no time to help a friend in need. For the Christian, we have no time to take advantage of divine appointments.

In short, we are existing in “hyper-living” mode; we are “skimming along the surface of life”. I think that is a good description. We are just skimming the top of our work, our relationships (including our relationship with God), our family, our church.

If you feel like you are overloaded in your life, the problem may be a lack of margin. If that is you, I encourage you to sign up to follow this series of posts over the next few weeks. You can do that in the upper right hand corner of this page.

To help me, please comment below on your feelings about margin and time in your own life. Do you sense a lack of margin?