Members of my church, including myself, sometimes complain that too many things are required of us in our limited time.
Every six months I listen to the Lord Jesus Christ's Apostles give inspired and inspiring talks. These conferences are some of my favorite times of the year. However, I can also feel overwhelmed when I am reminded of the many good things that I could add to my already packed schedule. But this unfortunate feeling is accompanied by blessings.
One blessing I have observed is improved marginal productivity. Something that I learned in my basic economics course is that we often experience diminishing marginal productivity. The more time we spend on certain activities (think of ones that we are already spending a lot of time on), the less productive each additional minute spent on that activity becomes.
This is especially relevant with whatever we do for a living. The 46th hour that I choose to dedicate to studying (looking over notes for a fourth time, for example) is probably less productive than the 20th hour that I chose to study (listening to a professor or looking at notes for the first time). For this reason, it is helpful to be reminded about the joy of doing something nice for my neighbor instead. Those 30 minutes that I spend meeting and serving a neighbor will probably be more productive than 30 more minutes of studying, given that I am already studying a lot. Hence, I am blessed by hearing reminders of the many good things I can be doing.
This has been a hard lesson to learn. When I was first starting college I often felt like my church leaders thought school was bad and that if I really wanted to be a good person I needed to drop out of school and become a really loving and selfless beggar. After trying to understand this for several years, I no longer feel bad studying. I think studying is awesome and wish I did it more (I should maybe be doing it right now). At the same time, I see that the occasional break that I take from studying (to follow some other counsel) is often very productive.
Not all activities always experience diminishing marginal returns. For example, your first minute trying to understand Chinese (or the law, economics, or calculus) is probably less productive than your 100th minute, because during your first minute you were so lost that almost nothing was sinking in. A similar principle applies technological devices, which over the long-run go down in price because companies get better at producing them.
Likewise with spiritual things, increasing the total amount of an activity can increase the benefit of each additional minute spent in that activity. This helps explain why learning and reviewing the basics is so helpful. If I only spend an occasional hour at church, then that hour's learning will be forgotten. But by consistently partaking of the sacrament (which is how I renew my covenants with God) I more fully have the Spirit, and hence each hour I spend partaking of the sacrament is more productive than if I only partook of the sacrament once in awhile. Some activities are most productive when we do them so much that they become a part of us.
