At the beginning of 2018, did you choose a “word of the year” for yourself? I like to choose a word, verse, or motto to help me set my intention for the year. A few years ago, I picked the word “margin.” I don’t remember exactly where I first learned about the concept of margin, but I had seen the term pop up in several articles and blog posts about minimalism. I was feeling stretched thin at the time, and the idea of margin in my life was enormously appealing. I craved space. Space to breathe. Time to think. Energy to spare. Room for joy.
Looking at my life, I saw pockets of time, energy, and money being wasted instead of enjoyed. I frittered them away as I mindlessly stared at the TV, scrolled through social media, and cleaned up clutter around my house (over and over and over again). When life goes from full and happy to overwhelming and stressful, something isn’t right. I spent the following year removing hundreds of items from my house and trying to use my time more intentionally. Developing margin in my life allowed me to stop spinning my wheels and gave me the freedom to do work I enjoy. Not long after that, I started my blog.
I recently came across the book Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson at my church’s library. As someone who tries to maintain a healthy bit of margin in my life, I wondered if he had something to teach me about managing my time, energy, money, and space. In fact, he did!
What is margin?
Dr. Swenson defines margin as “the space between our load and our limits.” He explains that our load is made of factors such as work, commitments, expectations, debt, and conflicts. Our power is made of components like energy, time, strength, finances, and social support, all of which have limits. When our load exceeds our limits, margin disappears and we experience overload. The book lists 17 types of overload, including activity overload, debt overload, decision overload, media overload, possession overload, and traffic overload. Wow! Reading that list made me realize I don’t have as much margin in my life as I thought I did. I’ve worked diligently to eliminate overload in some areas of my life, but others are still in desperate need of a reduction in complexity. Maybe this is why so many people choose “simplify” for their word of the year.
Why does margin matter?
So what happens when we live with overload instead of margin? We don’t have room for joy, health, generosity, and relationships. In correlation, we suffer emotionally, physically, financially, and relationally. Swenson emphasizes the importance of relationships throughout this book. He laments the way overload can fracture families, giving one example of “a professional couple whose junior high daughter needed psychiatric counseling [so they] had her driven weekly by taxi to see the doctor.” On the other hand, margin nurtures our relationships to ourselves (emotional), to others (social), and to God (spiritual). When we create margin our lives, we then have resources (time, energy, money) to give to others. We are available to help meet the needs of our family members, friends, and communities.
How did we lose our margin?
The central thesis of the book is that progress has stolen our margin, and we need to get it back if we want to have optimum health in our minds, bodies, relationships, and society. Swenson asserts that margin is sabotaged as a natural consequence of progress. When progress is advancing, our environment becomes differentiated (more complex), then everything proliferates (increases in number) and accelerates (increases in speed). To get a mental picture of this, think of an urban American environment as compared to a primitive, third-world country. Swenson argues that the direction of progress is always “toward increasing stress, change, complexity, speed, intensity, and overload.” Couple that with the fact that humans have physical, mental, emotional, and financial limits, and you have a recipe for disaster. Swenson says, “Once the threshold of these limits is exceeded, overload displaces margin.”
Margin was originally published in 1992. I read the updated version, which was released in 2004, before social media was prevalent and iPhones were invented. Still, Swenson had the foresight to warn his readers that America’s unprecedented rate of progress in the early 21st century would only make life more complicated in the future.
How do we restore our margin?
Swenson offers many (maybe a few too many) suggestions for restoring margin in four facets of life: emotional energy, physical energy, time, and finances. I found his suggestions to be practical and reasonable for anyone who wants to make a series of incremental life changes that will lead to significant results. (Just don’t try to implement them all at once!)
In the last few chapters of Margin, Swenson gives us another prescription for what ails us. He expounds on fostering four things in our lives: contentment, simplicity, balance, and rest. He emphasizes how these practices improve our relationships with self, others, and God. Ultimately, Swenson draws the conclusion that love is the greatest benefit of living with margin. While progress fails to nurture and protect relationships, margin makes room for love to thrive. “Progress builds by using the tools of economics, education, and technology,” says Swenson. But he points out that love is the currency of relational economics. “Love is not like other resources. There is an infinite supply,” he says, “As a matter of fact, the more it is used, the more its supply increases.”
Dr. Swenson clearly states that he isn’t opposed to progress. “I am not for regress,” he says, “but I am for redirection.” He points out that Americans have made great progress in our physical environment (wealth, technology, medicine) and our cognitive environment (knowledge, information, education), but we’re suffering in our social, emotional, and spiritual environments. I find his writing almost prophetic as America is now seeing a dramatic increase in mental illness and suicide among teens, which may be linked to media overload. Are you dealing with overload in an area or two (or fifteen!) of your life? I know I am! But after reading Margin, I’m better equipped to widen the space between my load and my limits.
