00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 648 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.
00:00:24 And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader. There's no way you can do anything other than improve and therefore it's never wasted time. So what's your number one thing. What is the area that you need to improve on more than any other? It's probably that thing that you've been putting off that just kind of lives in the back of your head and takes up real estate that frustrates you to no end welcome.
00:01:03 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 in 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.
00:01:34 And today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about putting in the time, why there is a difference between purposeful practice and just practice and why practice isn't wasted no matter what 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.
00:01:59 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, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. One of the phrases that she hear a lot of times from people when they're trying to get better at something,
00:02:27 when they're trying to develop a skill, when they're trying to work on an area of improvement, is that they're putting in the time. I've just got to put in the time to go to the gym. I've just got to put in the time to get things done. I've just got to put in the time to whatever it is that that expression is used to mean dedicating a certain amount of your time to a specific activity.
00:02:55 And I lock a lot of times when I talk about expressions and idioms, there's nothing necessarily wrong with this idea of putting in your time. The truth is to get good at things we do actually have to put in some time. The truth is that sometimes something that comes easy to us after years and years of work is actually not easy to someone who hasn't put in that time,
00:03:22 who hasn't got that experience around the area of coaching, where I work and where I train other coaches. We often talk about both the skill and the art of things, how there's simple knowledge of something, but then there's sometimes the art of how you apply that knowledge. And the art is usually way more powerful and way more important than simply the surface level knowledge.
00:03:50 It's not necessarily about what, you know, as much as it is, how you use what you know. And so one of the dangers, sometimes when you hear people talk about putting in the time is not putting in the time, but rather how they put in that time. Is there a deliberate plan or is it just about kind of marking time?
00:04:13 You know, sometimes it's almost like people are talking about serving out a prison sentence. I have to just put in the time to go to the gym. It's about hard work. It's about just boring task. And the truth is sometimes it is about doing things that are uncomfortable, but there's a difference between just practice and deliberate, purposeful practice. In fact,
00:04:38 there's a difference between just putting in the time and putting in the time with a purpose behind it. You know, that's a, that is an expression that I don't like where people say practice makes perfect. You know, the truth is practice by itself. Doesn't necessarily make you perfect. It doesn't even necessarily make you better at something. It doesn't even necessarily improve you at anything.
00:05:05 Think about it. You could go out and practice shooting baskets. Let's just use a real tangible example. And if all you did is kind of dribble around the ball and shoot a few baskets and not really pay attention to how you were doing it or your form, or how many baskets you made, you shot, you know, 50, 60 baskets in a 30 minute,
00:05:26 maybe an hour long period. And you know, you got out there and did it every single day. So you are putting in the time, but you weren't being really deliberate or structured in it. And on the other hand, somebody goes out every day and they shoot very meticulously, 200 baskets in an hour. They have somebody else retrieving the balls and bringing it back to them.
00:05:49 And they have a third person taking notes and keeping track of it. They even video themselves shooting and they go back and look at the video later and think about their form and what were they doing? And when did the shots get better and more consistent? How many did they make? And they break all of that stuff down and they really pay attention to it.
00:06:07 And then the next day they go out and they have a very deliberate plan of specifically, what things are they going to improve? That is purposeful practice. That is deliberate practice that is practice with a purpose. Now, all of a sudden, who do you think is going to make more improvement, shooting baskets? And I think everyone would say that the second person,
00:06:32 and even if the second person was less talented, overall, less physically talented, less gifted athletically, they could still outperform the first player and probably would because it's not just about putting in the time. It's about putting in the time in a structured way. You know, Ben Hogan was a golfer in the early 20th century and he's considered one of the greatest golfers of all time.
00:07:01 In fact, he was, I think, ranked fourth and now don't get me wrong. I, I'm not a big golf fan, but I love this gentlemen story because what he would do is get up every morning, go to the practice tee at the crack of Dawn and hit balls all day long. And he spent years paying attention to what clubs hit the right distance,
00:07:24 breaking down exact details of how his form needed to change for each and every ball and each and every club. How the particular golf courses, he would play on how the wind and other things would affect it. He really broke down the golf game in a detailed way. And because of that, he won game after game after game. And he broke all sorts of records.
00:07:52 He was in a way, the very first person to at least that we have documented systematically break down a sport and intentionally practice each and every part in a deliberate way. And it showed in his performance. This is now regularly what professional athletes do. But ironically, as people, whether it's as a business person, whether it's in your personal life, we don't actually pay attention to this.
00:08:19 Instead, we just kind of put in the time we just go through the repetitions and pay attention to very little. We don't deliberately practice each and every step of the process, we don't pay attention to what areas do we need to improve. And when I'm proved this, when I make this change, what happens? This isn't about being a scientist. This isn't about being scientifically minded.
00:08:45 This isn't even about being a detail person, because there's all sorts of ways. You can set up the systems and processes where no matter what your personality is, you can actually find what gets better over time and you can continue to improve on it. This is about making a decision that there's something, some area of your life, some quadrant of your life,
00:09:09 where it's worth, not just putting in the time, but putting in the time with deliberate practice, it could be making your relationships better. It could about be about learning to communicate. It could be about learning to run your business. It could be about anything, but this idea of deliberately setting up an intentional set of systems and processes to get better at everything you do each and every day.
00:09:37 Not all at once, but over time to just focus on the tiny improvements. And what you'll discover is you can move mountains. If you shovel one shovel full of dirt at a time, because this act of deliberately breaking it down and being purposeful in your practice means that you don't waste any effort. The practice isn't wasted because it's intentional. See it's not the practice makes perfect,
00:10:12 but deliberate practice does create improvement. You know, remember, I don't want you to aim for perfection. I want you to aim for improvement. And if you're practicing in a deliberate way, you have no set. There's no way you can do anything other than improve. And therefore it's never wasted time. So what's your number one thing. What is the area that you need to improve on more than any other?
00:10:39 It's probably that thing that you've been putting off that just kind of lives in the back of your head and takes up real estate that frustrates you to no end. And the truth is that you've been putting off developing a system of deliberate and intentional practice around it. And it's time to do that today. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast,
00:11:11 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, by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four, four, two, two,
00:11:40 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.