Margin

  

PIC No. 107: Pails in Comparison (August 29, 2025)
Book #4 of 12 in the Time Management Series

• Title: Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives
• Author: Richard A. Swenson, MD
• Publisher: NavPress (Oct. 25, 2004, 240 pages)
• Management Bucket #9 of 20: The Team Bucket

Welcome to Issue No. 107 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system. 

The Cure for Overload

LOL! Dr. Richard Swenson’s book is very, very practical. The “margin doctor” suggests you deactivate your voicemail, or record this message, “Please wait for the beep and hang up.”

You must read this! This is Book #4 of 12 in our time management monthly series.

Margin features the cure for overloaded lives. If you don’t have time to read this book…nuff said!

Would it be a tad smug to mention that I wrote this issue a week in advance? Truth be told, that’s rarely the case—it’s often down to the wire. But back in 2008 in the new wireless, marginless age, I noticed that I was often the only relic on the rental car bus without his nose buried in his Blackberry or iPhone. (You remember "Blackberries," right?) Not that I have this subject mastered—far from it. It’s a daily discipline to build margin into my life.

So, tell me. How do you relate to Dr. Dick Swenson’s eloquent description below of the difference between living a marginless life versus the real thing? He writes:

Marginless is fatigue. Margin is energy.
Marginless is red ink; margin is black ink.
Marginless is hurry; margin is calm.
Marginless is anxiety; margin is security.
Marginless is culture; margin is counterculture.
Marginless is the disease of the new millennium; margin is the cure.

It’s likely that you—or several team members—live on the precipice of a marginless life, without adequate emotional energy, physical energy, time, or finances. A life WITH margin honors God—the opposite does not. If you’ve never read this classic, or it’s been a while since you’ve done a margin self-assessment, you’ll deeply appreciate Swenson’s practical and biblical look at a healthy life that is characterized by contentment, simplicity, balance, rest and authentic relationships.

Who are the mentors, role models and bosses or supervisors in your life? Do they live lives with margin—or are they are marginless? How does that affect you? This book is a keeper and it deserves a place of honor in your organization’s resource library.

PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Team Bucket, plus other buckets/core competencies.

[  ] Hot-off-the-press, here's a time management book for your entire organization—but it’s so much more. Might be my book-of-the-year in 2025. Read There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work, by Nelson P. Repenning and Donald C. Kieffer. (Read my review.)

[  ] Read this very helpful blog from Time Boss, “When Helping Stunts Your Team's Growth (And Burns You Out).”

[  ] Visit the Time Boss website. “Time Boss helps high-performing leaders master their time, scale with focus, and lead without overwhelm.”

[  ] See above for the list of books in our once-a-month time management series.

To order from Amazon,  For more reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, by Richard A Swenson, MD. Listen on Libro (7 hours, 26 minutes). For more reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews.

MORE RESOURCES:

   • John Pearson’s Buckets Blog
   • Subscribe: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews
   • John Pearson’s book reviews on Amazon
   • Management Buckets website
   • Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations Blog

Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Pails in Comparison Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 100+ blogs posted (between 2022 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month. 

© 2025 John W. Pearson. All rights reserved. New blogs for Pails in Comparison are posted every once in a while. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. By subscribing to Your Weekly Staff Meeting, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.