Richard Swenson has a message for men living in today's fast-paced, make-a-buck, be-all-that-you-can-be world: Cut yourself some slack.

Swenson, the author of the hugely successful book Margin and related titles, learned this lesson the hard way in 1982. A respected physician with a loving family and a beautiful home in Wisconsin, Swenson and his wife had nearly everything a couple could want, except for the time and energy to enjoy it.

"We were overcommitted. We were not only tired--we were exhausted," he recalls. "Everything had become a burden: medicine and ministry, patients and caring."

The old saying "too much of a good thing" sums up Swenson's life before he developed the "margin" concept. "We were not involved in anything that was bad--nothing unsuccessful, nothing evil, nothing that did not honor God. It was all caring, serving, teaching, doctoring. We were meeting needs everywhere we turned."

"If 15 years earlier I had written a formula for the perfect life, I had achieved it all," he adds. "I had a prestigious career, a generous income, grateful patients, supportive colleagues, a wonderful town, a loving family, a vibrant church and a growing faith. But if we had such a perfect life, why was I getting all these headaches? Why was it so hard to get out of bed in the morning?"

Turning his medical training on himself, Swenson diagnosed the problem: overload. He also developed a cure: a concept he called "margin."

The idea is as easy to understand as it is hard to apply. Everyone has limits: only so many hours in a day, so many dollars in the bank, so much energy in the body. No matter what your high school coach used to say, you can only give 100 percent, and then you're done. The problem is that we tend to expect 110 percent from ourselves. The result: stress and constant disappointment.

Swenson says it's healthier--physically, emotionally and spiritually--to set our sights a bit lower, to expect maybe 90 percent of our absolute maximum, and to reserve a bit of margin so we can cope with emergencies. Don't schedule every minute or budget every dollar. Leave yourself some breathing room.

The model for the margin concept is none other than the Great Physician, Jesus Christ. "If Jesus had chosen to live in modern America instead of ancient Israel, how would He act?" Swenson asks: "Would He have carried a pocket calendar? Would He have worn a wristwatch? Would He have carried a beeper? Can you imagine Him being paged out of the Last Supper?

"When we look at the life of Christ, we notice that there is no indication He worked 24-hour ministry days. He went to sleep each night without having healed every disease in Israel--and He apparently slept well. Neither did He visit everybody who needed it. Neither did He teach everybody who needed it. Is this to imply that He was lazy or that He didn't care? Of course not. But He understood what it meant to have limits. We can learn a lesson from Jesus: It's OK to have limits."

That message is sharply at odds with society's expectations. "Living conditions today are different than living conditions yesterday," Swenson explains. "People need to understand that and factor it in. Culture is giving us more and more, faster and faster. People eventually hit their limits. When you're saturated, you can't add something new unless you take something away."

That's a hard lesson to learn--especially for guys. "Men are not very good at recognizing the existence of such limits," Swenson admits. "We're taught to be stoical. But even the most hyperstoicals are hitting the wall. The thesis is elementary, and it's pretty low-level math, but men don't catch on real fast. When men are finally cracking they're glad to have answers for why they feel this way. It's not because we're failures or wimps. It's because our culture is changing and making more demands on our system."

Christians in general often have a hard time with the margin concept, Swenson says. "Scripture calls us to good works, not to idleness. We want to give all for God because Jesus gave all for us. People today feel guilty if they rest, even on Sunday. It's hard to say no, and you feel that you're disappointing God when you do it," he says.

"But there's no way we can pay Christ back for His gift--that's why it's called grace. This doesn't mean you're free to sit in a chair for the rest of your life. It's a fallen world that needs work. But we're not God, and we can't do it all--that wasn't ever part of God's plan. God figured out the activity/rest thing right from the beginning.

"God hasn't called us to fix all the problems in the world by midnight," he continues. "It's not possible. What God has called us to do is love the person right in front of us. As you crank up the speed on the treadmill of life, you may get more done, but you forget about love. God left us in charge of love. Marginless living makes it hard to care for the person in front of you because you're just hanging on by your fingernails yourself. If God Himself taps you on the shoulder to get you to do something, you give Him the busy signal."

How can people tell when they're overloaded? It would be easier if we were built like cars. "Your car has clear signals on the dashboard," Swenson says. "When the engine is about to explode a red light comes on. But in our lives it's hard to know when we've gone from 95 percent to 105 percent, because we don't have an alarm that goes off. But people do have a 'symptom complex' that develops--symptoms that let you know where you're at."

Everybody's different, says Swenson, whose personal overload symptoms include irritability and migraine headaches. "When I get irritable and get lots of migraines, I know I'm probably over the line and need to pull back," he says.

Other people respond to overload by becoming apathetic or withdrawn or depressed. Some begin to dread their work and find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Others respond with rage or hostility.

Chaos and disorganization in the workplace and mistakes at work can signify overload, as can moral failure. "Some of these failures in the leaders of Christian ministry come because they're going too fast, trying too hard, and in 5 minutes they sabotage 20 years of ministry," Swenson notes. Physical symptoms can include headaches, heart palpitations or a racing heartbeat, chest pains, stomach burning, irritable bowel, tics, rashes and difficulty sleeping.

How does a person begin to develop margin in their life? "There's no magic formula that fits everybody," says Swenson, whose other books include The Overload Syndrome and Restoring Margin to Overcrowded Lives. "But everybody has to do something because sooner or later the treadmill will catch up with you." Here are some of Swenson's suggestions:

• Cultivate social support: Meaningful relationships with friends and family help build our emotional reserves.
• Reconcile relationships: A broken relationship can sap your ability to cope with life.
• Rest: Try setting aside some time every day for quiet and rest--even 15 minutes away from deadlines and phone calls can recharge your batteries.
• Establish boundaries: Learn to say, "I'm sorry, but I can't," politely, but firmly. The moment it takes to say those five words can save you hours of grief.
• Choose to get enough sleep: Remember that sleep is God's idea, not ours. A sound night's sleep is a valuable restorative gift.
• Pay attention to your physical health: The time you take to eat right and exercise will be repaid with more energy for life's demands.
• Do the right things, not the most things: Setting priorities can keep you from spending your energy on things that don't matter.
• Schedule free time: Make appointments to do nothing and keep those appointments.
• Live within your means: Decreasing spending and increasing savings can help give you the financial margin you need to cope with life's surprises.

The idea, says Swenson, is to live a healthy life--a life where your energy is being used purposefully to do what God has called you to do. "In my life, as a result of having margin and focusing on the specific things God wants me to do, I've accomplished more, and what I've accomplished is of a quality nature," Swenson says.

"I've allowed God to run His kingdom in me and through me, and God takes me places I never could have gone on my own. I find that God working through me gets more done than me working through me." NM

By Doug Trouten, who teaches journalism at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn. and is president of the Evangelical Press Association.