Our work is like a bus… with headway.

If you look at our agendas, you will see something in there called “shuffle time”. In a bus company, it would be called “headway” in English. What is that, and why is it there?

Suppose you have a bus company with an hourly service.

The bus has (call a number) 40 stops on its route and as soon as the bus comes out the other side, it turns around and goes the route again in the other direction. Fine, right?

But… that bus has to “plow” through all the traffic. And in theory it takes an hour (and is then just in time to catch the next trip), but in practice that bus also sometimes has a traffic jam, the traffic lights are all red today and the driver may also have to eat and go to the restroom?

For that reason, a bus route contains (as the English always so beautifully say) “headway”. There is space between the routes of that bus line. Depending on the route, that is somewhere around 15 minutes. So if the bus arrives late at the turning point, there is nothing to worry about because the bus (and the driver) had 15 minutes of leeway. This leeway is necessary to prevent the delay in ride 1 from continuing like a snowball into ride 2. If you were to do that, the last bus of the day would be delayed by more than an hour, and that would not make anyone happy.

Not only the passengers, but also the driver. Because it breaks down quickly if it has to speed and race all day to make up for a time that it has no control over. And the bus itself is not any better if that headway is not there. The bus also needs to be refueled, it cannot drive through the village at full throttle all day long. If we do that, the bus itself will also break down.

And now… to our work.

That term headway is a nice one. Your head also needs “way”. Your head needs space. The driver (we) also needs space between each “ride” to clear our heads for the next “ride”. We also have conversations that run late and that we have to consider. To think that the world consists of a world with only green traffic lights is nonsense, and we also have to take orange and red traffic lights and even traffic jams and accidents into account. They are part of life.

Our schedules literally include “sliding space”, “shuffle time” aka “headway”. It’s literally in the agenda. If anyone were to ask if we still have space at that time, we would literally say “No, unfortunately, that time is already fully booked”.

And the bus?

Our bus also literally needs maintenance. The accounting has to be done, the car has to go to the garage, all the cups of tea have to be washed, etc etc. If we don’t do that, very practically, our bus will also be ready for demolition tomorrow. That time is also scheduled. Because if we don’t do that, the maintenance will always be too late and the bus will get stuck. So our “bus”, read: resources, also get proactively scheduled time for maintenance.

And now…. to our clients.

They also need headway. Headroom. We discuss numerous things with them, and sometimes you have to think through some things. Just sit quietly and just think about it. What has been said, what do I think about it, how do I deal with it, etc. etc. So we also consciously give them that sliding space / headway / shuffle time. Some time to think.

Therefore, there is always headway between our appointments, but that time is also very conscious for the people we work with and for. For some, a day is sufficient, but for others, a week is the minimum required to “process” a conversation. So we give them that time too. That has nothing to do with our planning, but with their “thinking planning”. They are often not aware of this, so we proactively plan this for them. Thinking time / Headspace.

At our retreats for missionaries and pastors, for example, you can sometimes literally see it in the planning. On day one we look more deeply at what the request for help is, and we start working on the first things, on day two there is “headway time”. Then we don’t start pulling, pushing, picking, but we give them very proactive thinking time. However, it is not named as thinking time, but as a zoo, museum, walk, or terrace.

And make no mistake, during those “fun things” to the zoo, museum, walk or a terrace they are working very, very, very hard. Thinking is also work…. and we are happy to give them that time. Proactively, without having often thought about it themselves. Because if we don’t do that, the traveler won’t get better, the bus driver won’t reach his pension and the bus itself could go to the scrap heap within a year. And we are very consciously working on that, every day. This could also mean that the planning for tomorrow is already being changed because we are already seeing that the planning that seemed beautiful in theory is in practice far too much for our clients. No problem, we will adjust it. We have time / space for that.

And what do you do? Do you sometimes consciously stand still and allow yourself enough “head space”? Or do you just keep running…..? When have you looked back on the past few months in peace? When have you spent time on maintenance, study, Bible study, or just doing nothing at all? Do it, otherwise your bus will break down… and that shouldn’t happen.