Episode 1213: Time Pressure and Impacting Others

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,213 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Hema Vyas: I'm Hema Vyas. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, your treasures, to live out your calling, having the ability to find your state of gold is key.

[00:00:27] And one way to be inspired to. That is to listen to this inspired steward stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:39] Scott Maderer: That's why oftentimes this affects us every day. When you get up every day and you feel pressured to get to work on time, and maybe you feel like you've left late. All of these other things are forcing into your day. When you feel like you've lost control of your time, and you have no chance to get everything [00:01:00] done that you need to get done.

[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. In the inspired stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:29] In today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time. I talk with you about an experiment on how time pressure affects our ability to serve. I talk about why this is more than just about the time it takes, but also the psychology. And I share how this affects us every day. As we talk about stewarding your time.

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[00:02:15] answer the question of why sometimes we help people whenever we see that they're in need. And other times we just ignore that need or pass it by is a question that has been studied a lot of different ways by social psychologist over the years. What experiment that I discovered a number of years ago that I thought was interesting.

[00:02:37] They went to a group of people that at least in theory would be relatively charitable. They would be people that would be relatively able and willing to help people in need. And in this case, they went to a bunch of seminary students, people in training to become pastors. Now you can argue about whether or not that group would [00:03:00] be any more or less.

[00:03:02] Primed to help other people, but to go a little bit further, they took these seminary students and they said, we want you to deliver and develop and deliver a seminary sermon on the title of the good Samaritan. This is that Bible story about all of the people passing by the person that's been robbed.

[00:03:24] That's laying injured on the side of the road. How finally the person that helps him is the Samaritan. The person who in this story is the least likely to go out of their way. The pastor, the priest, the, all of these people that you would've expected to go out of their way to help pass them by, but the Samaritan helps them.

[00:03:47] Then they randomly divided this group of 67 seminary students into two groups. One. was given the sermon instructions with, oh, by the way, you're [00:04:00] running late. You were expected to start a few minutes ago. We need you to get all the way across campus to the chapel so that you can deliver the sermon. And you're already late.

[00:04:10] Let's get moving. And the other group at the end of the instructions and the time to prepare their sermon, they were said, it'll be a couple of minutes, maybe even 30 minutes before they're ready for. But you might as well begin to go ahead and head on over to the chapel. So there was a condition where they were hurried and a condition when they were unhurried.

[00:04:33] Each student was sent on the path alone, the route that they knew well from the place where they were at to the chapel, where they would be delivering the sermon. And they observed them from afar on the way there, there was a man. obviously somebody planted by the researchers who was slumped in a doorway with his eyes closed, coughing and moaning, clearly [00:05:00] under some sort of distress.

[00:05:02] And the researchers watched would the seminary students help this stranger in need. Remember, they'd been primed with the idea of the story of the good Samaritan. They've just written the sermon on that. And now they're heading. To preach on this sermon, the ones that were in the hurried conditions, the ones that felt time pressure only about 10% of those students stopped to help the man.

[00:05:30] But in the unhurried condition, when they were told they had plenty of time to get across campus, about 63% stopped to help the man. So even after priming them with this story, The fact that they felt pressured for time had a direct and significant impact on whether or not they stopped to help. And I think that's important to recognize we feel this idea of [00:06:00] if we don't have enough time, if our goals have taken on more importance because we're pressured and we only have a limited amount of.

[00:06:11] And we feel like we can't quote fit in the time to help other people. We won't do it sometimes that's in part because we don't actually even see it. They went back and they asked the seminary students, if they'd observed the man that was needing help. And many of the students that were in the hurried condition reported not having seen any such.

[00:06:35] Now whether that's true or not is debatable, but at the end of the day, it is true that oftentimes you don't pay as much attention to your surroundings. You don't listen to what's going on. You don't interact with other people and let them more fully explore and explain what's going on in their mind.

[00:06:51] Whenever you feel pressured for time yourself. That's why oftentimes this affects us every day. [00:07:00] When you get up every day and you feel pressured. To get to work on time and maybe you feel like you've left late and all of these other things are forcing into your day when you feel like you've lost control of your time, and you have no chance to get everything done that you need to get done.

[00:07:18] You're less observant. You're less willing to go out of your way to help others. So one of the things you can do, if you really wanna impact the world and serve. Is begin to get control over your time so that you begin to recognize that you have the time that it takes to help others. It lets you see the need that is there.

[00:07:42] Thanks for listening.

[00:07:44] 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 [00:08:00] 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.

[00:08:21] And that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time invest your. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.