Review of Margin

INTRODUCTION

In, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, Richard Swenson presents a motivational/ self-help writing in how to deal with the decrease of the "margin" in person's life. The main point of his book is how to fight against and eliminate the pain that is caused by ever increasing state of progress in our culture. Swenson relates our overloaded lives with cultural progression and deals with how to dig in re-manage/ re-establish an individual's priority. This review will look at the various concepts that the authors presents, its contents, various strengths and weaknesses, and the personal application and context as it applies to this reviewers life and ministry.

SUMMARY

The book is divided into three main sections. The first section focuses on the symptoms and diagnosis of the decrease of marginalization in a person's life. Here Swenson identifies the various ailments that start to appear as one starts to take on an overloaded lifestyle, and serves t o evaluate the results of such a way of life. Here he describes the four main causes of pain, which he states are progress, overload, problems, and stress. Of these four, progress is the most heavily focused on. Swenson elaborates on how, at more than any time in history, the issue of progress is the highest it ever has been as lives are being more and more demanded upon. That our time and resources are becoming more and more strained. With that strain comes an overloaded existence as there are too often no time at the end of schedules. He explains that, with our overloaded timetables, comes the propensity to leave out the more important events and replace them with new obligations and commitments that often have much less value and return. Swenson states, "When we neglect the most important priorities, our final reward will fittingly be all the unhappiness money can buy." (Swenson 2004, 13) He explains how both men and women have definite limits with how much stress, problems, and overloading they can handle. After those limits have been surpassed truly exhaustion and fatigue take over.

The second section involves Swenson describes what he feels is the prescription for the pain of an overloaded life, which is margin. In this section he moves to show how to restore the margin in four specific areas: physical energy, finances, time, and emotional energy. Physical energy is re-established through rest, nutrition, and exercise. Emotional energy is built up through strengthening the inner person, gaining better health, and enjoying fellowship through community support. Financial margin is regained through harnessing one's own impulses, living within a budget, avoiding any unnecessary debt, watching one's finances closely. A margin of time is built up by establishing better efficiency, schedule prioritization, saying