00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 619 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey, I'm Matt ham, author of redefined rich and I challenge you to live richly by listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. And by the way, if somebody tells you slow down and do a little bit of thinking before you take action, then you probably have a little bit too much of an action bias and in both places,
00:00:34 in both senses. For both of these, you can do things to help you control for that, but first you have to be aware of it always. Self-awareness is the first step towards self-improvement. 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,
00:00:59 your talent, and your treasures for your true color. In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact And today's episode about investing in yourself through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about why, if all you do is learn, it won't actually help you get anywhere.
00:01:29 Why this doesn't mean it's about stopping your lifelong learning. Instead, it's about having an action bias and why this and just in time learning work together to make you succeed. You've heard me talk about developing your talent and one of the best ways to do that is through books, but if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read and that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible.
00:01:58 Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from, and you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via audible. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books. The same way you're listening to this podcast. Stop learning. Start doing. You know,
00:02:30 I've had people tell me this all my life and there's definitely some truth to it, at least for me. The first thing to recognize when you're thinking about how you act in the world are, are you action biased or information biased? And don't get me wrong, neither one of these is good or bad. They just are. Most of us have a tendency to be more one way than the other at least most of the time.
00:02:59 You know, if you're, if you're information bias, you have a tendency to want to constantly gather more information to learn one more thing before you make a decision. You're, you're constantly looking for the one best or perfect decision. The thing that you will do and if it works, it'll be perfect. Everything will fall into place. The stars will align,
00:03:24 Okay? Rainbows will come about and everything works exactly as you wanted it to. And if you're more action biased, you, you have a tendency to act first and later. Worry about the consequences to think about the choices after the action to decide not what is the best thing to do, but rather to decide after you've done how you can now make this work.
00:03:56 Now, obviously these are characatures and extreme positions. The truth is we all have a little bit of both, but when it comes to acting information biased or action biased, you probably have a tendency to be a little bit more one than the other. Most of the time for me, I'm definitely information biased. I want to do all of the research.
00:04:19 I've recently been looking for barbecue pits and I've been doing weeks of research and watching videos and reading reviews and trying to find the barbecue pet. That was the perfect balance of price and features and eventually I have to make a decision. Now for me, I have certain tricks that I use to help myself, force myself into a decision and taking action at some point.
00:04:45 But this is important for you to recognize. If you're wired like me and all you want to do is constantly learn. You want to read the next book, study the next course, do the next piece of research. Okay. Then you never take action and you never really get anywhere. The truth is without action, you can't have real growth. You can't make a real impact.
00:05:16 Now, don't get me wrong, this is not to say that I'm against lifelong learning. We should have a bias towards learning. We should constantly be striving to learn new things, but not at the expense of ever taking action. This is one reason that I love what I call just in time learning. See, I actually started thinking about buying a barbecue pit about six months ago,
00:05:41 but I really didn't do any research until here in the last couple of weeks because now was the time coming into the summer where it was the right time to go ahead and make a purchase. At least for me and our family, this, this was the in time nature of learning. That's one of the tricks I use to help myself have an action bias and basically I set myself a deadline.
00:06:07 I said, I need to make a decision before June 1st so that we can get the barbecue pit, have it here, get it set up before the bulk of the summer hits. When I do a lot of the cooking outdoors. This was a way of tricking myself into taking action. Well, really not tricking myself, but setting myself up where the action bias would take effect because I had set a deadline and notice I still did the research.
00:06:41 I still did learning, but I set myself a deadline and I was only allowed to research a certain amount each day. I was only allowed to study so much and then I had a deadline by which I had to take action. This in my case helped me balance that information bias with an action bias. It helped me take action and make a decision despite the fact that I'm still not a hundred percent satisfied that I've read all of the reviews that are out there and made the one perfect decision,
00:07:17 but I am satisfied with the decision that I have made. You know, on the other hand, if you have an action bias, you need to put some limits on yourself about making decisions. Sometimes whenever it's a vital decision, one that's really important and going to have a long lasting impact, you need to decide how long you're going to force yourself to wait before you actually make that decision because see,
00:07:45 for you, you're going to have a tendency to want to act without thinking and it's important to get some information. It's important to do some thinking. It's important to put in place some shelter so that your decision making slows down a little bit. In that case, this is one of the things that is important to work on. First, you have to recognize how you're wired.
00:08:09 This is why so much of what I do is really about the person, not the tools and the techniques, because the way you're wired affects how you make decisions and the way you make decisions affects everything in your life. So when someone looks at you and says, stop learning, start doing, they're probably pointing out to you that you have an information bias.
00:08:33 And by the way, if somebody tells you slow down and do a little bit of thinking before you take action, then you probably have a little bit too much of an action bias and in both places, in both senses, for both of these, you can do things to help you control for that, but first you have to be aware of it.
00:08:52 Always. Self-awareness is the first towards self-improvement. 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, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent
00:09:29 and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent. Or if you're in the U S 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. Develop your influence and impact the world.