00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 5 43 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. My name is Show. Idea Me. I'm a Christian financial advisor. I'm the host of the dollar savvy podcast, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, Develop your influence, impact the world by using your time, your talents and your treasures to live out your calling. Find your path to financial freedom on one way to be inspired. To do that is the listen to my friend Scott made her be inspired.
00:00:34 Stewardship podcast wears where the actual work gets done. You don't work on something across a year. You work on it in minutes and hours in days in months. And so you've gotta focus down and figure out what are the chunks that make it done. What are the chunks that get things done? And once you figure out those chunks and focus in on those chunks, then you can actually get work done. 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,
00:01:18 then you must learn to use your time your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired Searchie podcast will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in today's episode about investing in others by stewarding your time. I talk with you about a quick trick to get things done without wasting your time. I talk about how this applies both on a small scale and on a larger scale and why this works for both your own work and work, where you're working with others as we talk about Stuart in your time.
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00:02:24 just use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon. Have you ever heard of Parkinson's law? Basically, this is,
00:02:35 ah, statement, kind of like Murphy's Law or the Perata Oh, principal about a general trend that tends toe happen with the things that we do,
00:02:45 and what it says is that work expands to fill the time available. You actually know that this is true that if you have a deadline and you have something that's coming up and it's due immediately,
00:03:00 you will have a huge focus on getting that thing done. You'll buckle down and really concentrate, put in a lot of effort and get it done.
00:03:12 I mean, it's one of the reasons that for most of us going through school, oftentimes are big projects are big.
00:03:18 Papers were done just a couple of days before they were due. And you know, this is ah,
00:03:24 good thing in a bad thing kind of situation. There are times where, believe it or not, procrastination is your friend,
00:03:33 because when you put it off and now all of a sudden you have a deadline, you really focus down and get it done with a lot of deep,
00:03:42 intense work. And if it's something that you know at the end of the day is a relatively routine task or is something that isn't all that mission critical to you or to your business or to your long term success,
00:03:55 then doing it kind of in a just in time way is not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand,
00:04:05 there's times that you will identify projects or activities or things that you need to do that our mission critical.
00:04:12 They're things that are vital and really need to be done. Well, for instance, getting things done for a client are working on a big major project for your company or for your business that's really gonna grow and move the needle on things you should take.
00:04:28 The time and the effort to really invest on doing these overtime and doing them well and procrastination is probably not your friend then.
00:04:39 So how can we use this idea of deadlines and procrastination and use it for us instead of against us?
00:04:47 Well, often, even if it's a big project that's really important, you can break it up into smaller task.
00:04:52 You can break it up into little chunks, and then you can set time limits for those little chunks.
00:04:57 You consent little internal deadlines and by setting those deadlines and then actually using a timer or some sort of auditory que that says,
00:05:08 Hey, my time is up. You can begin to train yourself to have focused, burst of really focused activity and use almost many deadlines that give you that same effect of having the rial external deadline.
00:05:26 It's just a simple as using a timer. Getting things done just in time can be created internally as well as externally.
00:05:36 This is why Pomodoro is work. We've talked about them before on the podcast about how using these focused blocks of 25 minutes of work five minute break,
00:05:45 25 minute of work, five minute break and doing this and cycles can help get you Maur during the day.
00:05:50 One of the reasons is with that timer going and knowing that at the end of 25 minutes, that timer is gonna go off and it's time to stop,
00:05:59 and that's when you get to take a break. You often get Maur done during those 25 minutes because you're creating these little mini deadlines within your day.
00:06:11 Setting a timer really is a quick trick to get things done without wasting a lot of time. It's something that I don't always remember to do every day,
00:06:22 but I will tell you the days where I remember to do it are always more productive than days where I forget.
00:06:29 Sometimes I think, Well, I don't need to do that today and then I end up having a day where I don't get nearly as much done.
00:06:38 So this is talking about it on a daily scale in kind of a small scale. But this actually works in a larger scale situation,
00:06:45 too, in a couple of different ways. One, like we just talked about where you have a really big project and you can break it into smaller chunks.
00:06:53 But the other is, Ah, lot of times what we do is we focus on things like an annual goal.
00:07:00 This is what I want to get done this year, and there's nothing wrong with setting annual goals. But then,
00:07:06 how do you chunk that gold down and look at it by quarter by month bye week by day? That's the tricky part because there's where the actual work gets done.
00:07:18 You don't work on something across a year. You work on it in minutes and hours in days in months,
00:07:27 and so you've gotto focus down and figure out What are the chunks that make it done? What are the chunks that get things done?
00:07:35 And once you figure out those chunks and focus in on those chunks, then you can actually get the work done.
00:07:43 So you take the large scale and turn it into the small scale. But there's another right to Sometimes we worry about large scale things.
00:07:52 We worry about the big rocks. We worry about the big projects in our life, and sometimes we worry,
00:07:59 and we never get started on something because we think of it as a permanent condition. If I start down this road that I'm committing to it,
00:08:07 I'm gonna do it forever. But the truth is, most things in our life don't last forever. You can also set a time scale by which you're going to run an experiment.
00:08:20 If you want to try something new in your business, if you want to find a way of investing in others that's new and different and see if it works.
00:08:28 See if people resonate. See if it helps people set a time limit for that. Decide how long are you gonna commit to it?
00:08:34 Are you gonna commit to it? for six months for a year for three years. Make sure the time frame is long enough that you can actually get some real results,
00:08:43 but also short enough that you don't feel like you're committing to something that is a lifelong commitment. Instead,
00:08:51 it becomes an experiment, and by doing these short segments across the larger scale, you can begin to actually get yourself to trick yourself into moving forward and making progress.
00:09:05 And this works also when you're working, either with others are when you're working on projects that are other focused,
00:09:12 because it turns out that if you communicate thes sorts of deadlines externally, if you tell people by what time you need something and you set in internal and external deadlines,
00:09:24 it turns out that other people respond well to. This is, well, one of the ways that when I'm doing a coaching discussion,
00:09:31 I don't ask people to make an immediate decision on whether or not they want to sign up for coaching with me.
00:09:37 Instead, I give them a deadline. I give them a fixed amount of time to think about it.
00:09:41 I asked them to think about it for 24 hours and get back to me with an answer because it turns out that by giving them a deadline,
00:09:51 they process it. But by giving them long enough to actually think about it, it's more fair. They're not making a snap decision,
00:09:59 and when they actually move forward, they're much more invested in the process. And I see more success with them and for them.
00:10:08 And that's what I'm after is their success, not mine. So this works both internally as well as when you're working with others to invest and others.
00:10:19 So look at the areas of your life. Figure out where you're wasting time where you're procrastinating and inject some of the different ways of creating a deadline and using a timer toe,
00:10:31 help yourself gain focus and be more productive. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship Podcast.
00:10:46 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 toe live your calling.
00:10:57 If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips.
00:11:05 Siri's by going to inspired stewardship dot com slash time or texting 44222 time tips and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time investor time,
00:11:27 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world.