Episode 1073: Intentional Time Management

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1073 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Mario Porreca: I'm Mario Porrecca from 10 minute mindset. The podcast 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 inspiration to set your mindset on the right path is key.

[00:00:26] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to. The inspired stewardship podcast with my good friends, Scott Mader.

[00:00:34] Scott Maderer: when you first set it up, when you first began doing it at the beginning, oftentimes it takes effort. It takes energy. It takes an investment. But over time, you begin to see the payoffs of those, and you begin to see how it multiplies and begins to lower your cognitive bandwidth and begins to make it where you're less worried, less anxious, less forgetful, and are focusing on the things that you really care [00:01:00] about.

[00:01:00] And you're getting them done. 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] And today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time. I talk with you about four ways to improve your time management. I share why at the end of the day, intentionality is more important than perfection. And I also talk about how time management decreases anxiety. As we talk about stewarding your time.

[00:01:48] Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long, it turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired [00:02:00] 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.

[00:02:06] If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/. We've talked before about how, when it comes to time management, it's important to recognize that we're each different people and some of the things that we do, or some of the ways that we handle our time are going to be different.

[00:02:28] Than others. And yet at the same time, it's important to recognize that first off time management is something that we all need to pay attention to because our productivity, our energy, those things are we only have a finite amount of time, so learning to be able to deal. Ourselves and how we work around our productivity is important to our longterm success.

[00:02:57] That intentionality is [00:03:00] what is important. And so I wanted to talk about some kind of big bucket ideas that are important to understand in any system. At the end of the day, what you do and how you achieve these four things may be different for different people, but everyone needs to include these four buckets in some way to get better at dealing with their productivity and their time.

[00:03:27] The first. The first idea is one that at first glance may not even seem to have anything to do with time and time management and productivity and discipline and those sorts of things. But the truth is the first step to getting more effective and more productive is always filtered. It's learning to ask about the event, learning to find out more information it's learning to say no to things that aren't [00:04:00] aligned with, what you really want and what your big goals are.

[00:04:03] And what's moving you in the right direction and learning to say no to those things. It's about learning to filter based on your availability, not just saying yes at a knee jerk reaction. Actually paying attention to what sort of bandwidth and availability and energy you have filtering out what you actually allow onto your calendar or onto your doula to do lists and filtering off the things that you don't want to do that aren't in alignment that aren't adding value is always the first step and in mid.

[00:04:39] Ideas. It's probably the single most important one. And yet it's also often overlooked. The second bucket to keep in mind is to develop a system and then use it consistently to have a system that [00:05:00] captures everything. And then. Calendars it and puts it on a way of knowing what's coming. What's going what's next?

[00:05:09] What's important. What can I ignore a way of getting that out of your head in, into a digital or analog system, and then as part of that, having time that you actually set aside. To update and reconcile and work with your system so that it becomes a habit. And so that there's a routine of actually scrutinizing and refreshing and eliminating things out of your system so that the system doesn't become cluttered, but actually stays focused the third bucket.

[00:05:48] Where were you really pretty good at getting things into our system, but we're not as good at prioritizing once it's in. It's [00:06:00] very easy to let your system get cluttered with a bunch of work that takes up time, but really isn't that important. It's a lot, it's easier sometimes to find the things that you can do and just knock them out.

[00:06:14] And yet, at the end of the day, those aren't the things. Should be doing it. It's the idea of using a system to prioritize what actually should I be doing next, as opposed to just what's on my list next it's about finding the things that are not urgent, not important. The things that are urgent, but not important.

[00:06:38] The things that are urgent and important and the things that are not urgent, but important. And then actually making time to deal with all of those categories. It's about coming up with a way of ranking, what you should do ABC or D so that you actually spend time on the things that are most valuable, [00:07:00] not just the things that are front of mind.

[00:07:02] And then the last buck bucket is to actually look at your time and what you're doing and think about is this time spent as what sometimes you will, who are called a maker task, or a manager task. The difference between. When you're in a manager mode, you're talking you're problem solving. You're thinking quickly, you're doing short burst of time, five to 15, maybe 20 minutes.

[00:07:30] You're mindful of what's going on. You are spending time in meetings and communication with others. But when you're in maker mode, your alone creating thinking slowly, you're doing longer blocks of time, and you're aiming to develop a flow state where you almost lose track of the time that is being spent and you just get it done.

[00:07:56] This is the difference between shallow work and [00:08:00] deep work. And are you allowing time for both and the differentiating between those and when you come to the deep work tasks, the maker kinds of tasks, are you blocking that off in protecting that and making yourself unavailable to others? Are you using the tools to allow yourself to do that?

[00:08:21] If you think about it, these four buckets really boil down to, are you being intentional in how you use your time so that you're using it to the best of your ability? And when you do that, when you develop the habit of intentionality, that is the real goal, because then you get better and better over time.

[00:08:43] It's not about achieving a perfect day or perfect year or a perfect week. It's about just getting a little better each time. The truth is when you do this, Trying these systems out doing this. You begin to [00:09:00] recognize that a lot of the things that you have on your head that are worrying you, that are stressing you out, that are making you wake up in the middle of the night with those things that, oh my goodness.

[00:09:11] I forgot to do that. I have to get this done the things that are weighing and sucking energy out of your life. When you develop a system like this, you begin to feel less anxiety and worry and are able to take more action because the systems actually lend themselves. To moving forward and taking action as opposed to dwelling on nothingness.

[00:09:41] When you first set it up, when you first began doing it at the beginning, oftentimes it takes effort. It takes energy, it takes an investment. But over time, you begin to see the payoffs of those, and you begin to see how it multiplies and begins to lower your cognitive bandwidth and begins to make it where you're [00:10:00] less worried, less anxious, less forgetful, and are focusing on the things that you really care about.

[00:10:06] And you're getting them done. Thanks for listening.

[00:10:10] 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, be sure to sign. For our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4, 2, 2, 2 time tips.

[00:10:48] 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 [00:11:00] influence and impact the world.