I’ve always been curious of how other pastors and church leaders work. So I shamelessly ripped of Lifehacker.com’s How I Work series and began to ask other church leaders questions about their work. 

Sydnie Mares

Location (city/state): Houston, TX

Your Ministry (position/title): Social Media/Visual Arts Manager for the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church

One word that describes how you work: Resourcefully

Current mobile device: Samsung Galaxy S8+

Current computer/laptop: My work computer is a Dell something, and my personal laptop is a Dell something.

Connect with Sydnie:
Sydniemares.com
Twitter
Instagram

Describe a recent work day:
I started by checking all of our social media notifications and answering emails. I edited photos from a recent event, then edited the corresponding video. After lunch, I created some new website and social media banners. Before I left, I wrote a couple of Instagram captions.

Gadgets/apps/tools that you cannot live without:
I cannot live without Google Drive. I use it for everything in my personal life. People in this office generally use Dropbox though, it’s alright.

What’s your workspace setup like? (Do you do majority of work from office or do you work remotely):
I work from the office 80-90% of the time, and I’m very fortunate to have a custom desktop with two large monitors. When I’m at home, I’m working on my phone or laptop and cuddling my dogs.

Best short-cut; life hack you use:
In talking to some church communicators (and pastors who do social media), I’ve found that a lot of people are not scheduling their social media posts.
Posting things on the fly keeps everything fresh, but it can also be an energy void. Sitting down and scheduling your church’s posts for the week takes less time than posting manually each time. There are many scheduling applications available that make managing social media so much easier, and most of them have free versions.

How do you keep track of what you have to do:

I keep a running to-do list on a legal pad at my desk, one column is for “To-do right now” and one is “long-term ideas/projects”.
I also add a post-it note to my desk for each task that needs to be completed before I leave the office for the day. Sometimes this actually works.

What’s one of the least favorite aspects of what you have to do:
Sometimes we will receive racist, homophobic, and other nasty comments that I have to read and filter.

Passion/Side project of yours?
My passion/side project is TBD. I’m just learning a lot right now.

What gives you joy about your work:
I’m thankful that I am in a position to be able to boost underrepresented voices and tell the stories of some really awesome ministries.

Currently reading / or anything you’d recommend one to read:
Honestly, I’m not very well read.
However, I am a huge TV nerd. I recently finished season 2 of One Day at a Time on Netflix. Television helps us frame our world, but unfortunately, many of the images that we watch are unhelpful to certain groups of people. One Day at a Time tells its story in a way that prioritizes love and sympathy. I end up laughing and crying in every episode.