11: Getting to 70%

**Mosaic Church** (0:17)
What would it look like if we all had 30% of our time to give to those very important things that come up that initially feel like a distraction or an interruption?
What if we had margin in our schedules for that teachable moment with our kids, that seemingly random yet impactful conversation with our co-worker, or that needed act of service when tragedy strikes in our neighbor's family, or that lingering conversation with a spouse that builds intimacy, and so on? I'm struck by Jesus' life. It seems that much of the most important things he did in serving people and also in developing leaders was unscheduled. It's almost as if he intentionally had margin in his schedule for really important things that would come up.
On today's episode of The Chopping Block, we're going to talk about getting to 70% scheduled capacity so we can follow Jesus' lead by building much-needed margin in our lives. Then we can have space to walk in the good works that God has prepared for us. Cool.

**Dave** (1:22)
Yeah.

**Mosaic Church** (1:22)
Welcome to episode 10 of The Chopping Block. So glad you tuned in.
We're here at a local coffee shop, Sparrow Coffee. Come check it out when you're in Manhattan. Come hang out with us when you're in Manhattan. We'd love to see you.

**Dave** (1:42)
Delicious coffee.

**Mosaic Church** (1:43)
Yes. What you drinking, Dave?

**Dave** (1:45)
The drip.

**Mosaic Church** (1:46)
The drip coffee. I am trying a hazelnut mocha.

**Dave** (1:49)
Oh, good for you.

**Mosaic Church** (1:50)
One of my free drinks.

**Dave** (1:52)
You got to get that value.
All right, getting to the 70%. I like this. This is an interesting concept. I love it.

**Mosaic Church** (1:59)
So several weeks ago, one of our elders, David Renberg, preached on biblical hospitality, and he commented and highlighted this 70% scheduled capacity. So we have margin to demonstrate hospitality.
And he got this idea from What's Best Next by Matt Perman. So this is a great book about productivity, about kingdom productivity, subtitles How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done.
And so when David Renberg highlighted trying to get to that 70%, it was picked up by another elder in one of our recent elder and spouses meetings, where he just was really ruminating on that. Like, what would it look like to actually get to where we're only scheduled at 70% of capacity so that we can actually be much more productive in our lives.

**Dave** (2:48)
So I want to have the margin.

**Mosaic Church** (2:50)
Share just briefly from Matt Perman's book where this concept comes from.

**Dave** (2:55)
What pages it on?

**Mosaic Church** (2:59)
223, page 223 So in the chapter The Problem with Full System Utilization. And so he says this, that the reduced steps, so reducing stuff in your life so you have space to get to the important stuff, is about getting rid of unnecessary things so that the basic template you've created for your schedule can work.
But it's also about one other thing, avoiding the scary, what he calls, ringing effect by realizing exactly why doing less enables you to do more.

**Dave** (3:31)
Say that again.

**Mosaic Church** (3:32)
Yeah, so avoiding the scary ringing effect, which we'll talk briefly about, by realizing exactly why doing less enables you to do more.
Counterintuitively, this is one of the upside down aspects of the kingdom of God, the way he's designed the world. So the ringing effect, so this is Matt Perman talking. Researchers have found that whenever most systems, such as airports, freeways, like the highway, and other such things, so imagine the highway or the airport, whenever they exceed about 90% capacity, efficiency drops massively. Not just slightly, but massively. This is why when you're in that traffic jam, and there's four lanes across the highway, and you're thinking, if the guy in the front would just go 75 miles an hour, then everyone else could go 75 miles an hour, and it would be fine. The problem is when you hit 90%, the whole thing log jams and backs up, and you have a traffic jam.
And so that's where the idea comes at. It's actually more efficient. You can be more productive if you're scheduled at a less percent of your total capacity.

**Dave** (4:39)
Yeah, I think that makes sense.

**Mosaic Church** (4:41)
Maybe if we think about, first, what prevents us from walking in good works, or prevents us from getting to the productivity that we, maybe we long for, or probably even deeper, that God longs for us, that we need to shape our values around. Why are we so busy?