00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 693 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Patrick new Nucci from dad hackers, and I challenge you to become the man that you were called and created to be one way to be inspired to do this is to listen to this show, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader. And you gotta be careful when you're picking,
00:00:34 how do I theme this area? Or how do I theme this day? You want to make sure that you're theming it and you're working in an area that actually matters something that's actually important to you. Something that by doing this, by spending this time on this task or this set of task, you move the needle for yourself. You, you get more done in an area that's actually important.
00:00:57 That actually matters. 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 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.
00:01:28 And today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time. I talk with you about why sometimes just identifying the one thing for your day or for your life can be so valuable. I share why that can be scary, but often provides clarity. And I also talk with you about why knowing your one thing gives you power. As we talk about stewarding your time.
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00:02:13 just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. There's a great book called the one thing that talks about how identifying the one thing that is what you want to concentrate on or what you want to do and how important this is and how, how, how it helps you become more productive. It helps you become more able to do the things that are important to you and so on.
00:02:39 But today I want to talk about one thing in a little different way. I want to talk about it a little bit more microscopically. See what are the problems that I see folks struggling with when I'm working with people on productivity and time is in getting started and in doing the things that are them that they really need to do. Uh, you know,
00:03:02 I do it as well. I think we all do from time to time where you have, uh, a hoard of tasks that you need to get done. And it's so easy to just put them off and say, I'll start on it tomorrow. I'll start on it. The next day, I'll start on it the next day. And pretty soon that list has piled up and piled up.
00:03:21 And, you know, we talk about identifying the three big rocks that you want to get done in a day. And, and these sorts of things as a productivity tool or ranking your, to do list and focusing in on the top two or three things that you want to go do. And those are certainly valuable techniques and they do work. But oftentimes if you can just identify the one thing for your day,
00:03:48 what is the one thing that you want to focus on today? If you can theme your day and really focus in on one task or one set of task or one goal, or in result or transformation that you want to produce or go through in a given day and bring everything into that, it can help you get more done. It can help you get clarity and focus around what is it that I'm going to be taking care of today.
00:04:20 And that clarity helps us get more productive because you see one of the things that holds us back from productivity is not a lack of focus, and it's not going once you get started into the actual getting started part it's, what's the smallest tasks that I need to start on so I can get moving. I know if you want to start writing, what's the smallest task it's writing one letter,
00:04:45 one word it's getting started that often holds us back. And I've seen this happen to people when they have a million things on their, to do list from a hundred different topics and all different areas of their life. But if you can block off two or three hours for a day, or if you can block off a full day and focus in on this is the theme today's going to be cleaning day,
00:05:09 or today's going to be the day that I work on writing, or if it can't be a whole day, this first three hours of the day, that artificial boundaries around time helps give you clarity and it helps give you focus. And it also helps you get started on this. It can seem kind of overwhelming and frightening at first because the truth is when we theme in our day like that,
00:05:34 it seems like by ignoring everything else we're going to get behind in other areas. But the interesting thing is you often get so much done in that one area that now you can cycle through and not do work in that area for a couple of days, you, it gives you time to catch up and other areas because that focus gets you moving, knowing the one thing for your day,
00:05:59 knowing what is the theme for today really gives you power to get started. It really gives you power to get moving. It really gives you a clarity and everything that you do during that block of time. That day, that half day, that hour, whatever it is, should build towards that larger goal should build towards that larger task. You know,
00:06:23 it's part of the technique that we can use of blocking time or chunking are bringing tasks together that have similar things or similar. You know, the brain works in a similar way when you're working on those tasks, that gives you a degree of efficiency. That gives you a degree of getting moving quickly. That often doesn't happen when you're trying to multitask or switch from one task to the other.
00:06:48 As you switch your brain gets distracted, your brain gets pulled in other directions. Your brain begins to say, well, what am I supposed to do now? And it has to reset and refocus and rebuild from the ground up. But knowing that everything I'm going to be working on today is cleaning help spring focus, yes, to that task. And by the same token,
00:07:11 it also helps create a little bit of pressure to actually be working in that area. It creates a little bit of a gamification where you can compete against yourself and see if you can get more done or get it done quicker this time than you have in the past. It begins to give you the ability to align those tasks together and get a lot of things done in one major area of your life.
00:07:37 And you gotta be careful when you're picking, how do I theme this area? Or how do I theme this day? You want to make sure that you're theming it and you're working in an area that actually matters something that's actually important to you. Something that by doing this, by spending this time on this task or this set of task, you move the needle for yourself.
00:07:57 You, you get more done in an area that's actually important that actually matters. And the only person that can know if it's important, if it matters is you see, that's another problem that we have. We often let our time be dictated upon us by others. And even if you work with an accompany, even if you have a boss, even if other people are telling you what to do,
00:08:20 you still have the ability to use your time wisely by paying attention to how you structure your day. So, one of the reasons that I encourage people to shut off notifications, to turn off their email and other things, whether they're working on task, where they need focus, because those little distractions add up to big times that that pull us away. They give us corruption in doing the task and make us much less efficient.
00:08:52 So good theme part of your day or the whole day, identify the two or three things that during a week are most important to you and try to block off periods of time where you can do those in concentrated task and see if that helps you not only get started faster, but get more done and enjoy it more while you're at it. Thanks for listening.
00:09:21 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, by going to inspired stewardship.com/time
00:09:52 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.