I've never been much good at speaking in tongues, prophecy or healing (read: not at all). But I have been labelled the "Queen of Spreadsheets" (rather Marian huh? I wonder if there is an 'Our Lady Queen of Spreadsheets-and-all-things-electronic'?).

I grew up in a household where one's ability to be organised, well-planned and well-executed was pretty much considered essential on the path to holiness. Sigh...every family has its ways, eh?

Then I met my husband. Now, before you get the idea that my husband is some scatter-brain, disorganised, bumbling sort...he, too, is an expert in being organised. He was in the military once upon a time. He still refers to twenty-four hour time and carries a compass (slight exaggeration). Enough said.

However, what he has, and what I'm still (painfully) acquiring is an ability to temper that organisational (productive) drive to get a balance.

I stand to be corrected, but I don't think anywhere in Scripture is it written that we must not be late, we must be highly organised, or even that we must be productive for productivity's sake. I even read once how Blessed John Paul II would get so wrapped up administering the sacrament of reconciliation, he'd be two hours late for his next appointment.

Sure, we need to give ourselves each day, in our vocations, our families, our workplaces and communities - earn a good wage, go about with a general attitude of service and self-gift, fight the good fight, run the good race - but nowhere does it say we need to be productive and tick off a lot on the 'To Do List'.

Sure, the nature of today's society obliges us to provide for our families as best we can, and for many families that still demands an enormous amount of 'productivity' in order to just get through the day.

But each of us knows how much of our 'productivity' is necessary, and how much of it is pride and default? Do we know how to get off the treadmill? Do we know how to disconnect from technology and connect to those around us? Do we know how to simply not feel anxious about a day that went pear shaped even if we lived it charitably and faithfully?

My husband is, as I said, rather more talented at this than I. He listens to the ebbs and waves of nature and isn't constantly trying to get one more thing done. I sometimes give him a hard time when something takes a while to get done (like putting in that leave request at work!) but then his ability to know when to shift down gears is an essential temper to my tendency to stay in 5th gear all the time.

Trying to knock 'productivity' from pride of place as the thing driving my day is still hard. However, getting to morning Mass is one of the ways I'm trying to do that. It's a bit out of the way...15 minutes' drive there, then 15 minutes' drive to work.

There's something ironic about honking at the Sunday driver because you're 'rushing' from Mass to work. I calculate just how much more I could get 'done' if I just didn't go to Mass today. And some days I'm ridiculously distracted and have to try with all my might to focus (and still don't get there).

The point is, it's an appointment, with God, everyday...and I realise how essential that time becomes - to mull, to just be and give thanks...to intentionally not be 'productive' as defined by the world, and yet it is the most productive thing of all (eternally-speaking).

The very fact of getting into His presence, receiving Him in the flesh is the ultimate way to knock productivity from being 'pride of place'.

Heather King wrote a great blog on this recently...a similar experience of being so wrapped up in her own productivity, that she was stopped in her tracks when she received a message from a reader asking her to explain more the meaning of the 'real presence' when we talk about the Eucharist.

"I'm trying to work, I'm trying to be effective, I'm trying to bear fruit here and you're going to ask me to explain the Real Presence? This is not something you can dash off in an un-thought-out sentence or two..."

I can't think of a better place to start than just spending a bit of time with the Lord as a way to avoid 'productivity' becoming our highest goal. In fact, it's perhaps the little way that each of us, in our own heart, can be a bit 'counter-cultural'.

Today's culture is ruled very much by economic concepts of value...including how we value time and action. From what do you need to seek a bit of refuge in the Lord? Excessive 'productivity' [that's perhaps not all that productive anyway]? A love of stuff? Unnecessary 'noise'? Mindless technology? We've all got something whose gravity is competing with that of the Lord...but whose fruits pale in comparison to His presence.

- Lucy O'Donoghue
Lucy O'Donoghue lives in South Asia with her O'D husband (true Irish right there). Lucy changes her mind every week what she wants to 'be' or 'do' in her life, much to her husband's and parents' dismay. Nevertheless, she has spent the last few years earning her bacon in the humanitarian sector in Africa and South Asia and is currently completing a Master of Arts in Catholic Theology at the Augustine Institute.

Doesn't it just bug your socks off the way someone in the workplace - your boss especially - manages to rub you so ridiculously up the wrong way? You cringe to think what frustration and subsequent lack of charity emanates from you - how this doesn't feel at all like ‘living the Gospel'.

A while back I had a really lame boss. With all due respect and charity, and acknowledging my own glaring imperfections at times, I still maintain that this boss was, well, off the charts. I'd even taken to reading books like "It's OK to Manage Your Boss." Of course, sometimes you have to skip to Chapter 9 "How to deal with the ‘jerk' boss". That's helpful, but as a Christian, I needed some guidance that took account of God's presence, his Grace and His mercy (and my need for all that) - practical was great, but not enough.

Then I read Heather King's ‘Redeemed: Stumbling Towards God, Sanity and Peace that Passes Understanding'. Following her journey from 20 years of alcoholism to sobriety and then to the Catholic faith, she recalls her short-lived career as a lawyer in a Beverley Hills law firm, working for "Frank, a sole practitioner, [and] a cigar-smoking bachelor eight years my junior who specialized in personal injury and employment discrimination." By way of anecdote, she helped soften my heart, reduce the stress…and lose 10 pounds in three weeks (ok, not quite).

My work experience at the time mirrored Heather's. She had come in with great optimism, "yearned to contribute", only to find the place in "stupendous disarray" full of disillusioned and cynical folk. Nevertheless, she worked like a Trojan, in search of constant affirmation, nay adulation, for the ideal that she always thought was ‘the law'.

"Unfortunately, nothing could have impressed Frank less, and I never quite recovered from the shock that he found my best, most sacrificial efforts barely worthy of notice. Instead, he viewed me as a pitiful crackpot and I got stuck doing not only my own work, but the work of Eric, the toadying paralegal, as well. Eric had a bald spot and clammy hands, twiddled a knockoff Mont Blanc pen and wore blazers with gold insignia over the breast pocket, like the captain of a yacht….In lieu of working, Eric wrote memos to Frank, filled with suggestions of work I could do, that began, "Your Royal Highness" and ended, "I await your bidding."

The comical descriptions went on. I lay in stitches of laughter late into the night relieved to know I wasn't the only one whose feeble attempts to ‘keep calm and carry on' were ever-threatened by the seething rage bubbling just beneath the surface…

"Underlying every other loathsome aspect of my job was the fact that I hated Eric with a black and festering hatred. [Ooh, ouch…really?] I burned with it, writhed with it, fanned the flames of it morning, noon and night by pinpointing, categorizing and analyzing his infinite character defects: his stupidity, his cunning sloth, his soft, slug-like hands. Behind my closed office door, I worked on it like a sculptor working molten wax: a mass of indignities and slights, whose contours I endlessly, obsessively reshaped."

The power of brutal honesty, humour and frankness in dealing with life's struggles is, I think, a hallmark of a mature spiritual life. Call a spade a spade. The catch, of course, is not to rest in the negativity but to work through it and learn from it, and reach out to God's love and mercy. That's how we can be freed from the frustration. Indeed, when Heather recalls leaving the law firm, and taking the time to apologise to Eric for any moments where she had failed in charity, despite his "puffing and preening" response, she realized she was suddenly free. The person in the workplace that had held her "bondage" through her anger and resentment was really "someone almost as pathetically insecure" as she realized she was. Now, that's the power of God's grace and our seizing it. And I like the sound of that.

Lucy O'Donoghue lives in South Asia with her O'D husband (true Irish right there). Lucy changes her mind every week what she wants to ‘be' or ‘do' in her life, much to her husband's and parents' dismay. Nevertheless, she has spent the last few years earning her bacon in the humanitarian sector in Africa and South Asia and is currently completing a Master of Arts in Catholic Theology at the Augustine Institute.

Heather King is a Catholic author, blogger, speaker…and ex-bar fly, sober alcoholic, former lawyer from Los Angeles. Her writing has been rated by Catholic, Christian and secular media alike. Heather is set to come on tour to New Zealand in April 2013 - more info, click here.