00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 608 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Ryan England with core matters and the blue collar culture 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 treasure is to live out your calling. Having the ability to grow yourself and your business is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. No,
00:00:39 we've talked about being busy beyond belief. We, we share how busy we are. We constantly talk to each other about our busy-ness as we run about the day and we almost wear it as a badge of honor, as, as if being busy is somehow a good thing. And don't get me wrong, I used to do that as well. I would work in the corporate world and I used to talk about how busy I was during the day and welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts.
00:01:10 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 color. In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can and today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about the difference between busy and productive, why productive is the goal, but busy is so often what's honored and how to shift from being busy to being productive.
00:01:52 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. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/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,
00:02:15 just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon all too often. When asked, how are you doing or what's going on? The answer that we all give almost automatically is,
00:02:30 I'm so busy. You know, we've talked about being busy beyond belief. We, we share how busy we are.
00:02:37 We constantly talk to each other about our busy-ness as we run about the day and we almost wear it as a badge of honor,
00:02:46 as as if being busy is somehow a good thing and don't get me wrong, I used to do that as well.
00:02:53 I would work in the corporate world and I used to talk about how busy I was during the day and even now I'll,
00:03:00 I'll, at times I'll share with someone how busy I am, but the truth is that's really not the goal we should be aiming for.
00:03:10 We shouldn't be aiming to be busy. We should be aiming to be productive. You know, there is a difference between these two things.
00:03:21 Productivity is a good thing, busy-ness, not necessarily. Productivity is also a skill. It's something that you have to learn how to do.
00:03:32 It's not something that comes naturally and just were born. Knowing how to be productive. Busy-ness. On the other hand is something that especially in today's world is way too easy to allow that to happen and you know this is true whether the pandemic is going on like it is now,
00:03:50 or whether it's a time when that's not true. Busy is feeling overwhelmed, feeling rushed, feeling like the world is happening to you instead of you happening to the world.
00:04:04 Productivity is about making choices, making decisions, deciding what's most important and getting those things done and saying no to other things and in fact that's part of what makes being productive so hard is productivity is really not determined by the yeses in your life as much as it is by the nose.
00:04:27 Now, don't get me wrong, I still frame it as this kind of thinking. The real truth is to be productive,
00:04:33 you have to have a big enough yes to allow you to say no to many other things. You know,
00:04:41 productivity, most of us would would agree is the goal for us in our life. We want to be more productive.
00:04:48 We want to get the right things done. We want to be able to say, at the end of the day,
00:04:56 I really feel like I've had a good day, but instead, oftentimes what we honor in society is busy-ness.
00:05:06 We look at the person who's working 1418 hour days and we think of that as a badge of honor.
00:05:15 Now, could you work a 14 hour day and be productive? Absolutely. But the only way to do that is to actually set about it and do structure.
00:05:24 And I will tell you that if you work nothing but 14 hour days, it's going to almost be impossible to remain productive longterm because at some point there's a law of diminishing returns.
00:05:37 At some point, your brain and your body begin to say, enough, I can't keep doing this.
00:05:43 Think about it. You've had those weeks where you've run 24 hours a day from Monday through Friday, and then on Saturday you just collapse into a little ball and lay there on the couch and binge Netflix and eat potato chips and do all of the other things that you know you shouldn't be doing and you feel almost ashamed on Monday morning.
00:06:09 But then you'll start it all over again. Then you'll do the same thing to yourself day in and day out.
00:06:15 That's because busy is considered a badge of honor, but the truth is you can shift from busy to productive.
00:06:26 Even if you're in a job where someone else really controls your day to day decision making and they're ordering you what to do during the day,
00:06:36 you can begin to make small shifts. Maybe those shifts start outside of your work or maybe they start inside of your work.
00:06:45 I worked in a middle management position and I still managed to take control of my time and I began to shift from just being busy to being productive and what was interesting is all of a sudden I started to get more done in 40 hours than most people got done in 60 or 80 because I began to identify what are the real key factors,
00:07:06 what are the things that are the most important for me to get done and say yes to and let me put in the time and energy to do those and do those with excellence.
00:07:18 And I'll have to say no to some other things. Here's some key questions you can ask yourself. If you want to begin to shift towards being productive,
00:07:27 you have to be deliberate. You have to be intentional. If something comes into your sphere of influence,
00:07:36 if someone comes to you and says, Hey, would you do this for me? Or if a decision comes to you where you have to add a new task or a new commitment to your life,
00:07:47 ask yourself these questions. What do I need to put to one side so that I can say yes to this new opportunity?
00:07:56 In other words, what am I going to have to say no to if I say yes to this opportunity?
00:08:01 Because you can't constantly just add new things on. You've got to let go of some things, so what is it that I need to say no to so that I can say yes to this and are those things that I'm saying no to less important to me is this new opportunity in my best interest,
00:08:21 in the best interest of my family? Does it help me grow? Does it help me serve others?
00:08:26 Does it help me expand my influence? Does it help me do what I am called to do? If that's true,
00:08:34 then maybe this is something you say yes to, but then what are you going to say no to?
00:08:41 Another thing is to really honestly reflect, is this something you even want to do? The truth is oftentimes we are guilted into saying yes to things that the truth is we didn't want to do in the first place.
00:08:56 Don't allow other people's priorities to determine what you allow into your life. Do you even want to do this?
00:09:06 Is this something that you are called to do? Is this something that moves you in the right direction for your world?
00:09:13 And if you say yes to those three questions, then you need to think about what boundaries you set.
00:09:19 What are the conditions that you put on this? Is this a temporary thing? Is this a permanent thing?
00:09:25 Is this something that you're going to have to make sure you carve out time from now going on forever to be able to do?
00:09:33 Is this instead something that's just for today and a temporary, maybe even for a while you have to work those 14 hour days,
00:09:41 but there is a predetermined beginning, middle and end to it. You know the scope and you've decided that it's okay to expand your time in this limited instance because the yes is important enough.
00:09:58 See, the truth is that's usually not what we do. Instead what we do is say yes to everything that comes along and continue to just add task after task assignment after assignment,
00:10:12 commitment after commitment until we look up and all we've done in our life and in our week and in our month and in our day is run from emergency to emergency,
00:10:23 from fire to fire and we've never really made forward progress on those things that we want to do and that we're called to do.
00:10:33 This is where coaching helps. This is why I coach on productivity because it's so important to our wellbeing and to our ability to serve others.
00:10:47 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener,
00:10:59 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.
00:11:10 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 four four two two two time tips and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time.
00:11:36 Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.