Design A Life You Love

Sarah’s word for 2025 is design—not in the aesthetic sense but rather the act of intentionally crafting a life and business that reflects God’s purpose. For her, this means carving out time each month to truly DESIGN, prioritizing time for creativity, and being quiet before the Lord to hear his promptings.  

How much of our time is spent reacting to relentless to-do lists and overflowing inboxes rather than proactively shaping our days? How often do we look up from working and wonder what we've even accomplished?  

The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple tool that helps us determine the importance and urgency of our tasks, and helps categorize them into four quadrants:

1. Do (Urgent & Important): These are tasks with deadlines and/or consequences. If necessary, ask for a deadline to determine the urgency. For these kinds of tasks, we can live in day-tight compartments, focus on one thing at a time and get it done.

2. Design (Important, Not Urgent): If you have an important but not urgent task that takes longer than five minutes to complete, schedule it for later. Strategy and creativity often require dedicated, focused time and even a different venue to feel inspired. Don’t reschedule these appointments with yourself—they’re super important, even if they’re not urgent.  

3. Delegate (Urgent, Not important): We can delegate these tasks to someone with the proper skill set. This is beneficial in two ways: it lightens your load and is an opportunity to build up skills and confidence in your team. At Light, helping others is one of our core values, which extends to our own team. And we have the freedom to be honest when we don’t have the capacity. It’s essential that whoever is delegated has what they need to succeed so it doesn’t come back to you. Our team assigns tasks with this framework: who is doing what, by when? Because clear is kind, remember? (Thanks, Brene Brown!)

4. Delete (Not urgent, Not important): These tasks are neither important nor urgent and we should immediately eliminate them. We have enough distractions in our day, the more we can cross off the list, the better!

While applying this practice, we can also ask ourselves:

• How are we currently spending the precious time God has given us?

• In an ideal state, how should we spend our time?

Consider using the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize your tasks this week and carve out some time for strategic planning and growth to see how it goes! Let’s design our days with purpose and a life we love!

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