00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 613 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hello my friend. This is dr Brad Miller from the pathway to promise podcast. If you'd like to stay inspired to stay on your pathway to promise you can't do better than listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. That's how you get more productive anyway, so I just gave you some tools and tips for each of these myths, but the truth is you have to experiment with them to find out what works for you and don't be afraid to tweak the system that the guru has,
00:00:51 if that makes it work better for you, including my own, including the coaching I do. 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 and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world in today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time,
00:01:35 I talk with you about some of the biggest myths when it comes to time management, why? The truth is it's not about managing your time anyway and I give you a few tips so that you can get more productive even if you aren't managing your time. 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.
00:02:07 We'll 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.com/amazon let's talk a little bit about time management. You know, often people come to me as a client and that's what they're interested in is time management. But I really hate that description. I've talked about that before on the podcast. In fact, I believe that one of the biggest myths out there about time is that we can manage our time. The truth is we can't manage our time.
00:02:45 All we have is 168 hours in a week. We can't make it grow. We can't do anything to make us have more time.
00:02:53 And in fact, if you suddenly had 28 hours in a day, if you suddenly had 190 hours in a week without changing your mindset and your behavior,
00:03:03 you would actually just fill up those extra hours with the same busy tasks that distracts you today. So the truth is you can't imagine CLI manage your time.
00:03:15 Some of the other myths that are going on, we talk about budgeting our time. I actually use that phrase with clients.
00:03:23 You can budget your time, but you have to budget it in a particular way. See budgeting your time here.
00:03:30 A lot of times what people hear is they'll have a minute by minute plan of how everything is going to happen in their day and then what happens if something goes wrong,
00:03:39 they get distracted, they get frustrated, they throw the budget out the window and they start over because things interrupt them.
00:03:46 The the emergency things that the updates come in and just derail everything they do, but the truth is you can manage to manage or budget your time in different ways.
00:04:02 You just have to be aware that it's not that minute by minute perfection that you're actually aiming for. We also talk about planning every single day and that is important.
00:04:14 It's important to have task list. It's important to have focus. It's important to know and plan the next day,
00:04:20 the day before a little bit and budget your time and put in blocks of time that are important for things.
00:04:27 But the truth is if you want to just go from a day to day perspective, then you lose track of the bigger picture.
00:04:37 One of the other myths, it's all about getting it all done. It's about doing everything possible. And the truth is now it's about getting the right things done.
00:04:46 The real key is identifying what are the things to focus on and what shouldn't you focus on. This is why we often end up multitasking.
00:04:54 Another myth that you can do more than one thing at a time. You can't, and if you're trying to just simply check things off a list and get everything done and you aren't paying attention to what are your real priorities,
00:05:07 what are the most important things? What are the things that leverage and get more done going down the line,
00:05:13 you know, where's the 20% that gets you 80% of the results? Then if you don't do that,
00:05:19 you end up wasting things because you're spending a lot of time getting the unimportant things done instead of moving the big rocks,
00:05:28 which leads us to another myth. You know, you'll hear people talk about putting down the big three every day and you'll hear people talk about scheduling your hardest task first thing in the morning while your decision fatigue is low.
00:05:42 However, you have to be aware of the fact that we all have different kinds of energy levels. We have different rhythms to our energy throughout the day,
00:05:52 and you have to pay attention to your energy throughout the day, throughout the week, even throughout the month.
00:05:58 To be able to know when to put those most difficult tasks that take the most energy, they take the most mindset,
00:06:05 they take the most focus. You don't want to necessarily always put them in the morning. If you're flat in the morning,
00:06:11 you don't want to put them on Friday. If Friday is the day that you're drained, you have to pay attention to your own rhythms.
00:06:19 See, the truth is it's not about managing time anyway. That's not the focus. That's not really what we want to do.
00:06:27 Instead, what we want to do is focus on our priorities and our energy. We look at how we manage our own priorities and we focus on our own internal energies.
00:06:40 What drives us forward? What is the thing that gets us jazzed up? What is the thing that gets all of our energy going?
00:06:47 And these are the things that we're really called to do. And then from there, what we can begin to do is set really big goals.
00:06:56 We can look at the big picture and then you can dial that big picture back into capturing all of it in an external brain,
00:07:05 capturing all of it into a list system of some sort that you can trust so that you aren't carrying around all of this information in your head that's constantly distracting you and pulling you in the next direction.
00:07:17 And then in those lists you can focus on not just the big goal. See, sometimes we make a list and some of them are really easy like call Steve or make this,
00:07:28 but others are big tasks like file my taxes or get the party planned. And instead what we need to do is focus on for every single task,
00:07:37 even big projects. What is the next smallest action I need to take? So when I'm talking about organizing the party,
00:07:46 what do I need to do? Do I need to decide on a theme? Do I need to get invitations out?
00:07:51 Do I need to actually just write names on the invitation? Do I need to put stamps on the envelopes?
00:07:57 What are the small tasks that make up that big task? And the truth is you won't know all of them,
00:08:02 but by putting many of them down and giving the lists that you make context and depth, you'll make more progress.
00:08:10 You'll actually get a lot more done. You'll be more productive. And it's, it's a thing that you have to dial into your own personality,
00:08:19 your own mindset, your own belief, your own history. It takes time to develop a productivity system.
00:08:26 There are tons of ones out there that come off the shelf and people will swear that this is the system that turned their life around.
00:08:33 And now you should try and do exactly the same thing. But what I do when I approach this as a coach or in my course,
00:08:41 productivity for your passion, I always take the approach of no, let's first identify you, your needs,
00:08:50 your priorities, your personality, your rhythms, and then let's plug in the tools and the processes and adapt them to you.
00:09:01 That's how you get more productive anyway, so I just gave you some tools and tips for each of these myths,
00:09:08 but the truth is you have to experiment with them to find out what works for you and don't be afraid to tweak the system that the guru has,
00:09:17 if that makes it work better for you, including my own, including the coaching I do. Throughout that,
00:09:24 what you need to do is dial in, find the ways to be productive anyway. Remember, it's not about managing your time,
00:09:31 it's about managing your energy. It's not about managing time, it's about focusing on your priorities and as you do that,
00:09:41 you'll get more done and what's more important, you'll get the right things done. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:09:57 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.
00:10:09 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,
00:10:30 and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time. Until next time, invest your time, your talent,
00:10:40 and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.