00:00:00 Welcome to episode 688 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I encourage you to have the courage to live your calling. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this To get to, and to actually begin doing. And then the thing that they do once every six months, somebody has spent a lot of time and energy on streamlining and making sure that it's very easy to get to.
00:00:45 And that's exactly backwards. The truth is you should make easiest those tasks that we do all the time. 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 column. In the inspired stewardship podcast,
00:01:12 we will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact Today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about creating a motivational environment, why it's not willpower alone, that can work for you and how to change your behavior by changing your environment. As we talk about stewarding your time,
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00:02:09 just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you think about creating a motivational environment, you know, the Monday episode, we talked about motivational choice architect. That's the term that Elaine used. And I like to think about it myself as creating the optimal environment for people to do or to achieve the best that you want them to achieve it, whether this individual is you yourself,
00:02:44 whether you want to think about yourself and helping craft your own ability to achieve habits or achieve your goals, or whether you want to focus on the people around you in your community or your organization, or the people that you lead, or the people in your family, no matter what this idea kind of stays the same. What are the coaching groups? I'm part of talks about some known as the open Gates model.
00:03:10 And this idea is that all of us have certain filters or Gates by which we run things through. And if those Gates are closed, then that tends to stall us out all from doing the things that we want to do. But if those Gates are open, then that facilitates our ability to do it. And these Gates, these ideas kind of boil down to two areas.
00:03:36 One is around our belief and the other is around our, our environment or our routine or the things outside of us. So there's an internal and an external set of the Gates. You can think about them. The internal ones I've seen them lately is identity, mission leaf. And those are really big buckets that boil down to different ways. We view ourselves different ways.
00:04:00 We view others. What we see as the most important things for us to do in the world, this kind of thing. It's the areas around how we think about ourselves and how we feel they'll about ourselves. And I often find folks that want to achieve big goals, but they've never really thought about any of their beliefs or any of the underlying reasons by which they want to do that.
00:04:25 And there's certainly nothing round them and their environment to keep them in touch with these things. It, it just becomes a, a way of doing things without really thinking about the reasons behind them. And then the other set of Gates habit environment in capacity kind of have to do with what we surround ourselves with how we set up our systems around ourselves and then how much time and energy and effort and money and resources we have available.
00:04:53 Now, these words can be defined in different ways by different people, but that's kind of where those buckets can, can be thought of, or those Gates can be thought of. And at first glance, a lot of times people think, well, I'll just smash through the Gates. I'll, I'll use willpower or use effort. I'll just make sure that I'm getting up every day and I'm doing what I need to do,
00:05:14 and I will make it happen. You know, if it's up to, if it's going to be it's up to me kind of belief system, and you know, there's a lot of power in that. There's a lot of truth in that, but willpower only lasts so long. We have a tendency to run out of it way quicker than we believe that we would,
00:05:33 we have a tendency to stall out on ourselves, way sooner than we think that we would. And this is true for other people too. And by force of will trying to drag other people along into doing what you want them to do. It never seems to really work. You're going to tire out before they do. But if, instead you begin to think about how can I get people in touch with these Gates?
00:05:57 Can I help them redefine their identity? How can I help them get in touch with a bigger mission? How can I help them overcome any limiting beliefs about themselves? How can I help them begin to develop their habits and create an environment that facilitates them doing what they're supposed to be doing and how can I help free up the capacity so that they can actually make it happen.
00:06:21 Then all of a sudden you begin to become a motivational choice architect. You begin to create an environment where it's easier to do the things that are positive than it is to do the things that are negative. This is kind of what I think we were talking about on Monday. Let's just focus in on one area and take that as an example. We can talk about these other Gates at other times.
00:06:44 And honestly, I have talked about them at other times, just in different words, but let's look at the environment. See the truth is if you want to work out and you get up every morning and it requires you 20 minutes to set up your exercise equipment, well, you're less likely to work out. If you have to dig your clothes out of the closet,
00:07:05 find your shoes, put them on, and then go for a run. You're less likely to go for a run if you want to write in the morning, but it takes you 20 minutes to boot up your computer, find the right application, get your notes out, get your cup of coffee and do all of these things. Then you're less likely to actually begin writing no matter what it is,
00:07:26 the truth is by streamlining the environment, by making it where doing what you want to do becomes easier than not doing, doing it. It begins to get easier. There's also things about your environment that can distract you and pull energy away. If the environment around you as cluttered and messy and dirty, that tends to drag some of your energy, there's some part of you,
00:07:49 that's thinking to yourself, I should clean that table off, or I should get that cleaned up, or I should do the laundry. So by creating an environment where those things are either removed and out of sight, or those things get done at a regular schedule so that, you know, yes, maybe the laundry is not done right now, but it's going to get done because I always do it on this night.
00:08:13 Then it, it becomes easier to focus in and get things done. And if you turn that around and you think about the people around you, they're affected in the same way, if you're part of an organization and you're trying to influence others to be able to do the things that they need to do, you need to think about how does the environment make that easy for them,
00:08:33 or how does the environment make that hard? You need to ask them what is keeping you from doing the job in the most efficient way possible. I've gone into organizations and looked at how they were set up and notice sometimes that the things that people will do two or 300 times a day may take 14 or 18 steps to, to get to, and actually began doing.
00:08:56 And then the thing that they do once every six months, somebody has spent a lot of time and energy on streamlining and making sure that it's very easy to get to. And that's exactly backwards. The truth is you should make easiest those tasks that we do all the time. And don't worry as much about making efficient, the tasks that you do every six months or every 18 months or periodically,
00:09:18 because really, and truly, you know, from a bang for the buck perspective, you're going to get more efficiency and more speed out of streamlining those that you do over and over and over again. But we lose sight of that sometimes. So you need to think about the environment that you're creating and how does it make it easy or hard for people to do the things that you're asking them to do.
00:09:42 This is what it means to look at the environment gate and begin to streamline it for people to be motivated without actually trying to motivate people. 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.
00:10:16 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 until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.