00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 518 of the inspired Stewardship podcast. Hey, guys, this is Matt Ham from you.Print would encourage you to find your own journey to living your life's calling, and one way to be inspired. To do that is to listen to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott mater, especially if you really do put the step in of consciously making a decision about what makes it on your to-do list in terms of what's at the top and what's on the bottom. I will tell you the kinds of task of my to-do list go into the future by months and months and months,
00:00:41 sometimes a year or more into the future. Sometimes I just put things on the to-do list that are someday, maybe ideas that I just want to capture and get out of my head. But they don't even have a due date yet. 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. Calling in the inspired Stewardship podcast will learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:11 invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact in today's episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time I talk with you about why the way you use your calendar and your to-do list is important. Ah, share the tactic of dealing with blocking time on a calendar versus working from a list and why this could make a real difference in your productivity 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? It turns out you can't.
00:01:50 All you have to do is use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon, and a small commission will come back to support the show just that quick. If you enjoy the show when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon Ah, calendars and to do list. You know, the truth is, most of us have multiple calendars and often multiple to do list floating around where we've got a list for work and a calendar for work and then a calendar for our home life and list about things that we want to do at home.
00:02:29 Maybe we carry around a grocery list and other list as well. And the truth is, it's it's funny, but what ends up happening a lot of times as we end up not using these things well, because we're scattered, we're all over the place. We've got multiple documents and multiple things that show our time and compete, and we end up getting confused, getting things lost. Yeah, it's the old joke of I have to have a list so that I know where to find all my list. I have to have a master calendar that pulls all of my calendars in that.
00:03:02 Actually, sometimes it's not a bad idea. The truth is, oftentimes, if we can end up with a single calendar and a single to-do list that we use is sort of the dominant thing that controls all of our time,
00:03:18 we're much more effective because we have one life. We have one calendar. We have one life. We have one list Now,
00:03:26 the other thing that ends up happening a lot of times people hear that and they go great, so I should get it down.
00:03:31 The one thing. So let me use my calendar as my to-do list. And I would suggest that these two things air actually used in different ways,
00:03:42 if you want to be, is effective as possible with how you use your time. So let's talk a little bit about the difference between a calendar and a to-do list and how you determine what you use each four.
00:03:56 See a calendar is really just a list of days and times, and then what we usually add to a calendar.
00:04:04 I mean, the kind of stereotypical system is to think of a calendar is a place to put appointments,
00:04:11 and that's true what you can do with the calendars. You can put things on there that have a fixed time,
00:04:19 a fixed place that they need to occur. It could be an appointment. Now here's the interesting thing.
00:04:25 It doesn't just have to be an appointment with others. It can also be an appointment with yourself. So if there's something that on Thursday,
00:04:35 you need to sit down in front of your computer, and do a certain thing because it's due Thursday afternoon.
00:04:43 And so you've got time blocked out on your calendar on Thursday morning to be able to get it done,
00:04:49 then that's an appointment with yourself that's appropriate to block that time out on your calendar to commit to it physically,
00:04:56 I'm going to be at a certain time at a certain place, even though it's just with myself. And then if somebody else comes along and wants to schedule a meeting or a time during that time on Thursday morning,
00:05:07 you legitimately can say no. I've got an appointment now. You don't have to tell them that the appointment is with yourself.
00:05:15 It's an appointment. It doesn't matter who it's with. They don't need to know that information. It's not necessarily relevant.
00:05:21 So this is a way of blocking time out on the calendar. Four appointments. Now let me share something else.
00:05:28 Another trick on the calendar. Let's say, for instance, you actually have to drive to an appointment.
00:05:35 What we usually fail to do is take into account the time it takes us to get there, and the time it takes us to get back or to the next location.
00:05:43 I'm suggesting that you actually block out on your time transportation time. The amount of time it takes you to get to the appointment,
00:05:51 the amount of time it takes you to get back from the appointment as well. Because again, that time has a fixed time and place.
00:05:59 You're going to be in the car. You're going to be traveling now. Obviously, you can't get everything perfectly right.
00:06:05 Sometimes you put down an hour in the appointment only takes 30 minutes. Sometimes you put an hour in the appointment actually takes an hour and 1/2.
00:06:13 But you can at least get a fairly good grasp of your time. And you can see, for instance,
00:06:19 right away. Hey, this appointment is going into the transportation time. Therefore, I need to call someone and let him know I'm gonna be late to the next thing or I need to rearrange something on my schedule.
00:06:30 It gives you visibility of how your time is flowing throughout the day. So if that's a calendar, then why not just take everything for my to-do list and begin to put blocks of time and say,
00:06:43 hey, this one hour time This is where I'm going to get this done. Well, the truth is,
00:06:48 if you have never noticed your to-do list, oftentimes ends up being somewhat fluid. Sure, there are things that you put on your to-do list that are must do things.
00:06:59 You've got to get this done today because it has a due date. Those oftentimes can come over to your calendar.
00:07:06 But there's a lot of other stuff on your to-do list where it's I need to get these seven or eight things done.
00:07:12 And honestly, if I do three of them on Monday, three of them on Tuesday and three of them on Wednesday,
00:07:17 it really doesn't matter which three I do each day. The order isn't important. It's just the fact that it needs to get done.
00:07:25 It's things that you have a little bit of control over. Um, I'm gonna work on this in the morning,
00:07:30 and we're gonna work on it in the afternoon. Where can it fit in during my day? Or it may be a series of small task that you need to pick up and put down and be able to kind of slot in where you have time so that to-do list is really just a list of all of the possible things that you might want to do.
00:07:49 And then you can prioritize that list and move things around and put certain things at the top of the list and other things at the bottom of the list.
00:07:57 This is why I use Electronic Tool because it makes it much easier for me to drag and drop and move things around.
00:08:03 But this list is somewhat fluid, not completely fluid. There are still things that are locked to certain due dates,
00:08:09 but there's also a lot of things that just kind of get moved around and slotted in where they fit.
00:08:14 And then there's things that I'll pick up and put on my to-do list for today. But then something changes.
00:08:20 A new priority comes in, and I make a conscious decision to move something from today to tomorrow and slot something new in as the priority for today notice.
00:08:31 However, I said I made the conscious decision. What's interesting is if you put those things on your on your calendar,
00:08:39 if you made that kind of time commitment that often feels like a bad thing that feels like it's a failure in some way.
00:08:46 That feels like I was trying to get this done in the morning and I didn't get it done until the afternoon,
00:08:51 and that feels bad. But if you're moving things around on your to-do list and then slotting them in on your calendar is you have time.
00:08:59 It doesn't it doesn't emotionally feel is bad, especially if you really do put the step in of consciously making a decision about what makes it on your to-do list in terms of what's at the top and what's on the bottom.
00:09:12 I will tell you the kinds of task of my to-do list go into the future by months and months and months,
00:09:18 sometimes a year or more into the future. Sometimes I just put things on the to-do list that are someday,
00:09:23 maybe ideas that I just want to capture and get out of my head. But they don't even have a due date yet,
00:09:29 and periodically a review that kind of captured document. And look at these things that don't even have a date and decide.
00:09:35 Is this something I need to move into my priorities? for this quarter this month. This year, whatever it ISS I do.
00:09:42 That is part of that review process that we've been talking about the last few weeks. So my to-do list is a capture tool for all of these ideas.