00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 663 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey, I'm Nick Pavlidis from the confessions of a terrible husband podcast. I challenge you to not be a terrible husband or wife or friend like me, by being intentional about stewarding your relationships. One way to be inspired, to be a better husband is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend,
00:00:29 Scott Mader. The truth is you usually don't have a time problem. You have a priority problem and identifying our priority. Notice that singular is much more about the strategy that we use than what app do we download to track our time. If the strategies right, the tactics come easy, but if the strategy is wrong, then the tactics don't even matter.
00:01:03 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 stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
00:01:33 And today's episode about investing in others. By stewarding your time. I talk with you about why there's a difference between the tactics that you use and the strategies you use. When you look at your time, how mindset and why always are key strategies and why, if your strategy is it right, then the tactics don't really matter. As we talk about stewarding your time.
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00:02:17 just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. One of those things that comes up time, and again, when I'm working with clients or when I'm working training other coaches on how to work with clients is this idea of the difference between tactics and strategy. So obviously those are words that have specific meanings in various context, but to define what I mean here, when we're talking about our time is tactics are those minute by minute detailed things that we do to create some sort of momentum.
00:02:55 It could be a tool that we use. Like what specific journal do we use if we're journaling or what specific tool do we use to track our time? Do we use toggle or do we use something else? Do we use time Mueller to track what we do during the day? Do we use the various tools like a spreadsheet, or do we use alarms or what app do I download on my phone?
00:03:20 These sorts of questions about the minute by minute detail, how we interface with our time, which to do list app is better, or is it better to keep it to do list as a physical written list? How about do I have one list or two, do I keep one for work? And one for personal, all of these things are minute by minute detail level tactical decisions.
00:03:45 And oftentimes this is where we start our think. We should focus when we're talking about getting better with our productivity, getting better with how we use our time now strategy. On the other hand, that's that high level discussion it's pulling back from the detail of pulling back from the minute, the minute from the things about which specific tools work or how does this process work and looking at how you interface with your time in a holistic way,
00:04:15 it's looking at what's important to you discovering things like what is your why and how you use that? Why? Yeah, it's looking at things like how do we focus on what our limiting beliefs are around time? It's figuring out am I putting the most important things into my life first? Am I filling my life with, you know, the big rocks first are instead,
00:04:43 am I trying to put the things that are most important to me in around the margins? It's the high level conversation about what's important to you and are you actually living your life? with that, see the truth is that strategy, this idea about our mindset, about how we view things and what's important to us and all of those things about how we figure out what's going on are in some ways more important than the tactics,
00:05:18 or at least it should come first. See all too often, we kind of try to figure out what it's going to fix. This, what tool is going to fix this by just, you know, if I use the same tools that somebody famous uses, then my life will be in order just the same way as they are. I mean, if you look around the web,
00:05:38 you'll see thousands of freemiums that involve which two tools are the best to use. These are the tools I use to do X, Y, Z, but the truth is just picking up the tools. Does it mean that they're going to work for you? Because if you haven't figured out what's actually most important to you, how you're wired your personality, like then one particular tool may work or may not work.
00:06:03 Same thing goes for systems and processes. One of the reasons that I recommend, you know, both my own program productivity for your passion, as well as my coaching that I do with people around time, as I spend the initial stages, unpacking these strategic things, because the truth is there's thousands of tools out there, but which one is right for you.
00:06:28 If you pick up a book on productivity and you happen to be wired the same way as the person that wrote it, then it'll resonate with you. It'll make sense. It'll be something that you think to yourself, Oh, this will work. And it very well might. But if on the other hand, you're wired differently. You view the world differently.
00:06:45 Different things are important to you. Your life is structured differently than you're going to have to put in some time and effort to adapt that system, to make it work for you. It's not as simple as just picking up the same tools as the next person. It's being able to deliberately plug in the tactics that are detail specific for you, with your goals and your personality,
00:07:11 and what is important to you. See the truth is if you haven't done the work on strategy, then tactics just becomes a guessing game. This is one of the reasons why I bet you've experienced this, where you download an app, that your friend swears is awesome and will help you so much with X, Y, Z, whatever it is that you're working on.
00:07:32 And then you try it out and you're like, I hate this thing. Does it work? Like they said, it's not fitting with my life and the way I want to use things, that's not because there's anything wrong with you. It's also not because there's anything wrong with the app or the tool is because we haven't yet found the right tool for you.
00:07:54 So there's some, the general breast practices. There are some things that you can start with that work for most people, but you're gonna have to put in the time and effort at a strategy level to be able to start filtering through and picking the right tactics that fit at the right time, in the right way. See if your strategy isn't right. If you haven't done that work about thinking about who you are and how you're wired and all of that stuff,
00:08:22 then the tools just become a guessing game. The tactics just become a guessing game. You just start trying them out one after the other. And usually you get frustrated long before you found something that works and you give up and you say, there's nothing that works. I can't manage my time. I'm just going to have to go through life and react.
00:08:46 You know, when you have those feelings of you're just way too busy go, the truth is you usually don't have a time problem. You have a priority problem and identifying our priority. Notice that singular is much more about the strategy that we use. Then what app do we download to track our time? If the strategies right, the tactics come easy,
00:09:13 but if the strategy is wrong, then the tactics don't even matter. 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,
00:09:45 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 until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.