00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 5 45 of the inspired Stewardship podcast. 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 treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to really find your gifts and calling is a key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast by my friend Scott Mater Focus has tremendous power, but the truth is to what's really difficult.
00:00:45 Sometimes is identifying that focus. And then what's even more difficulty is actually following through on completing that focus, doing the hard work and staying accountable to get it all done. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship. Podcasts. 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 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 through stewarding your treasures.
00:01:37 I talk with you about the power of focus. Why doing one thing at a time has really power and why this can help you identify places that you want to either automate or eliminate or build habits around to affect riel.
00:01:55 Change when it comes to your money as we talk about stewarding your treasures. Wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself an extra dime?
00:02:07 It turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon,
00:02:17 and a small commission will come back to support the show. If you enjoy the show when you're ready to buy from Amazon,
00:02:23 just use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon. If your ah, follower of Dave Ramsey you hear him talk about gazelle intensity,
00:02:36 if you've been around different sorts of groups, you'll hear people talk about the power of focus. You've heard me talk before about how multi tasking is a myth.
00:02:47 The real truth is that our brains are not capable of doing more than one thing at a time, and if you want to keep track of more than one thing,
00:02:54 you've gotta build systems and processes and habits and different things to be able to do that. Otherwise, you tend to forget things.
00:03:03 You tend to lose track of things, and in this episode we're talking about that same idea, the power of focus,
00:03:11 the power of identifying what is the next priority notice. That was singular. What is the next most important thing that I should be doing?
00:03:22 What is the next most important thing that I should be putting my focus towards what is the next most important thing that I should be focusing my money towards now,
00:03:33 To be clear, this doesn't mean you can more than one goal. This doesn't even mean that you can't have more than one area that you're paying attention to,
00:03:40 are working on it the same time, and in fact you should have multiple areas where you're working and growing.
00:03:48 But what it does mean is when you're trying to get something done when you're really trying to achieve something,
00:03:56 especially something that involves either significant change, our involves really making something different than it was before, or that involves really doubling down and making something happened quickly.
00:04:12 When you've got financial goals like paying off debt or when you've got a financial goal, like saving up an emergency fund or when you've got a financial goal like increasing your retirement savings,
00:04:25 there is a lot of power to identifying a single area of focus for a short time and really pushing all of your efforts towards that.
00:04:38 It's sort of the idea of Do I want to live in debt and pay off a little bit at a time in 30 years from now,
00:04:44 I'm finally paid it off, or is it Maur worth it To take two years out of my life and put every dollar towards that singular goal and really push hard on it I'm using Getting out of debt is an example cause it's a common goal.
00:05:02 But this could even be something like buying a new house or buying a rental property. It doesn't have to just be around something that is a difficulty can also be about focus to grow something.
00:05:17 The balance years you have to identify Is this something that I need to get done quickly? Is this something that deserves all of my attention.
00:05:27 Sometimes we put all of our focus into something, but it's the wrong something. Doing one thing at a time has tremendous power because it puts all of your attention on it.
00:05:40 It puts all of your money on it. It puts all of your focus on it, and it keeps you from getting distracted with the 472 shiny objects that inevitably come along and diffuse your efforts.
00:05:55 Focus has tremendous power, but the truth is to what's really difficult sometimes is identifying that focus. And then what's were even more difficult is actually following through on completing that focus,
00:06:11 doing the hard work and staying accountable to get it all done. And this is why, as you go through and identify what are your different priorities?
00:06:23 And then what order should I put him in? So I have a single priority that I'm focusing on first,
00:06:29 and I know what else is important to me. But I also know that it comes down the list right now,
00:06:34 and as you go through those things, what you can do is you can begin to identify what are the areas that are so important and so routine they happen all the time that it makes sense to automate them,
00:06:48 or it makes sense to turn this into a habit. So it becomes a regular part of my life.
00:06:54 It becomes something that I do without thinking. For instance, investing is often a really powerful place to automate,
00:07:04 because if the money comes out of your check and goes into some sort of investment instrument and you never even had it is part of your income,
00:07:12 then you don't feel like it's gone. You don't miss it. It's so much easier to pay yourself first.
00:07:18 This is why people have that recommendation, because automation in that kind of case can work really well. Sometimes it's something like automating certain bills.
00:07:29 You have to be careful about that in some situations, but often times you can automate bills and get them out of your mind where they just happen automatically.
00:07:38 This could be beneficial because it frees up your energy in your mind and your attention and your efforts to be able to do things like focus on increasing your income,
00:07:48 our focus on cutting expenses in other areas. The same thing happens with building habits of your couple building.
00:07:55 The habit of regular communication about your budget is important because that regular communication is what lets you stay on the same page.
00:08:04 It's what lets you keep from feeling overwhelmed. If you're a single person having a regular habit of checking in with your money once a week or once every couple of weeks and identifying what's going on and really making sure that you're staying on track with your larger goals,
00:08:23 that's a place where you want to build a habit. You know, I talk about the fact that my wife and I have done a budget for years.
00:08:32 It is a habit now. I don't even think about it. We just sit down and do it.
00:08:37 It's not a big deal. It doesn't take a long time. It doesn't have a lot of effort because it's become a habit.
00:08:44 But at the same time, we also have to be careful that it doesn't become routine where we're no longer paying attention to it,
00:08:53 no longer thinking about it, no longer communicating about it. And I will tell you there are periods in our lives where that has happened.
00:09:00 It's become not just a habit but a routine. And we've had to break free from that and start talking about it again.
00:09:07 Or else something happens that causes us to break out of it almost inevitably. So what I encourage you to do is really think about all of the different things you're doing with your money and step back for a minute and really think through what is the one thing that is the most important next big goal.
00:09:30 And what could I do it? Is it worth automating it? Is it worth building habits around it,
00:09:35 or is it worth turning it into something where for a little while I focus all of my attention and all of my money on that singular goal and still can accomplish all of the other goals I have over the long term?
00:09:50 If you need some help doing that, reach out. I'd be happy to sit down and talk to you about an exercise that will walk you through how to do this and thanks for listening.
00:10:04 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,
00:10:15 but act on what you've heard and find a way toe Live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of treasures,
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00:10:50 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world.