Episode 1268: 5 Time Management Strategies to Try

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,268 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Annie Purdue Olsen: I'm Annie

[00:00:07] Purdue Olsen from Leading Better Together. I encourage you to find the courage to lead in ministry well, and one way to be inspired to do that is by listening to this the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott.

[00:00:28] Scott Maderer: Recognize that there is no one set of time management techniques that work for every single person. You've probably tried things in the past and there may be some things that worked well for you and other things that you struggled with. The idea here is to experiment with something that you've never tried before in the new year, and see if you can get even more productive this next year.

[00:00:53] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to [00:01:00] 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, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in.

[00:01:13] And develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:24] In today's episode about developing your influence by steward of your time, I talk with you about why you might want to focus on productivity in this new year. I share five specific time management techniques that you can consider and I talk about why you might wanna try one of these, especially one you've never tried.

[00:01:43] This new year 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? Turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a [00:02:00] purchase via Amazon, and a small commission will come back to support the show.

[00:02:03] Just that quick. If you enjoy the show when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/. As we come into this week of Thanksgiving and have ourselves looking forward towards the New Year and Christmas and all of these things that we rush through at the end of the year, I wanted to talk a little bit about some techniques that we can use for productivity.

[00:02:31] I think often folks struggle with getting things done and feeling like they have enough time in the day, being clear on the boundaries between work and personal. People often feel stressed out and way too crazy busy about everything that they're doing. And because of that, they often stress out about way too much and not getting the right things done, feeling like they have bad habits around [00:03:00] their time and their productivity.

[00:03:02] And so there's a few different tried and true techniques that I wanted to go. You've talked about some of these before on the show, but not all of 'em. But when it comes to scheduling your day and being intentional about your day, setting up your to-do list, looking at what you have to get done and planning it out, these are some broad strategies that you can implement and try out in the new year.

[00:03:30] I'm gonna cover five because odds are good. At least one of these is something that you haven't tried before. When it comes to being more productive, when it comes to using your time, and if there is one that you hear that you've not tried before, I would suggest that you experiment with it and test it out in the new year.

[00:03:50] See if you can implement it in a way that helps you get more productive next year. So the first one is time boxing. [00:04:00] Time Boxing is the idea that you set aside fixed amounts of time. To work on things on your schedule, it's the idea is to take a large task, something like maybe writing a book or something, like writing a blog post and breaking it down into smaller sub-task, and then assigning specific amounts of time to those sub-task.

[00:04:26] So for instance, maybe when you talk about writing, the first step is to write an outline and maybe you give. A two hour time block to work on that, or a one hour time block to work on that. And then you assign a break period. You assign yourself a certain amount of time to work on maybe doing the research for the article, and then you assign another break and then another block of time or box of time to work on the first draft.

[00:04:58] And this way you can break it up [00:05:00] over several weeks or several days and work. Consistently over time. This works well, especially if you're not sure how much time you're spending on each task, or if you have a tendency to take task and get overwhelmed with the size of them. . The second technique is similar, but it's called time blocking.

[00:05:25] The idea here is instead of scheduling a specific time for each individual task, you block off time on your calendar for related work. So for instance, maybe every single day or three days a week, you've got an hour time slot in the morning that you work. A certain project like writing, or you work on a certain time of day to check your emails and respond to those, or you work on a specific amount of time that you use for things like exercise.

[00:05:59] The idea is [00:06:00] to assign fixed blocks of time that you use for the same sorts of task in some sort of routine schedule. It begins to program your brain to expect you to do those tasks in those times. Time blocking works well when you've got a lot of control over your time. Doesn't necessarily work as well when you get a lot of interruptions throughout the day, but even there, you can set aside certain blocks for certain things.

[00:06:29] The third technique is the Pomodoro method, and we've talked about this one before it. It's something that I'm a fan of in a lot of ways. The idea here is to work on short timeframes with breaks in between focus during those short times to be very productive, and then PR programming in the break time.

[00:06:49] So you need a. And something that you can do repeatedly. You need your to-do list with what you're gonna do first, second, and third. And you start a timer for 25 [00:07:00] minutes. . You just work on that task until you complete it. You don't get distracted. You put away your phone, you turn off your email, turn off notifications, do all of that.

[00:07:09] And then when that timer goes off, you get up and you take a five minute break, preferably doing something away from what you're doing, like a walk or a stretch or something like that. And then you can even check in on your devices and things. But when that five minute timer goes off, you're back to another 25 minutes and you do this working.

[00:07:30] Blocks on the fourth session. You take a little longer break, like a 30 minute or 20 minute break. I love that technique for getting things done when you've got to get through a da, a set of tasks or a number of tasks throughout the day. The fourth technique, Is called Eating the Frog. The idea is Mark Twain has a quote that says, if you have to eat a frog, it's best to do [00:08:00] it first thing in the morning.

[00:08:02] The idea is if you get that hard, complex, difficult, unpleasant task out of your out of the way on the day, or if you wanna get a high priority task done, first thing. Put it early in the day and get started on it right away, get it completed, and then work on other things. So only work on those other things after you've done that priority task or that difficult task.

[00:08:31] This works well if you're somebody that has a tendency to put off the important things until the last minute, the next one, the fifth one, the last. Is if you don't like the idea of eating the frog, there's also the idea of the 80 20 or the TTO principle, this idea of you can get about 80% of your tasks done and about 20% of your time.

[00:08:55] So the idea here is instead of getting that really big, difficult task done, first [00:09:00] thing in the morning, You knock out a bunch of the little tasks that you have to get done. You get through as many of these small tasks as quickly as you can, and that frees up more time later in the day to be more focused on some of those bigger tasks.

[00:09:15] By the way, these work well. Especially if you're more of an afternoon person than a morning person, and you need that to get all these little mosquitoes out of your brain so that you can focus on that difficult task or that very important task when you're higher in energy later in the day. So they work differently for different people.

[00:09:35] That's the one of the most important things. Recognize that there is no one set of time management techniques that work for every single person. You've probably tried things in the past and there may be some things that worked well for you and other things that you struggled with. The idea here is to experiment with something that you've never tried before in the new year, and see if you [00:10:00] can get even more productive this next year and really make progress.

[00:10:07] Thanks for listening.

[00:10:14] 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 up for our stewardship of Time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4 2 22 time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time.

[00:10:57] Until next time, invest your. [00:11:00] Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.