In Good Time
8 Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace
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About
Reclaim your life from the tyranny of your schedule
Whether we're trying to find time, save it, manage it, or make the most of it, one word defines our relationship with the clock: anxiety. Is productivity really the only grid for the good life? Have you ever imagined a life without hurry, relentless work, multitasking, or scarcity? A life that is characterized instead by presence, attention, rest, rootedness, fruitfulness, and generosity?
This is the kind of life we are meant for, says Jen Pollock Michel. But if we want to experience freedom from time anxiety, we have to reimagine our relationship with time itself.
In the pages of In Good Time, she invites you to disentangle your priorities from our modern assumptions and instead ground them in God's time. Then she shows you how to establish eight life-giving habits that will release you from the false religion of productivity so you can develop a grounded, healthy relationship with the clock.
"If you feel overwhelmed by your pace of life or your schedule feels like a bucking bronco, you will find more than simple, helpful steps in these pages, though they are many! You will also discover tender, theological riches."--Sharon Hodde Miller, author of The Cost of Control
"Jen Pollock Michel's wise and gentle reflections on learning new habits of being and receiving the lives we have been given are a balm for every soul."--Amy Julia Becker, award-winning author of To Be Made Well and White Picket Fences
Endorsements
"We are living in an abundance of undercooked advice, which is why we so desperately need voices who have done the work, plumbed the depths, and harvested true wisdom to guide us. I can think of no better way to describe the writings of Jen Pollock Michel, and In Good Time is no exception. If you feel overwhelmed by your pace of life or your schedule feels like a bucking bronco, you will find more than simple, helpful steps in these pages, though they are many! You will also discover tender, theological riches."
Sharon Hodde Miller, author of The Cost of Control
"In Good Time is for all of us who imagine that the solution to our anxiety lies between the covers of the next great time management book. Jen Pollock Michel's wise and gentle reflections on learning new habits of being and receiving the lives we have been given is a balm for every soul weary from the relentless pursuit of productivity."
Amy Julia Becker, award-winning author of To Be Made Well and White Picket Fences
"Once again, Jen Michel delivers. I was drawn by her honesty, storytelling, and practical wisdom. If you find yourself exhausted by the constant pressure to produce and long for a new way forward, her words will light the path."
Anjuli Paschall, author of Stay and Awake
"Here is a worthwhile meditation on how to steward the greatest resource that doesn't actually belong to us: time."
Justin Whitmel Earley, business lawyer and author of The Common Rule and Habits of the Household
"This book resonated deeply. Too many of us see time as a problem to be solved and a puzzle to be managed. But Jen Pollock Michel invites us to see time as a gift to be received and a mystery to be embraced. The best wisdom is haunted by death and yet buoyed by the horizon of Christian hope. It is wisdom saturated in the residue of eternity, accumulated from decades of quotidian observations and "thin space" encounters. This book is replete with that sort of wisdom. It's rich, immersive, beautifully written, and casually profound. Get yourself a copy and read it in an unrushed way."
Brett McCracken, senior editor at The Gospel Coalition and author of The Wisdom Pyramid
"Time, too, can be a place--with its own constraints, its own place-making, its own order and invitation. Jen Pollock Michel invites us to pull up a chair and stay awhile in time: to listen to the wisdom of Scripture and to saints old and new. She tells an alternate story to one where we must curate a life or require time to do our bidding of efficiency and productivity. Her book models her message: we receive our days as a gift from the One who keeps time. Capacious in its heart and learning, In Good Time is just the sort of book we need to practice inhabiting time as clear-eyed, hopeful, and resilient disciples of Jesus."
Ashley Hales, PhD, author of A Spacious Life and Finding Holy in the Suburbs
The Author
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Jen Pollock Michel
Jen Pollock Michel is the award-winning author of Teach Us to Want, Keeping Place, Surprised by Paradox, and A Habit Called Faith. She holds a BA in French from Wheaton College and an MA in Literature from Northwestern University,...
Continue reading about Jen Pollock Michel
Reviews
"'Time belongs not to us but to God,' contends Michel. Lambasting time management strategies that prioritize productivity, Michel argues that readers must instead accept that 'there is always enough time to do what God has planned.' Michel succeeds in putting earthly concerns in cosmic perspective. These insightful musings are worth a look."
Publishers Weekly