Episode 1138: Not Enough Time is a Lie

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,138 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:06] Caroline Boudreau: I'm Caroline Boudreaux. 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 treasure to live out your calling. Having the ability to impact the lives of children is key.

[00:00:23] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:31] Scott Maderer: And if you find yourself saying this isn't a priority to me to something that really is a priority. Like I don't have enough time to spend time with my kids. I don't have enough time to spend time on self-care. I don't have enough time to spend time on rest. If you find yourself saying that and you think to yourself, oh, that I don't want that to be true.

[00:00:53] Then you're the only one that can change that. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired [00:01:00] 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.

[00:01:13] We'll learn to invest in. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:22] And

[00:01:23] today's

[00:01:23] Scott Maderer: episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time. I talk with you about why not enough. Time is a lie. I talk about what you need to think and say instead. And I also share why changing this mindset is so important to you. As we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great.

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[00:02:07] I don't have enough time. I'm just too busy. There's never enough hours in the day to do all of the things that I want to do. I hear those words from people all the time. And it's interesting because the moment I hear it, I immediately think that's a lie. That's just not true. And it's not true.

[00:02:28] You've probably said it. I said it. I think we all think and feel and say that from time to time. But the truth is, this is also why I hate the term time management. It's not about time management, smell self management, because the problem is not with time. The problem is with us. It's with what we do with our time.

[00:02:55] It's what we do with what we are thinking and [00:03:00] planning and executing on that is the problem you've heard. It said. And Intellectually, at least that we all have the same amount of time per day. We all have 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. That's all we have. And no matter what we do in terms of wanting to, or trying to, we're never going to make more time for ourselves.

[00:03:26] We all have those 24 hours. We all need to sleep. We all need to eat. We all need to spend some time with our loved ones and spend some time with ourselves. And truth is that should be the starting point. And we should put those things on the calendar first, but instead we have a tendency to start thinking about what we need to do all in terms of work.

[00:03:49] But the truth is usually for most of us out of that, 168 hours, we only spend 40, maybe 50 hours a week at work. That's 120 [00:04:00] hours that we have left to do other things. Even if you take out 10 hours a day for eating and sleeping and self care, that's still about 50 hours a week that we have to spend on what we want to.

[00:04:16] We have a chance to spend that 50 hours a week doing what we choose to that seven hours a day. And it, and yet we say we get stressed out. We get frustrated. We say we never have enough time. We can't get it all done, but it's amazing how much you can get done in seven hours a day. Think about it. That's about as much time as you spend on average at work every day.

[00:04:43] And what do you get done there where you're making it? Priority. You're making it something that you're strategic about. You're planning it and you're doing it with a goal in mind and that's the truth. That's what we have to do with our [00:05:00] own personal time as well. We have to have a plan. We have to know what we're doing with it.

[00:05:06] The first step of course is to find out what you're currently doing with your. And that's one of those things where you can use like the 15 minute miracle that I've talked about before, where you sit down with a piece of paper divided into increments of 15 or 30 minutes and set an alarm on your watch to go off.

[00:05:24] And every 15 to 30 minutes you stop and you jot down what you've been doing during that. And then of course, from there, you begin to plan the activities that you're going to do. Instead you move from tracking what you have done to planning what you will do first, put all your commitments on your calendar, all of the things that are fixed commitments that you have to do.

[00:05:49] And I start first with personal and family activities. Put those first. I use color coding and I use different things like that to help [00:06:00] me see what my things are. Church time, water fix times for my family. What are things that I'm doing by myself or for myself? What are the things I'm doing for work?

[00:06:10] And so on block those fixed times out each week, each month, each quarter, each year, look at what goes on your calendar because the truth is what you schedule is what gets done. Now that doesn't mean you have to have every single moment of every single day planned out, but then begin to look at those times and look at what you have committed to.

[00:06:34] And what's actually important to you and then decide, what do I want to give up? What do I want to do more of? What do I want to do less of? What do I want to change? Because the truth is. If you can begin to learn and shift from saying, I don't have enough time to, this is a priority that I choose to spend time on.

[00:06:57] And this is something that I choose [00:07:00] not to spend time on this. Isn't a priority to me is a much more truthful statement than I don't have enough time. And if you find yourself saying this isn't a priority to me to something that really is a priority. Like I don't have enough time to spend time with my kids.

[00:07:18] I don't have enough time to spend time on self care. I don't have enough time to spend time on rest. If you find yourself saying that and you think to yourself, oh, that I don't want that to be true. Then you're the only one that can change that. You're the only one that can reprioritize what you're doing.

[00:07:38] And say, I want to prioritize this differently. I want to make this a priority. See, changing your mindset from, I don't have enough time. There's not enough hours in the day to I choose where to spend my time. I have the power to change the priorities around where [00:08:00] I spend my time. It gives you the power to make the change.

[00:08:05] It stops you from being a victim to this entity called time and allows you to begin to set your goals and set your priorities and make sure that you're spending your time where you really want to. Thanks for listening.

[00:08:22] 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 call. If you liked 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 4 4, 2, 2, 2 time tips, [00:09:00] and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time.

[00:09:06] Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.