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Episode 753: Why Information May Waste Your time

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Join us today for an episode about the reason you think you need more information than you do to make a decision...

Today's episode is focused on how our brains tend to want more data instead of making a decision quickly...

In today’s episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time, I talk with you about why you likely feel that more information is best to make good decisions.  Why recognizing that you can make a decision quickly or with little information is powerful. I also share how you can prevent it from being an issue for you.

Join in on the Chat below.

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00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 753 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Paul sawn from Kara. I challenge you to discover your true identity and calling. So you can be empowered to live everyday to the fullest. One way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader. I agree Celsius depending on where you live,
00:00:32 that either immediately made sense to you because you've got an embedded kind of connection to that. And you know what temperature that is, or if you're somewhere like in the U S where Fahrenheit is the temperature that we use, that didn't make sense to you, and you would have to use system two to process it and to make it conscious so that you could then get it into something that actually makes sense to you.
00:00:57 Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact Worry In today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time.
00:01:29 I talk with you about why you likely feel that more information is the best way to make good decisions. Why recognizing that you can make a decision quickly or with very little information is powerful. And I also share how you can prevent it from becoming an issue for you as we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long,
00:01:55 it turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show. Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon information and data. It seems like in today's world,
00:02:22 we're inundated with information companies talk about using big data. We're all targeted in different ways by advertising, by marketing. If you run a small business, you're constantly looking for information on your customers and how to better improve your business and your products. If you're a person who's living your own life, you're probably interested in having more information about how to make decisions and about more information so that you can make the right decisions.
00:02:56 You know, one of the things I do as a coach is I help people get information, but the more important part is I help them then use that information to put things into action, to change their behavior, to change their actions, to do something different than they've been doing before so that they can get new results. You know, the truth is we often feel like the best way to make the best decision is to simply get more information,
00:03:29 to find out more data, to, to find out more answers. And the truth is they've done research on this and they've tried to figure out, you know, how much information is the right amount of information that you need before you can make a good decision. And the truth is even if you have a hundred percent of the information in front of you,
00:03:52 you're probably still not going to make always the best decision or the perfect decision. Instead, you're probably at best going to make a good decision. So why then do we constantly search out and try to have all of the information at our fingertips? And I think it's because we have this false belief that that's what allows us to get the right decision. But the problem is that that comes at a cost.
00:04:24 If you're constantly seeking more data and more information, you can number one, waste, huge amounts of time, getting that data, getting that information. And number two, you can waste huge amounts of money getting that information as well. And even more than that, you can get overwhelmed with the data that you do have and end up not doing anything with the data at all,
00:04:54 because the truth is the data, even the decision, isn't the important part. It's then taking another step and putting that into action. That is so important. And our brain has a natural tendency to want to come to decisions relatively quickly, but then we push back against it with this belief that we should know more before we make a decision. And what's interesting is these things are kind of out of alignment and,
00:05:29 and impart that frustration because they're out of alignment is one of the problems that happens. See the truth is your brain has different systems that we use for making decisions. And part of what we need to know is what system are we using when we make this particular decision? You know, if you ask somebody to do a math problem in their head, what 17 times 37,
00:05:54 that uses what we call system two, which is a slow, deliberate process. This is, if you want to do that in your head, you actually have to think it through. On the other hand, if I show you a picture of somebody's face, you probably can almost instinctively recognize the emotion and maybe even make some predictions about what's going to happen next based just on their facial image and what,
00:06:20 what expression they have on their face that's system. One system, one handles quick, easy decisions, sensory, and put relatively unimportant. Decision-making these sorts of things. If somebody throws a ball at you, you don't want to have this long drawn out conversation in your head about the trajectory of the ball. You just want to duck, and that's why system one exist.
00:06:47 But system two is the higher order thinking. It's, it's more deliberate. It's able to think in voices and pictures, it's, it's able to do calculations. If, for instance, I tell you 22 degrees Celsius, depending on where you live, that either immediately made sense to you because you've got an embedded kind of connection to that. And you know,
00:07:10 what temperature that is, or if you're somewhere like in the U S where Fahrenheit is the temperature that we use, that didn't make sense to you, and you would have to use system two to process it and to make it conscious so that you could then get it into something that actually makes sense to you. And the truth is when you recognize that system,
00:07:31 two is always going to think I need more data, but the real, more valuable questions to ask yourself and how you can recognize that making a decision quickly can be valuable, is making a decision quickly, can number one position you to make the decision before others, which puts you in front of people. It also can make the decision cheaper, faster,
00:07:58 and save you time and money as well. And you can recognize that for some decisions you can kind of think about how much information do I really need. How important is this decision asking the questions? What am I going to do with this decision becomes important because then you can begin to say, what data do I need? What information do I need to actually make a decision?
00:08:26 What do I need to know? Not what data is available, what data is out there, but actually what data is valuable to make the decision, because instead of accumulating more data and more information, you really want just the right information. And that right information is probably nowhere close to as much information as you think you can balance the risk that you are willing to take the risk of making the wrong decision with the potential pay off of the right decision to target.
00:09:04 How much information do you actually need to make a decision? And it's probably closer to 50 or 75% of what you actually instinctively think you need. So asking these questions, bouncing these ideas off of other people and targeting the information that you gather so that you can reduce risk, but not spend huge amounts of time and money making the decision is a valuable tool.
00:09:33 And it's how you can prevent this data overload from being a problem for you. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time,
00:10:06 be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series, by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four four, two, two, two time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact.

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In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • Why you likely feel that more information is best to make good decisions... 
  •  Why recognizing that you can make a decision quickly or with little information is powerful...
  • How you can prevent it from being an issue for you...
  • and more.....

“The goal is to turn data into information and information into insight. - Carly Fiorina

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Some of the Resources recommended in this episode:

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

Let Me Know What you Think Below....

Episode 748: Does a Schedule Handcuff You?

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Join us today for an episode about the reason a schedule is freeing not confining...

Today's episode is focused on finding the freedom in a plan...

In today’s episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time, I talk with you about why you should have a schedule, why a schedule actually frees you instead of handcuffing you, and why you think it’s the opposite.

Join in on the Chat below.

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00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 748 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Frazer rice, author of wealth. Actually, I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the right relationship with all of your gifts is the key to doing this one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this,
00:00:27 the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader And you don't enjoy it anymore. The real key is to remember, it's not something that's written in stone and you cannot change it. Instead. It's something that this is what you've committed to doing. This is what you need to do. And if something comes up, you can weigh the pros and cons and quickly decide is the new task more important than the existing task.
00:01:02 Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. In today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time.
00:01:37 I talk with you about why you should have a schedule, why a schedule actually frees you instead of handcuffing you, if you're doing it right, and why you might think of it as doing the opposite as we talk about stewarding your time, wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long, it turns out you can.
00:01:58 All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show. Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. One of the things that folks often push back on, when you talk about scheduling your time or setting up a plan ahead of time for what you want to use your time for is that that actually tends to handcuff them.
00:02:31 It tends to make it where they can't be spontaneous. They can't do things as it comes. They can't work on what they feel like at that particular point in time, or do something extra that they didn't plan on doing. And the truth is even if you like to live by the moment, even if you like to be spontaneous, even if you like to have a chance to do different things or change your mind during the day,
00:02:58 you should actually have a schedule, a schedule isn't meant to be something that sets up a fixed point in time that this is it, and you cannot change it. Remember the truth is that you're the one that made the schedule in the first place. So if there's a reason to change it, you certainly can. All the schedule is meant to do is be a commitment you make to yourself that you're going to do certain things at certain times,
00:03:27 but you can always change that commitment. The, the truth is a schedule frees you up instead of handcuffing you, because it helps you make decisions quicker and easier about what you want to do with your time. Have you ever had those moments where you had a wide open schedule during the day, and you had plenty of time to get a lot of things done,
00:03:50 but then you never really got started. You never really got anything done that day, or you move from event to event and you really don't ever get into a flow state or get concentrated work done, or even get the most important things done. Or have you ever had those moments where suddenly you have some time open up on your calendar, but you end up spending the entire time trying to figure out what you're supposed to get done instead of just rolling into the next task and working on it cleanly.
00:04:20 The truth is a schedule allows you to make those decisions much quicker. And when those spontaneous events come up, when something comes up with family or friends that perhaps you want to do, it allows you to look at your schedule and bounce the new event against it and decide is this more important than what I already had scheduled? Because if it is then of course you can change your schedule.
00:04:44 You can make a decision, but you see the consequences of those changes and you can weigh the pros and cons. You can make an informed decision instead of just living by the moment and then regretting it later later, see a schedule actually frees you up to be more flexible. Not less if you're doing it right. Got the truth is we think of it the opposite way,
00:05:09 because often we make a couple of fundamental mistakes. When we're making our schedule one, we schedule every single moment of the day. We try to use a zero-based time schedule without including some time for just sort of unplanned or unexpected task, because I don't know about you, but I think everyone has the experience of having unplanned tasks or tasks take a little longer than you expected or other unexpected things come up that completely derail your schedule.
00:05:40 And then you end up running from behind all the time and feeling frustrated like you didn't get everything done by allowing your schedule to have a little bit of flex time or a little time for the unplanned and unexpected. It's easier to roll with it. The second that we make with our schedules is we do make that commitment to them and think that these are the only things that we can do.
00:06:06 And by doing that by not allowing for some flexibility, by not allowing for yourself to make a change in that, that's where you start feeling like it's locking you in and you don't enjoy it anymore. The, the real key is to remember, it's not something that's written in stone and you cannot change it instead. It's something that this is what you've committed to doing.
00:06:29 This is what you need to do. And if something comes up, you can weigh the pros and cons and quickly decide is the new task more important than the existing task. And if it is then go ahead and roll with it and get that done. The truth is a schedule is only as handcuffing as you let it be. But we often think of it as being that way because we've used them wrong our entire life.
00:06:57 This has to do with how we interface with our to-do list, how we interface with other ways we have of recording what we need to do to, if you put so many tasks on your list of things that need to get done, that there's no possible way they can get done in the time you have available. Then you end up feeling frustrated every day by the schedule and by your task.
00:07:18 And that frustration builds up over time until eventually you just stop using it. And as you stop using it, it no longer works for you. And you're right back where you started from. So I encourage you to build some flex time into your schedule. Use your schedule, not as something that handcuffs you, but as something that allows you to make decisions.
00:07:40 And I think you'll have more success. Thanks for listening. So much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series,
00:08:14 by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four, four, two, two, two time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact The world.

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In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • Why you should have a schedule... 
  • Why a schedule actually frees you instead of handcuffing you...
  • Why you think it’s the opposite...
  • and more.....

You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priority. ― Richie Norton

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Some of the Resources recommended in this episode:

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

Let Me Know What you Think Below....

Episode 743: Check Your Thoughts to Measure Your Time

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Join us today for an episode about the reason how you view time matters...

Today's episode is focused on why you often struggle to get the right things done if you don't view time "right"...

In today’s episode about investing in others by stewarding your time, I talk with you about why how we view our time is as important as how the time passes.  I share why all too often we think about time wrong and why even though time is finite our view of it doesn’t have to be.

Join in on the Chat below.

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00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 743 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hi, I'm Ella Hawkins, author of cracking the leadership code. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to lead well is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this,
00:00:31 the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, Just identifying the work, but identifying the why behind the work and in doing that and doing that, you end up really viewing time. The way it should be viewed as the resource that you spend, but you spend it like it's gold. You spend it on the most efficient, effective, and important things,
00:01:06 and you don't waste it on the things that don't matter. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:29 invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And today's episode about investing in others. By stewarding your time. I talk with you about why, how we view our time is as important as how that time actually passes. I share why all too often, we think about time wrong and why even though time is finite. Our view of it.
00:01:56 Doesn't have to be as we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long, it turns out you can. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show. Just that quick.
00:02:18 If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. One of those things about how we use our time and utilize it is oftentimes it has more to do with how we view it than just how much time we have, or sometimes even what we do in the time we have is affected by how we view it.
00:02:45 Let me give you an example. Have you ever had one of those days where you maybe didn't have any deadlines, you didn't have anything scheduled, you didn't have anything on your calendar. It was a wide open day and you thought to yourself, Oh, use this as a day to get a lot of things done. I'll I'll really clean up some messes and I'll,
00:03:03 I'll work on a whole bunch of things. I'll, I'll clean out a bunch of projects. And then you find yourself, you get up a little bit later than normal because you know, after all, you didn't have to set your alarm and you needed some rest and that's fine, but then it takes you a little while to kind of get started for the day and you kind of wander through.
00:03:22 And eventually you sit down to get started and you begin on one project, but find that that's not really interesting, or you're not making much progress. So you shift to another project and then another, and then it's time to take a break and eat lunch. And before you know it, you get to dinner time and you've gotten absolutely nothing done. And then on other days you,
00:03:44 you get up and maybe you do have those deadlines and you begin to, to work very quickly in the breaks in between them. And you get a lot of things done and you feel really efficient and effective and you feel like this is awesome. I got so much done today. And so you begin to think to yourself, well, it's deadlines. I,
00:04:03 I need deadlines to be able to work. And so you begin to try to establish artificial deadlines that force you to work. Even when you don't have things to do. And you set up your, your willpower and your systems in that way. And pretty soon you've decided that you work well under pressure. And so you put things off and wait till the last minute and tend to overfill your calendar with too many commitments and too much to do.
00:04:29 And the truth is the real problem. Wasn't the lack of deadlines that one day, the real problem. Wasn't the fact that you thought about that day, or it's not even that you didn't get as much done. It's how you thought about it. First off, when you got up that morning, you thought, because I don't have any deadlines. I have no time pressure.
00:04:51 There's nothing artificial. That's pushing me to get certain things done. And therefore it's easy to put them off. You thought about that and unconsciously, you did acted it out. The reason that so many of us think we work effectively with deadlines is because those deadlines actually force us to get things done. But here's, what's interesting. Sometimes when you work under deadlines like that,
00:05:16 you get a lot done. But then if you look back on it, you find out that what you spent all your time doing was busy work instead of work, that really moved the needle instead of deep work, that effectively cause you to do something big and it all comes back to how you're viewing it and what you're looking at. It, it isn't how much time passed or even how many things you accomplish in that time.
00:05:42 It's are you accomplishing the right things? See, we often think about time and one breath as if we have all the time in the world. And then in the next breath will say, we have no time at all. Obviously time is finite is it's a finite resource. And in fact, in some ways it's the most finite resource on the planet.
00:06:05 Because if you've use time a certain way, you can't go back and create more time. Even if you waste money or waste other finite resources, you still many times can recover them are, go back and reverse it or do something else that generates that resource again. But in the case of time, you really can only multiply time by scaling it, or by creating more efficiencies or getting others to do things.
00:06:35 And this sort of thing, you, you can't directly scale the time you have. So it's absolutely one of the most finite resources on the planet. But it's funny because in one breath we know that we acknowledge that, but then we fill that time with stuff that is unimportant stuff that we really don't care about. Stuff that doesn't move the needle. I'm in the midst right now of doing a review of all of the different things that I've been spending time on over the last year.
00:07:06 And I'm doing it with the intent of eliminating certain things. I'm doing it with the idea that I'm going to cut some things out of my life, that the result of this is not going to be discovering more things that I need to do. But instead discovering that there's less things that I need to do. And this is one of those activities that I strongly suggest people go through because the truth is the way we view our time.
00:07:35 As infinite, we've got plenty of time is important and it's good. Yes, you should say to yourself, I've got plenty of time, but you need to finish the sentence this way. I've got plenty of time to do the things that are the most important to me, but only eliminate and say no and guard that time so that I don't fill it up with the things that don't really matter in that way.
00:08:04 What's interesting is if you're really focusing on doing the things that you really want to do, you'll get up on one of those days where you have nothing on your schedule. And one of two things is going to happen. Either. You decide, you know what? Today is a day that I am going to use for rest. It's going to be a Sabbath day.
00:08:22 It's going to be a day of recovery. I am going to, without guilt, without anger, enjoy my day. I'm going to spend time with my family. I'm going to spend time in nature. I'm going to spend time relaxing, whatever it is. And you're going to be able to do that without guilt and without worry or alternatively, if it is a day that you need to get things done,
00:08:44 what you'll do is you'll get up in the morning and you'll find those things that are the most important things to get done. The things that jazz you up, the things that increase energy and make you feel like you really made a difference and built something and done something that's effective and exciting. What's interesting is sometimes that effective and exciting stuff can even be work that you don't really enjoy doing,
00:09:10 but it's work that you've determined as important. And you've done the hard work of not just identifying the work, but identifying the why behind the work and in doing that and doing that, you end up really viewing time. The way it should be viewed as the resource that you spend, but you spend it like it's gold. You spend it on the most efficient,
00:09:35 effective, and important things, and you don't waste it on the things that don't matter. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent,
00:10:08 you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent. Or if you're in the us, you can text four, four, two, two, two talent tips. That's talent tips to four four, two, two, two, and get those tips until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures,
00:10:36 develop your influence and impact the world..

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In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • Why how we view our time is as important as how the time passes...   
  • Why all too often we think about time wrong...
  • Why even though time is finite our view of it doesn’t have to be...
  • and more.....

One thing that can't be recycled is wasted time. - Anonymous

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Some of the Resources recommended in this episode:

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

Let Me Know What you Think Below....

Episode 738: Cognitive Dissonance and Time

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Join us today for an episode about the stress of Cognitive Dissonance and how it affects your productivity...

Today's episode is focused on why being out of mental alignment always has a productivity impact...

In today’s episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time, I talk with you about what cognitive dissonance is.  I share why it affects your productivity at work and at home.  And I share some tips on what you can do about it.

Join in on the Chat below.

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00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode seven 30, eight of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Doug North and I'm Carol Pitner. And we're the authors of raising your money savvy family for next generation financial independence. And we challenge you to really focus on becoming my new savvy. One way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend,
00:00:25 Scott Mader, Simply being more aware can help you begin to change these things because the truth is if you don't reduce the cognitive dissonance, it belief begins to oftentimes, especially in a work environment, it leads to withdraw. It leads to disengagement because a stressed person does it function as well as possible. And they begin to step away from work because that reduces the discomfort.
00:00:59 Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
00:01:29 Okay. In today's episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time. I talk with you about what cognitive dissonance is. I share why it affects your productivity at work and at home. And I share some tips on what you can do about it as we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long,
00:01:51 it turns out you can. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show. Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon cognitive dissonance. You know, that's one of those terms that you might've heard,
00:02:17 but you may or may not really know what it means or ever really thought of it, but I guarantee you it's something that you've felt probably more often than you even know that the cognitive dissonance is just a fancy term for the discomfort or the uncomfortable feeling when two or more ideas or modes of thought or beliefs contradict each other. It's something about where you,
00:02:44 for instance, believe yourself to be a productive person, but then you notice yourself doing activities or acting in a certain way that contradicts that belief. That's the feeling of cognitive dissonance and your, your action and response to this may go all over the place. Sometimes we simply compartmentalize it or ignore it. Sometimes we rationalize it away. Sometimes we actually change our behavior or change our belief system to eliminate the conflict.
00:03:17 We either stop thinking of ourselves as productive and begin to think of ourselves as someone who procrastinates or we take action to change the way we deal with our time. So using examples that don't have to do with time, if, if you feel like you've been told by your doctor, that you have to change your eating habits, because you're in danger of some sort of health problem,
00:03:42 you could simply ease that feeling by changing your belief that you know, doctors really don't know what they're talking about this as an exaggerated warning, or you could change your belief by beginning to take action. That then aligns with this new belief about changing your eating habits. If you have political beliefs and you learn information, you could change your beliefs, or you can rationalize those beliefs away.
00:04:10 All of these sorts of things, change how we act. You know, if you value your health, you may choose to make an effort to exercise, get nutritious food, eat rights, get enough sleep, but then you spend most of your day sitting at a desk and you say, well, it's okay because I'm taking care of my health. In other ways,
00:04:34 you even joined a gym, but you never actually go. This dissonance will either make you eventually begin to exercise and eat right, and go to the gym, or you'll just feel guilty every time you see it. And that's that feeling of cognitive dissonance, but let's take work and productivity, especially now, when so many of us are working from home,
00:04:56 you're in a situation where there's no one really monitoring what you do. You, you can probably have a second device that you can use that isn't even monitored by your work. You can browse the internet on your phone or on a tablet. And by the way, this was still a problem while people were at work. If you were off at a private cubicle,
00:05:14 how many times have you walked by and seen an employee browsing or even watching TV on their telephone instead of actually being actively engaged in work. And they even rationalize that they say, we'll eventually get our work done in. And in fact, if I take this little break, I'll even be more productive because you know, it's good to work in short bursts and take frequent breaks.
00:05:38 I'm increasing my productivity after all. I rarely take time off and I work hard. So I should get to relax too. You'll all of these are examples of the kind of feelings that we have that is cognitive dissonance. And I am telling you, it affects your at work. It affects your productivity at home because you rationalize various behaviors. And in fact,
00:06:04 cognitive dissonance is not necessarily a bad thing because it can prompt you and nag at you until you make positive changes in your actions. It makes you realize that something about how you believe and you're acting are not in alignment, but it is a problem. If instead of changing your behavior or changing your belief, you simply rationalize it or justify it away. If you get caught up in trying to rationalize the feeling away,
00:06:35 then it's not a good thing. So what can you do instead, when, when you begin to recognize that you have those moments of cognitive dissonance, where your beliefs and your actions are out of alignment, ask yourself a few questions. What are the two beliefs and ideas or actions that aren't fitting together, identify them, call them out by name and then identify what actions can I take that would eliminate this lack of alignment.
00:07:03 What can I change that brings these things into alignment? Are there specific behaviors that I need to change? Or is this a mindset or a belief that I need to change? And how important is it that I resolve the dissonance? Because the truth is sometimes you look at it and it's really not that big of a deal. And other times it is a huge deal.
00:07:28 Simply being more aware can help you begin to change these things because the truth is, if you don't reduce the cognitive dissonance, it believes begins to oftentimes, especially in a work environment, it leads to withdraw. It leads to disengagement because a stressed person doesn't function as well as possible. And they begin to step away from work because that reduces the discomfort.
00:07:53 They can be absent more from work, because again, they're avoiding the stress and then sometimes employees will act out. You are other people will act out in inappropriate ways because that aggression, that sabotage that bad behavior helps reduce the stress. And then of course, it also leads to health problems, which affect you and affect the workplace and affect how much you get done.
00:08:17 So it's this loop of behaviors. And that's why at times cognitive dissonance can be a really bad thing for a person, for an organization and for your productivity. It's usually cause not just by the person, but by the environment that you find yourself in. And this is why it's so important to identify it so that you can change your actions. You can change your beliefs,
00:08:45 or you can change your environment and reduce that feeling of stress. Because now you're living a life that's aligned on Friday. We'll talk some about how cognitive dissonance plays out in our money instead of our time as well. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen,
00:09:18 but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series, by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four, four, two, two, two time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time,
00:09:52 invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world..

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In today's episode, I talk with you about:

  • What cognitive dissonance is...  
  • Why it affects your productivity at work and at home...
  • Some tips on what you can do about it...
  • and more.....

When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance. - Leon Festinger

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