00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 718 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Robert Farrington from the college investor.com. I encourage you to be inspired, to become a better steward through financial wisdom. By listening to this show, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, Not planning, not sitting down and actually being intentional about what's going on and not being able to plan that out and then use this process of,
00:00:42 you know, plan execute, and then review and revise, and then plan, execute, review, and revise, and keep cycling that through your life. Looking to get a little bit better each and every time that you can 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,
00:01:06 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. And today's episode about investing in yourself by stewarding your time. I talk with you about why just like good money after bad,
00:01:34 you can check and see if you're throwing good time after bad. I talk about how you can recognize if you are wasting time in this way. And I share some things that you can do about it 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.
00:01:56 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. You know, one of the expressions that I hear people talk about is throwing good money after bad.
00:02:21 You know, this idea of continuing to try to spend money, to save something or to make something work. Whenever it's clear that it's just not going to work. The idea that we, we sit down and we just waste our money, trying to make something that's bad work. But what's interesting is I don't ever hear anyone use the expression throwing good time after bad,
00:02:44 but the truth is you can do the same thing with time. You can use your time very effectively and efficiently, or you can use your time in ways that don't really get you what you want. And I'm not here just talking, using your time. Well, in terms of, you know, not watching Netflix though, that could certainly be something that you may want to cut out of your life or not watching the news or not browsing social media or any of the other 4,572,000 distractions that come our way during the day.
00:03:16 Now here, I'm talking about it in a bigger sense than that. One of the things that that happens to us whenever we talk about productivity, we talk about our life is all too often. We aren't really sitting down and being intentional in our use of time. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the ways that I see us throw throw time after time throw good time after bad and end up wasting our time day after day,
00:03:47 week after week. This has come up a lot in the last few weeks with several different clients where one of the things that we've talked about is we're coming into this fourth quarter. I think it begins to become obvious to folks that things this year, maybe haven't gone the way they wanted and they they're trying to figure out what do they want to get rid of?
00:04:07 And did they waste a bunch of time this year doing things that weren't effective or weren't good, or didn't work for their business or didn't work for their life. As we come to the end of the calendar year, this is a natural thing that begins to happen to us. We begin to think about the year that just went and what do we want to do different?
00:04:23 And I think 2020 in a very unique way has really agitated this for a lot of us because of all of the chaos. And so some of the things that you can happen that that can happen to you that cause you to waste time. Yo, let's talk about email. The truth is email is one of those things that sucks up a huge amount of time,
00:04:45 but the truth is that you can develop systems or processes where it doesn't have to do that. Another one, this one's a little bit more meta saying yes to too much stuff. We often say yes to everything instead of being selective and figuring out what are the true things that we really want to say yes to that are most important to us. What are the things that are really key for us to be doing?
00:05:11 And that are the most important things to us that are connected to who and what we are. It's never about what you have to do. It's always about what you choose to do, which also leads us to making decisions quickly. The truth is we waste a lot of time on indecision on not making decisions and the act of not making a decision is a decision.
00:05:35 And it's one that can cost us huge amounts of time. If we're not careful, the same thing is being able to periodically sit down and really decide what are your limits? What are the things that you can afford to do and not do? And what are the limits on those things? So in other words, if you're going to spend some time playing video games or watching Netflix,
00:05:58 that's fine, but limiting the amount of time that you do. And how do you effectively do that? Taking breaks, getting rest is important too. Are you giving your body enough time for rest and sleep? So it's not about never take a break. It's not about never watch Netflix. It's about making sure that you've got boundaries around your life and it's not going to play that way each and every day.
00:06:22 That's one of the things that I struggle with when people come, what their ideal day or their ideal week, because oftentimes we don't ever reach that ideal. It's great to have the target and that's important, but you also have to have some flexibility. So it's about having some balance, but creating those boundaries. So, you know, when you're out of alignment and can work to get it back into alignment,
00:06:44 one of the biggest ones that I see as people spending a lot of time complaining. Yeah. The truth is that we can spend a ton of time complaining, worrying about the things that aren't working, right complaining about how everything's wrong, but the truth is instead of complaining, if we did spent more time putting things into action, then we would actually make a change.
00:07:11 One of the other areas, if, if you can recognize that you're not feeding your mind, if you're not growing in some way, if you're not studying and using time to grow what you do, then that's a sign that you are wasting time, not planning, not sitting down and actually being intentional about what's going on and not being able to plan that out and then use this process of plan execute and then review and revise,
00:07:42 and then plan, execute, review, and revise, and keep cycling that through your life. Looking to get a little bit better each and every time that you can, that's the way to really grow. That's the way to really move from wasting time to being productive with your time, that cycle of plan, execute cute, review revise, and then plan,
00:08:07 execute review. Revise is the key. When you find out that you're being distracted, when you find out you're spending way too much time on your phone, when you find out you're not getting enough sleep, when you find out that you're working too hard and not getting enough done, all of those things come down to the same core idea that you're right.
00:08:27 We're really not doing a good job on that plan, execute review, revise cycle. Now don't you, I mean, we're wrong. I'm not saying there's one quick fix. And if you just do this one time, that's going to solve the problems. No, it's a habit. It's something that you have to develop the mindset for. It's something that you have to keep working on day in and day out.
00:08:51 And it's something that over time as you get better and better it than the time that you're wasting becomes less and less. And out of that, you can also begin to recognize when you have the sunk cost fallacy. When you're, when you're wasting time, by spending time on something that is no longer the thing that you should be chasing. So you setting those parameters by planning,
00:09:15 lets you recognize when it's time to stop throwing good time after bad and to just stop doing the thing that you're doing because it's just not working. And that that's what lets us not throw a good time after bad and be truly gaining and productivity each and every day. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener,
00:09:48 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 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,
00:10:26 invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.