#66 The Discipline of Pausing, Pt 2 | Do Less, Lead Better

God forms wiser, healthier leaders when they slow down to learn from their calendar and courageously decide what to do less of.

In Week Two of The Discipline of Pausing, Pastor Mark Carter and Erica Adkins unpack the first two of eight annual reflection questions that shape wise, sustainable leadership:

1. What are the lessons from the calendar of last year?
   This question moves leaders beyond memory and emotion into objective reflection. A calendar exposes rhythms, overload, blind spots, and repeated mistakes — and invites God and others into the evaluation process.
2. What should you probably do less of? (Where do you have the least value-add?)
   This question forces leaders to confront limits, ego, and misplaced effort. Not everything that is good is right for this season — and maturity means pruning responsibilities to focus on calling.

This episode explores why feelings aren’t enough for growth, how calendars reveal patterns we often miss, and why pruning responsibilities is an act of faith—not failure. If you’re tired of repeating the same rhythms, carrying too much, or feeling busy but not fruitful, this conversation will help you lead with clarity and wisdom into the next season.

📖 “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12

📋 Key Takeaways

• Calendars reveal what instincts hide. Reflection creates wisdom.
• Learning builds leadership credibility. Repeated mistakes quietly erode trust.
• Pruning is obedience, not failure. God often leads through subtraction.
• Draining work is a signal. Developing work invites growth and joy.
• Mature leadership means focus, not control.

💬 Quotes & Soundbites

• “A calendar shouldn’t be your god—but it can definitely be your friend.”
• “As leaders grow, they should do less and less—just better and better.”
• “Jesus cares about what you do. The real question is: what does God want now?”

🛠️ Next Steps for Listeners

Reflect

• Review last year’s calendar month by month.
• Ask: Where did I feel rushed, drained, or repeatedly overwhelmed?

Journal

• What lessons was God trying to teach me last year?
• What activities produced the least fruit relative to effort?
• What am I afraid to let go of — and why?

If you’re heading into a new season and want to lead with wisdom instead of exhaustion, this conversation is for you.

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Transcript

Pastor Carter (00:07):

Hey, what's happening everybody? Welcome back to the Bible Leadership Podcast. Hey, last time we gave an intro of sorts to a process that I go through at the end of every year just to ask some questions about what happened and what's coming up and how do I make the most of the time that we're getting ready for. We looked at eight questions. We just said what they were, but now we're going to tear them apart. We're going to dive into questions one and two. I think you're going to love it. Let's go.

Erica Adkins (00:32):

Hey y'all, welcome back for our series on a great year and what that looks like, how it's super beneficial to remember back and recalibrate forward to what's coming next. Our last episode, we talked about eight questions to ask as kind of a yearly review to really think through how to be your best ineffectiveness for the coming year. Now we're going to tear apart each question one by one, get down into it, get the details. So let's go back to the question. What are the lessons from the calendar of the last year? Mark, walk us through why again, why is this important to ask this question?

Pastor Carter (01:09):

Yeah, that's a great question. And I would encourage you, if you didn't hear the last episode, this one's going to make a whole lot less sense. So I want to encourage you to just go back in time on the podcast feed and grab the last one. It's a lot of the why and this is a big deal, so here's why you should do this. When we're doing it, here's the first of the eight questions that we walk through. What are the lessons of the last calendar year? Moses told us in Psalm 90:12, "Teach us to number our days." It's his prayer to the Lord. And there's a sense that by nature, we're not thinking clearly or deliberately enough about I have this many days Left.

Pastor Carter (01:46):

And God wants me to make them count. And there's lessons we're learning all the time, but we're in a fast paced environment. And so we just don't always keep the lessons that God is trying to teach us. So I would encourage everybody, as we talk about this particular question, some people are like, they're maybe too nerdy about their calendar. They take three hours and they just love to move things around in their calendar. Others might be in a place where you really don't appreciate a calendar enough. And I get this because you might be a Holy Ghost person.You're like, "Holy Ghost, just tell me what to do. " I hear that. Here's the deal though. He can tell you that anyway, in the midst of having a calendar, but a calendar is really, it's the soul you're planting everything in. You can just say, "I'm going to go on the fly." You're really overestimating your own wisdom in the moment and your own perspective in the moment.

(02:43)
Nobody is that smart. That's why Moses prays, Lord, teach us to number our days so we can present to you a heart of wisdom. We are not naturally wise that we know how to do this. And so even if you just start where you are, I'm not saying become like a productivity nerd, but no matter how old you are, now dude, God is God. He's the great teacher. He can teach you how to get better at this.

Speaker 3 (03:05):

Calendar

Pastor Carter (03:05):

Really, it shouldn't be your God, but it can definitely be your friend. So that's where we start.

Erica Adkins (03:10):

That's so good. I love the second half of that Psalm 90:12 is that we may gain a heart of wisdom. I think you said it in a little bit of a different way, but that presupposes that we don't have wisdom in our own life, in our own mind. And so as God teaches us that wisdom is like birthed deeper into us. And so making that space to, okay, God, here's my plans. You could totally mess with them, but once you have a framework, there's just an ease even that comes with having a framework. I think about, I love to cook, I have a recipe, it's very clear. This is cooking, not baking. Baking, you really can't leave the recipe, but cooking you can. I have my framework. I can mess with it as time goes by. But I have to have the framework set First. So not being arrogant to ignore a calendar.

Pastor Carter (04:09):

Yes.

Erica Adkins (04:09):

You need that framework.

Pastor Carter (04:10):

And I think you're right on. We don't have to be rigid about it, but we have to have something there so that we can gain wisdom.

Erica Adkins (04:16):

Yes.

Pastor Carter (04:17):

I gain wisdom by evaluating, how did that go? How did that go? How did that go? I draw lessons from that. And I'm not saying anyone's going to do this, but we don't want to present the Lord not a heart of wisdom. He's like, "Wow, you didn't learn." You had 75 years and 74 of them, you didn't learn anything at all. So we just want to be able to evaluate stuff so we can grow in wisdom. That's how he does it.

Erica Adkins (04:39):

Yep. All right. So Mark, take us in. Why is it so important? Again, I think we're alluding to it, but why is it so important to actually have a calendar view versus just like a feelings or a memory View?

Pastor Carter (04:51):

Yeah. And I would affirm feelings and memories are great and we can remember a thing. That was dumb. I'm not going to do that again. But a calendar gives you a way for you to be able to stand back in it. The truth is that you just can't fit all the things in your brain. You get to stand back from it. You get to get perspective on it. People can't give you perspective on your feelings necessarily because some of them are invisible. But as you bring the calendar, you're like, "Okay guys, let's look at this. " Whether it's a spouse, whether it is a teammate, whether it is someone else you're mentoring, whatever it is, "Hey, look at this. What would you fix? What would you change?" Until I learned that I need feedback on how I'm planning to do things, dude, I'm just going to make a lot of the same stupid mistakes I've been making and I'm not smart enough.

(05:35)
I'm not wise enough. I'm not godly enough to be able to see all of my own shadows and pitfalls. So that's one is you're able to get feedback on it. I think it's honestly, it's easier to present it to the Lord himself for feedback.

(05:49)
I literally will just ask God sometimes, "What do you think about that? " And sometimes there won't be anything, but sometimes he'll be like, "That's not the right way. I've already laid this thing on your heart, put that over here or what have you. " Or he'll just out of the blue, I mean, this happens in this past year's retreat. Things I would never have thought of, he brings to mind, but if I don't put them on the calendar, I will forget those things.

Erica Adkins (06:13):

Yep

Pastor Carter (06:13):

You Know what I'm saying? I need to put that down and be like, "No, no, no. All year I need to remember God said to do that then." So just even the ability to comply with the Lord's instructions, it helps to have a calendar.

Erica Adkins (06:26):

Yeah, that's really good. I think the calendar gives you an objective look at it instead of a subjective look, too. It helps to take apart your emotions and your feelings of it. Those are still in consideration, but that kind of Figured look.

Pastor Carter (06:40):

I think too, and we talked about this a little bit last time maybe, it just helps you see patterns of where you keep doing it here and you're running right into this season of life that is always there. Just move the thing around. It helps you play a little bit more chess with your own life. I can arrange things differently so I have more energy, so I'm not burnt out all the time, so I'm available emotionally for him, him or her or what have you. Yeah. So I think it just helps you do ... I get a little bit stoked about this. I want to do life. I feel good about myself.

Erica Adkins (07:16):

yeah

Pastor Carter (07:16):

If I do life smarter this year than I did the year before.

Erica Adkins (07:19):

Yeah, much more intentionally.

Pastor Carter (07:20):

Done, bro. You're doing a lot dumb, but I feel like you're at least growing here. Yeah, that's good.

Erica Adkins (07:25):

That's good. At our most recent staff advance, again, we're on staff here at our church, Fierce, and we take our staff on kind of, our version, our staff version, of what we're talking about.

(07:37)
And one of the things that Mark presented to us was a calendar that was in like a circle and he explained, okay, now put the big things on the calendar. For church, there's always Easter and there's always Christmas and there's probably like a back to school thing in there and consider your big things and then the waves in preparation and the waves in like, "You got to come back down from that. " That was a really helpful thing for us to think about. Mark, what are some surprises when you've done that, like looking month to month and assessing what's big and what's the valleys and the peaks?

Pastor Carter (08:12):

Yeah. I think so as a leader, as a guy who is responsible for not only my own stuff, but delegating stuff to other people and like they're going to go ahead and do that, it's easier to see traffic jams. Okay,

Erica Adkins (08:24):

That's good.

Pastor Carter (08:25):

Wow, dude. And we had so many years learning this. Okay, you're going to stick that event between these two events and that's three weeks and everyone's excited about it because everybody loves it, but it's like, dude, that's just not a wise thing to do.

(08:40)
So having that foresight to be able to provide, I think it's the job of leaders to really, as much as you can, take care of your people and just point out, it's not that you have to be right about everything, but just say, wow, I think you're headed for a panic attack if you try to do that that way and you just don't need to. You can just put it somewhere else in the counter. Or it's also even helpful to be able to weigh in on people's away time. Like I don't see enough breaks in here for you. What's going on here? We've got to find somewhere. Well, I can't, I don't think there's a time. Well, we have to find a time. So holding their feet to the fire there I think is really important.

Erica Adkins (09:18):

If I can pause for just a moment there. I think that's a thing that you do really well, Mark, is you hold us accountable for our rest and that's not culturally normative, but I think even in like the secular world, if you're not in the church world, but you're just in corporate America, you're a human being, not a human doing. And so considering even in your patterns of busyness, like where are places that you can eject? And if you're a leader, like lead your team well in that because you do need to come down. You do need to have some rest after a really big push season. And if you're having a lot of really big push seasons, maybe you need to reconsider some things. Making space for your team to come down after a big thing is super important.

Pastor Carter (10:11):

And I think that can sound ineffective to some, but I would just say your team healthy is going to have less conflict. They're going to work harder. They're going to be more creative. Everyone's going to enjoy one another more. And so even though their rest doesn't say, "I don't think that's a goal this year." It's a goal because if you're aiming at more than just this year, you're aiming at the long game, then you want people that like each other and know how to rest and have fun and aren't just like high strong all the time chomping at each other, biting at each other. So

Erica Adkins (10:43):

That's a

Pastor Carter (10:44):

Thing.

Erica Adkins (10:45):

What could be a spiritual danger of not learning from the past year, like not looking at your calendar in full?

Pastor Carter (10:53):

Yeah, some come to mind. One is, in addition to the weight of you, either you don't realize that you keep repeating foolish things or you do realize it and you just dumbly keep doing it.

Pastor Carter (11:06):

I Think it really takes away a lot of confidence in your leadership because it's hard to look at a leader. When you look at a leader who's like, "Oh, I know they make mistakes, but they're trying to grow from them, that's easy to trust." Well, I don't need them to not make mistakes. I need them to fix it. If you watch a leader year after year that doesn't fix what everybody knows is kind of foolish, their leadership weight just goes way down.

Erica Adkins (11:29):

Yeah, you can't trust them.

Pastor Carter (11:30):

And those people's willingness to bleed for that leader goes way down because it's like, "This dude might lead me into half stupid." So I think bearing that in mind is, it's a cost for not modeling that.

Erica Adkins (11:46):

Okay. Okay. I think that's good to consider and I think that actually parlays us great into our next question.

Pastor Carter (11:54):

Okay.

Erica Adkins (11:55):

Number two, what should we probably do less of? What has the least value add here?

Pastor Carter (12:04):

Yeah. And I think this can vary ... Things can be important. They're just not important for right in this season.

Erica Adkins (12:10):

Okay, that's good.

Pastor Carter (12:11):

You know what I'm Saying? And so I remember as I was finishing up my doctorate degree and I was going into that year, okay, this is the year we're going to finish this up. Okay?

Erica Adkins (12:18):

Yeah.

Pastor Carter (12:19):

There were certain things that are important, but baby, they're not important for these next six months that have to crush this final doctoral project. And so just saying, "I need to do less of these so I can do this the most because this thing, I don't get another shot at this. This is the big deal." So it can be important. You just have to know it's just compared to these other things, I've got to be able to reduce this a little bit.

Erica Adkins (12:48):

Well, and they become a distraction, right? To the most important, this is good. It may not be bad, but it's not going to bear the most fruit. So looking at this, Mark, why do you think it's so hard for leaders to maybe admit what they're not great at or what they need to consider as a lesser priority?

Pastor Carter (13:07):

Yeah, that's really good. I think one, it's difficult to see without a process built in like this. So one, you just don't see it. Two, it's difficult to see without feedback. And so if you don't have a culture where there is feedback, it's harder to see that you have any ... It's harder to hear that there's places you're not that great at, that you should do less of or let go of. I think another, this is just really hard, but I think young leaders and maybe old leaders, if somehow they just, they made it through without getting spanked about this enough, they have a foolish overvaluing of their own independence, meaning they really do think, "Nah, it's just best if I do it. I don't need a lot of feedback. I don't need people to weigh in what I should be doing less of. I'm just good.

(14:02)
And so I'm just going to keep doing all of it. It's never going to be as good as if I do it, so I'm just going to do it. " And that, I mean, personally, that's a baby lesson. I'm not trying to offend anybody, but I just want to speak lovingly, truly, that's toddler class.

(14:18)
You got to get over yourself, man, because everybody else is already over you. You've got to get to the place where I don't need to do all the things. My job really as a leader is to be equipping other people to do as many things as possible.That should be our primary as leaders. And so, but I do think there's a heart set that maybe they just don't know it, but I would encourage you to reflect on it because you got to know that's bad for your soul. The Lord opposes the proud. Bring that to him. God, this would be insane if I was really your superman, if I was the special of the kingdom of God. I think you're also, you're setting yourself up for all kinds of sin because you're going to have to put the pressure for that somewhere. And so just thinking you need to be the man or the woman all the time, you're setting yourself up, you're setting everybody else up and you're less likely to hear, you're just not that great at it.

(15:07)
Why don't you try to lay that down this year on somebody else or maybe just not even do it because as you grow as leaders should be narrowing what you do,

(15:17)
You should be trying to get as much as you can, get the things that are not about your gifts away from you, either not to them at all, contract them out, do them for a time because it happens to be the season for that, but you want to be getting ... In some ways you want to do less and less, you just want to do it better and better.

Erica Adkins (15:34):

That's good. All right. How do you even evaluate what drains you, what develops you? How do you even come to that conclusion of what is the least value add or what's the most value?

Pastor Carter (15:46):

I think it ... Great question. I think it also has to do with the stage of the organization that you're In.

Pastor Carter (15:53):

Because I know that when we started the church, there was 500 things to do and there was just wasn't very many of us. And so you got to do everything and so you're not good at a lot of it.

Erica Adkins (16:05):

Sure.

Pastor Carter (16:05):

So you do the things, they just have to be done or the thing falls apart. I just think that's part of the danger also. You slowly teach yourself that, "Oh, I can do all things." No, you can't. That was the crappy moment you were in When you Needed to do it.

Erica Adkins (16:17):

That was your "start up."

Erica Adkins (16:18):

Yes.

Pastor Carter (16:20):

So I think in terms of what drains or what's develops you, you just need to pay attention to, do I feel the sense of God's joy when I do this? Do I have the sense that this works? So I'll give you an example, and I mean this in so many sweet ways, okay? So forgive me and flow with me. You could have a vocalist that they're like, "I feel the joy of God when I sing." And I bet you they do. I bet you when they're at home, they're singing around the house like the Lord loves it. He's like, "Yes, that's awesome." The problem is no one is really telling them that that's good. The body is not confirming that you're actually good at that. So I think you got to look for where's the joy of God, but then also where does the body affirm that I am good at that?

(17:07)
They're like, "Fruit. I see that. That's awesome."

Erica Adkins (17:09):

Yeah.

Pastor Carter (17:10):

You need both of those going on at the same time, I believe. Maybe there's a time where that's not affirmed because you're just not in the right spaces yet, but if you're not being affirmed that something is really fruitful, I Think you can trust the body of Christ to tell you.

Erica Adkins (17:27):

That's Good.

Pastor Carter (17:28):

I think also there may also be times when you're just losing heat for something. This was really important here, but slowly like the anointing is coming off of that Thing

Pastor Carter (17:39):

And it can get so bad that this is, you hate it. Now it's just frustrating versus where is God putting the onion, meaning where's he making me effective? Where's he giving me vision? When I say, God, give me vision, what happens? Like what lights up on the lightboard or whatever. I would say those are the places and you tend to get better. So if it's, we talk about developing, like what drains you versus developing you. Drain feels dead, develop feels not like I'm an all star, but like I can get better at this.

Erica Adkins (18:08):

I'm growing in this. Yes.

Pastor Carter (18:09):

Yeah,

Erica Adkins (18:09):

Exactly. Yeah. This is worth putting energy to because it is actually going to bear more fruit versus, eh, I might get a couple flowers off of this here and there, but it's not actually benefiting. It's not growing.

Pastor Carter (18:21):

Yes.

Erica Adkins (18:22):

And if it's not growing better.

Pastor Carter (18:23):

And it's draining and the body's not affirming it, I would just say that's a good candidate at least for- It migh need to get job off. Maybe I need to drop this.

Erica Adkins (18:30):

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The Lord prunes what is not most fruitful and maybe it's just, maybe he's showing you, "Hey, this isn't bearing fruit. Time to let that be pruned."

Pastor Carter (18:39):

And I think a great top question we could ask for folks, you should ask people that you trust and say, "Hey, I'm doing this thing. I don't mind doing it for the Lord, but would you say this is in my top three giftedness things?"

Speaker 3 (18:53):

Ooh, that's Good

Pastor Carter (18:54):

. Do you think this is really the peak of what probably is my calling or is this just extra stuff and just shut up and listen and see what to tell you.

Erica Adkins (19:05):

I think good leaders do that and I think good leaders even ask the question before that, which is, what would you say are the top three things that I'm good at Because probably what I think I'm excellent at versus what other people observe I'm really good at are likely different. And golly, we live in community and the wisest ones listen to the community that's around them and get good counsel. So asking even, what should I be putting my attention to?

Pastor Carter (19:34):

Great. One asterisk, as long as it's a healthy community.

Erica Adkins (19:37):

Yes.

Pastor Carter (19:37):

So if you've got like a toxic, everybody's always laying the beat down on each other. There's negative Talk All the time.

Erica Adkins (19:44):

yeah

Pastor Carter (19:45):

Go outside Of that culture as people that love you who you think, "Wow, they're probably pretty healthy spiritually."

Erica Adkins (19:50):

Yeah, that's really good. Mark, as we're looking at like what can we do less of or what is not really adding value, how do you differentiate between just busy work and calling work and What

Pastor Carter (20:04):

yeah

Erica Adkins (20:04):

To put energy behind? Because sometimes you got to do the busy work too.

Pastor Carter (20:07):

Yes. And I think we have to stoically embrace that. We got to take it on the chin and like I've got to do, Anybody's to just do everything that they want with no busy work.

Erica Adkins (20:16):

Right.

Pastor Carter (20:18):

I think a danger though, and I can give you an example, there's now busy work that is fun enough to keep you busy, but not necessarily fruitful, but you're just not evaluating it based on fruitfulness. So there's all kinds of, like I had, it was probably several years ago now, like I just was really convinced, dude, my social media life adds almost nothing to my life. It takes a lot of my time and the truth is I could just ask people around me, like the things that should maybe from a ministry perspective be Online, I Can just ask other people to put it online.

Pastor Carter (20:55):

I don't Need to get sucked because I can just death scroll forever. I came to the point where that's fun and so it makes you feel like, or like I'm going to organize my Facebook photos or like there's things that like, and it's, but it's busy work for the kingdom. Is it though? Or is that just a distraction? So I don't know what that is for. I'm not saying that is that for everybody and I'm a very novice in that kind of thing. So maybe there's folks that is exactly what you should do. All I'm saying is beware because there's tools and fun things that now everything is so engaging and dopamine hitting that that really is just busy work and it's not necessarily benefiting the kingdom in the way the other things you could be doing would be doing.

Erica Adkins (21:40):

Yeah. That makes me think of Pastor Craig Groeschel talked about this idea of GetMo, "Good Enough To Move On" and I am a nerdy creative and there are times where I will be working on a graphic or something and I will be continuing in that time and that is a waste of my time actually because it's maybe marginally making it better. And so that idea of, as I'm looking at my work week and my work year, are there things that I'm, I'm like getting into the minutia of this that is not adding value and it might even life me a teeny bit, but it's not actually, it's not increasing the value in such a way that's actually beneficial for the whole organization.

Pastor Carter (22:29):

That's really good, E.

Erica Adkins (22:30):

Yeah.

Pastor Carter (22:31):

I think it could be a trap. I think that there's ... And some people, it might be totally that's exactly what they should do, but I think God has asked you to do some specific things and some of them, sometimes when we start to sense what God wants us to do, we're like, "I don't want to do that. " But if you just open your heart and say, "God, if that's really you, give me the joy about it, call me to it, help me focus on that because the truth is dude, there really is an audit." When we go to heaven, there's an audit.

Pastor Carter (22:57):

Jesus Is going to lay all your stuff out and be like, "Well, which things were about other people, were about me that caused genuine love to be transferred to people and we just all have to be shrewd day to day." You can rest. I'm not saying don't go on social media and enjoy yourself. Have fun if that's your half hour that you give yourself to do that or whatever. But I am saying every minute you're spending on something that is really tertiary or less, you're missing something, a time you could be focusing on your actual call And Getting that thing better, which would lead to more fruitfulness for the kingdom and greater reward for yourself.

Erica Adkins (23:29):

Yeah, amen. Mark, what's the one nugget that you want us to walk away with from these two questions?

Pastor Carter (23:37):

I think a takeaway for me from especially these two questions is that Jesus cares about what I do. He doesn't want me to be so rigid that I'm not having fun, but he doesn't want me to be so loose that I'm like, "Well, maybe I'll get around to it. Maybe I won't." He's given us brains. He's given us tools like calendars to be able to think ahead because at the end of the day, what is my question? What is my question as a disciple? What is your question as a leader? It is, what does God want?

Speaker 3 (24:07):

Yeah.

Pastor Carter (24:07):

And I need to take some time to ask, what does he no longer want and what does he want coming up? That's my job as a disciple and as a leader and as someone who's trying to love Jesus more effectively. So ask the question, what does God want and then shape things you do in maybe some kind of an annual review, how to do more and less of whichever one it is.

Erica Adkins (24:28):

Yeah. That's great. All right. That was only questions one and two. If you didn't get to see the last podcast, go back and watch that one because that sets up this whole series, but we've got six more questions coming where we're going to tear it apart and ask the Lord. Bring it. "What do you want in this next year?"