Latest / Prayer Before Work / Your Manager Asks What You Did From 2:00 to 2:30 - Prayer Before Work
Transcript
- C0670: Your manager just messaged you asking exactly what you were doing between two and two thirty yesterday afternoon. Well, my name is Sean, and welcome back to Prayer Before Work. So here's the situation. Management rolled out a new spreadsheet, and now everyone has to log what they worked on in 30 minute blocks. Now you already have project tracking software. You have calendars, you have Microsoft Team. Teams, you have weekly meetings, daily stand-ups. Nobody can figure out what this extra time tracking process adds. And your manager says it isn't about monitoring anyone, they just want better visibility. And then he asks, why you wrote client follow-ups instead of naming every client? Now you feel like you're billing hours at a law firm and starting to think about updating your resume. being watched that closely wears on a person. It it can feel like a message that you're not trusted, even if nobody says that openly. But there's a story in the book of Daniel I keep coming back to on this one. So Daniel held a high position in a foreign government, and some of the officials around him didn't like it. So they went looking for something to use against him. In Daniel 6 4, it says They could find no ground for complaint or any fault because he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him. Now I'm not saying your manager is out to get you like those officials were. There's a good chance the spreadsheet just came from somebody above him who was nervous about something and needed some more data. But Daniel shows us what it looks like to live under scrutiny without letting it change who you are. So people went looking, and what they found was a faithful man. So what might that look like for you this week? Maybe it means just giving them the detail. List the clients. Takes 30 seconds, right? And it takes away one more thing to argue about. Maybe it means asking your manager a sincere question, not a sarcastic one. Like, like, help me understand what you're hoping to learn from this. So I can give you something useful. And sometimes that question uncovers the real worry behind a new policy. And if you do end up leaving the company, that's okay. People change jobs for good reasons all the time. But just let it be a decision you make with a clear head, not a reaction to a spreadsheet on a bad afternoon. So let's pray. God, it's hard to feel trusted when every half hour of our day has to be explained. Keep us from getting cynical or careless because of it. Help us to do our work faithfully, whether anyone's counting or not. And give us the patience with people asking for all of this and the wisdom to ask good questions instead of firing off angry ones. And if it's time to move on, make that clear to us and give us peace about the timing. In Jesus' name, Amen. And go make today count.