00:00:00 Welcome to episode 698 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Al Como. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, talent and treasures, to live out your calling. Having the ability to manage change is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this,
00:00:27 the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader And people almost don't believe it because what they want is tools and techniques and tricks. And you know, what app do I use? Do I keep a, to do list or not? How do I tactically approach this? But often the most improvement happens in these other areas that are much more belief oriented and strategic welcome.
00:01:04 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. Episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time.
00:01:37 I talk with you about what the open Gates model is, how this can apply to how we use our time. And I give you an example of this model and how it implies to improving your productivity. 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, we'll 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. So one of the Models that I like for framing and thinking about coaching and building habits and self development or change when it comes to looking at ourselves and thinking about how we grow and how we change.
00:02:35 It's an idea that I first learned about from a coach mentor of mine named coach Tony. And he talked about this idea of open Gates. See that the idea that a lot of coaches have is they focus on changing one kind of behavior. Maybe they, they focus as a habit on helping people build a new habit through building tiny habits. In fact,
00:03:01 Tony first started looking at coaching and building habits when he invented a, uh, a habit tracking app that has since gone on to become coach.me. And this idea was that we could start with tiny Keystone habits and begin over time to build up on those and you would see change and growth, but then he began to look at this over a large number of people using this app.
00:03:28 And he began to look at how many people were consistent and successful in changing their habits. That's what he found as he began to study this. It was somewhere in that, you know, eight, five to 15% range, somewhere between five and 15% of the people seem to be successful in building a new habit. And that often even when he brought on coaches,
00:03:51 the coaches would try to you attack that habit through sort of a single piece of advice. And the epiphany that Kony had is the truth is that the, the coaching that we do, the change that we make has to be more complex than any one single piece of advice for any of us. It's the reason why perhaps you've seen somebody else successfully begin to go to the gym or change their health or change their money or something else.
00:04:20 And we think to ourselves, I want to do that too. And so we ask them, what did you do? What was successful for you? And they share the one or two or three things that they did, then you try them and you fail miserably. And so the framing that, that Tony came up with and it, and it comes from other research that comes out of NLP and some other things like that was that really,
00:04:43 and truly we are made up of a series of things and they're not, hierarchial, it's not like one thing comes before or after another, but instead they're all necessary. They're interconnected. And this includes our mission, our identity, our belief, our capacity, our habit, and our environment, and that to successfully have change happen. All of these have to be,
00:05:08 but all of these have to successfully be addressed at different times. Different ones of us have different ones of these that are open or closed or available for change successfully and different ways. So if you begin to figure out that you want to build a new habit, then you're attacking that habit gate. But if your capacity or your belief or your environment, or your mission,
00:05:36 or your identity are not ready, then that habits not going to stick. And oftentimes for many of us, one or two of these Gates, or sometimes even three or four, all of them are closed. And we have to begin to address opening all of them before we can make successful change. And for many people, coaches and therapists tend to focus on mission,
00:06:01 identity and belief while trainers and weight loss coaches, or athletic coaches. These kinds of people spend their time on capability, habit, and environment. I mean, think about it a lot of times, when you think about like a life coach or career coach, they spend a lot of time to helping you figure out why what's important to you. What matters to you?
00:06:24 That's around these ideas of mission, identity, and belief. Those are really all kinds of beliefs about ourselves and others. Why, if you get into the more tactical, the more practical the application, the actual execution of things, then you tend to be working around capability, habit, and environment. But the interesting thing is it's not one or the other.
00:06:48 It's all of these that are important. So real quick definitions, you probably kind of came up with definitions in your head for each of these. But to give you a little bit of framing environment is literally the external things around you. It could be as simple as setting an alarm on your phone, how much time you have availability. It also could be certain physical activities or physical access to a computer is needed.
00:07:13 If you're building something around computers, habit is the idea of incremental change over time. It's, it's the consistency piece. It's not just one and done, but continue to work at it over time. Capacity is about the skills and strategies that we use. It's both the tactical, the little day to day stuff and the strategic, the bigger picture strategies that we use to actually improve or change in an area.
00:07:42 And then when we transitioned to belief, belief is about those internal beliefs that we have about ourselves and about the world, including the ones that we don't even know are there, the ones we haven't ever articulated to anyone. And then identity is a type of belief, but specifically it's the beliefs you have about yourself. So belief is more about how the world works and identity is about how you work.
00:08:09 And then mission is about what's important to you. What you really value, not what you say, you value, but what you really value. This is why sometimes when people begin to change habits, they stopped doing it because they figured out that there's something that's more important to them, something better for them to do. And all of these are part of this open Gates model.
00:08:33 So in looking at this, I now want to kind of transition and give you an example of how this can apply when you're looking at your productivity, when you're looking at how you use and build your use of time. So if you think about that, usually what happens is when people think about productivity, one of the first things that people begin to think about is that they want to get more things done.
00:08:58 That, that the truth is they aren't getting enough things done in the day or that the most important things are kind of getting put off and put off and put off. So that's a capacity question. That's this idea of if I had better control of my time, that I would be able to get more done, but what's interesting is when I began working with people,
00:09:18 there's actually a missional identity belief piece that we often have to attack because see, how do you approach time? What do you believe about time? Do you believe that productivity is getting more things done? Do you believe that productivity is getting the right things done? And how do you define what the right things are? That's around that idea of belief. And then when you think about it,
00:09:42 do you believe yourself as somebody who can do that, do you believe that you are a productive person? That's an identity question and does this fit into a larger set of values and missions that you have for the world? How does this make you better able to do the things and spend the time and do it, what you want and what you think is most important and what you value,
00:10:06 how does it help your mission? So when you begin attacking it, you usually think of it as a capacity or a habit, that problem, but the truth is all of these Gates are imports, even environment, you know, having a messy desk. Do you have a system set up where you can efficiently get started for the day, or is your system set up in a way that allows you to delay and wait and procrastinate?
00:10:31 Do you set up your notifications where they can interrupt you or do you shut down things like the apps around you that would interrupt you during the day? Those are environment questions that help you become more efficient and build the habit, the habit of productivity. It's also sometimes a reframe, you know, is that thing and an eruption, or is it actually something that allows you to do something that's more important to you?
00:10:56 How do you think about the time and your productivity? It turns out that B recognizing that all six of these areas are things that we have to tackle to get more productive, actually helps us get more productive. It's a valuable framing device. As we approach this habit of productivity, you know, oftentimes I work with people and I discover that it isn't really the habit,
00:11:25 but, or the capacity. That is the problem with time. It's often in these other areas that leads them to the most improvement and the most rapid improvement. Okay. And people almost don't believe it because what they want is tools and techniques and tricks. And you know, what app do I use? Do I keep a, to do list or not?
00:11:47 How do I tactically approach this? But often the most happens in these other areas that are much more belief oriented and strategic. Alternatively, people will have their beliefs in place, but have no tools to use. And then you need to inject tools. So this is where as a coach understanding these, lets us set up and approach these in a way that helps people get more successful.
00:12:18 So this is a production system. This is a way of framing, how we think about productivity to allow ourselves to build up more productivity and be more successful. Hopefully if you've been struggling in the area of productivity, this open Gates model might let you begin to get a handle on what things are, maybe shutting you down and keeping you from getting more productive.
00:12:44 If you'd like to talk more about it, please feel free to shoot me an email. scott@inspiredstewardship.com, and I'll try to help you with it more. 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.
00:13:14 If you liked 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.