00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 628 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Bob melodic from seed time, and 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 to live out your calling, having the ability to grow your money. Like a seed is key to learning.
00:00:21 God's way of handling money in one way to be inspired to do that as they'll listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, He, his question is how do you find that 15 minutes a day? What do you carve out of your life and turn into 15 minutes a day? And the truth is you, you first need to think about where are you going to put it?
00:00:50 You know, for a lot of us, the learning time needs to be first thing in the morning, because if we leave it for last thing at night, we're so tired and frustrated and enough things go wrong during the day. 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,
00:01:11 then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true call in the inspired stewardship podcast. You will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can In today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about how even 15 minutes a day can help you master any skill,
00:01:42 how to find that 15 minutes in a day and how this can increase your growth 1% every single day, which really should be the goal. 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. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon.
00:02:07 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.com/amazon. The truth is if you want to be in a different place in six months and three months in a year in three years from now,
00:02:32 you have to think about your mindset when it comes to growth and self development, you know, over and over again, I coach people. And one of the things that I see over and over again is people talking about how they just don't have time to learn new skills. They just don't have time to study. They just don't have time to exercise.
00:02:53 They just don't have time to do some sort of personal growth routine or each and every day. They struggle with putting in place a routine. They struggle and putting in place a constant self-development habit. And the truth is that you are who you create yourself to be. You have to change yourself and your thinking. If you want to be in a different place than you are today,
00:03:25 if you want to grow, if you want to succeed, then you have to know yourself and you have to work to develop those positive habits. As you design yourself, by designing your day, you design your future because the habits that you go through today are what create your future. Personal development is so vital and so important. And yet all too often,
00:03:55 we leave that last. I talked to people about how they set aside, time for development. And usually the reason they say they have no time is because it's the last thing on their list. It's the last thing they get to. They don't make a habit of learning and growth. And instead they put that last on the list. See the truth is if you have a time problem,
00:04:23 you really don't have a time problem. You have a priority problem. You have the same amount of time as everyone else, but where you put your priorities is what creates what you do. So the truth is with as little as 15 minutes a day, you can begin to master any skill. Let let's just take reading for a second. Let's say you want to read,
00:04:50 and let's say you read Oh, 300 words a minute, which is really slow, but that's doable. That's that's about a half a page, you know, in normal book every minute. So if you read 300 words a minute that you would read about 4,500 words in 15 minutes, and at the average book is between 50 and 60,000 words. That means you could finish a book in about 13 days.
00:05:22 That means just in a normal month, you should be able to read two books, reading as little as 15 minutes a day. And it doesn't work just for reading. If you want to listen to podcast episodes, you can listen to those. Listening to those for 15 minutes a day begins to teach you a new skill or watching educational videos on Skillshare or YouTube or one of the other learning platforms that's out there.
00:05:52 See it's the truth is we live in a world today where we are by opportunities to gather knowledge. We're surrounded by information. If anything, there's almost too much information out there, but you can begin to study it in 15 minutes a day. And you would be amazed at how much you would learn in a month and then do that month in and month out.
00:06:19 And it compounds over time. This allows you to begin to grow yourself just a little bit each and every day. See, that's one of the big problems that people have. They sit down and they try to cram all of their learning into one day. And then they burn themselves out. They get frustrated because change isn't happening fast enough, but it's kind of like watching a child grow.
00:06:45 When you grow up in the same house as a kid and you see them grow, you don't recognize how much they've changed across a year because it's slow and gradual. But whenever a stranger sees them on their birthday and they haven't seen them for a year, they always remark with how much change has happened. The same thing happens to you with this kind of incremental growth.
00:07:08 So the obvious question is how do you find that 15 minutes a day? What do you carve out of your life and turn into 15 minutes a day? And, and the truth is you, you first need to think about where are you going to put it? You know, for a lot of us, the learning time needs to be first thing in the morning,
00:07:26 because if we leave it for last thing at night, we're so tired and frustrated and enough things go wrong during the day that we never actually spend our time doing it. And we can't develop a habit without doing it as a routine. So I recommend for most people trying to put that 15 minutes of learning time, first thing in the morning, you get up,
00:07:47 you get a cup of coffee, you sit down on the front porch or on the couch somewhere quiet. And you just set your alarm an extra 15 minutes early to give yourself that time. So you don't have to rush and get to work and be frustrated and feel like you're running behind. If you've got young kids at home, get up before the kids get up.
00:08:06 If at all possible, this is a good time for not just exercise and physical growth, not just Bible reading and spiritual growth, but actual intellectual learning as well. Now, if that doesn't work for you, if the morning just isn't a good time for you, then find another time, take an extra 15 minutes of your lunch break, pack your lunch and read that book while you're eating your lunch at your desk or outside,
00:08:35 you don't have to extend your, your lunch break time. You can still do it in the same hour, but take 15 minutes of it each and every day as your learning time, or if that's not going to work for you, cut out watching one TV show for half an hour. That gives you two 15 minute blocks. You know, the average sitcom is 30 minutes long.
00:08:56 So just skip watching this sitcom each night. But you know, of course, if you do that in the evening, in the afternoon, like I said, for most of us, that's the time of the day that it's the easiest to let slip. And that's why lunch and morning is often better, but you can find 15 minutes a day. If you make it a priority,
00:09:16 see that's the key. You have to decide that learning and growth is important to you. And then you can allow that habit to develop. If you need help with that, if you want some, some other suggestions, if you need someone to hold you accountable to it, reach out to me. I'd be happy to hold you accountable to your own growth.
00:09:37 Thanks for listening. 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, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series,
00:10:08 by going to inspired stewardship dot Calm slash time Or texting four, four, two, two, two time tips. And that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.