00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 763 of the inspired stewardship Gassed I'm Wayne Titus author of the entrepreneur's guide to financial wellbeing. I encourage you to be inspired, to become a better steward through financial wisdom. By listening to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, Go through your budget. Ask yourself these three questions. What went well,
00:00:33 what didn't go well, what would I change? Go through your calendar. What went well, what didn't go well, what would I change? Go through your journal. If you keep a journal, what went well? What didn't go well, what would I change? Look at everything that you have really reflect. Spend some time on this. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:00:56 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. These episode about investing in others by stewarding your time.
00:01:27 I talk with you about why you need a review and a planning session, even in a year like 2020. I share three powerful questions to ask during your review this year. And I also talk about why plans are needed, even if things are in unsure. In fact, even more 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,
00:01:55 it turns out you can't. 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. I've heard a lot of people that even people that really normally do a really good job of annual planning and reviewing what's going on and paying attention to their goals and how things are shifted throughout the year that this year 2020 has really stretched that beyond belief.
00:02:35 And I, and I think it really has. I think it's fair to acknowledge the emotion of 2020 and how crazy it's been and how different it's been in so many different ways. There's been things that I don't think any of us could have predicted. And I think in some ways we've all gotten almost numb to what's been going on. We've almost begun to just sort of ignore it because it,
00:02:59 what it is, and there's nothing you can do about it. And that's true. There are things that are outside of your control that you really need to let go of and not spend a lot of time and energy on. And then there are things that are clearly 100% in your control and you ought to focus on those. It's the third category, the things that are sort of in your control and sort of not your actions are in your control.
00:03:24 Your attitudes are in your control, but the results that come from them are not. So for instance, marketing is a business owner. Well, you can control the marketing efforts, but you can't control whether or not somebody responds to it. That's up to them and their reactions, but there are things that you can do to continue to dial it in and get better and better and better.
00:03:46 Well, one of the things that I want to point out is even in a year, like 20, 20, even in a year, that's as crazy as this. You need to schedule a time sometime in the next week or two, maybe in the next month, maybe even into January, if you have to, but you need to set aside some time three or four or five hours on an afternoon or on a morning where you can really do a review session on what have you learned from 2020,
00:04:16 what happened in 2020 that you want to be able to take forward into 2021 and do even better? What are the things that you've learned? What are the lessons you've learned? What has happened during the year that maybe you need to do something about, because I guarantee you, even in the chaos of 2020, there are lessons to be learned and your lessons are probably going to be different than mine.
00:04:44 And that's okay because your life is different than mine. But at the end of the day, there's three really good questions. You need to ask yourself. And these work at almost any scale, meaning you could do this at the end of a day. And think about the day you could do this at the end of a week or a month, and think about that period of time.
00:05:04 But this works really well for your year. Pull out your calendar, pull out anything that you do. If you do any sort of daily journaling, pull that out. Anything that you do that's record-keeping about the year. If you're a business owner, pull out your numbers as well. If you have a personal budget, pull that out as well, get all of the information that you can about the year,
00:05:27 and then begin to go through all of those items. One at a time asking yourself the following three questions. What happened here? That's good. What happened here? That I like, what's a good thing that I could take forward out of this. I don't care how big or how small it is. Fine, something good. And the next question is what?
00:05:53 Didn't go well here, what? Didn't die, like what didn't go. Well, what were the challenges? What were the problems? What are lessons that I want to look at and see if I can reduce them in the future, keep a mind and keep a focus on what are the things that you have some degree of control over. So if your company shut down and therefore you were let go,
00:06:14 what? You can't directly control that your company was closed down, maybe because of COVID or something else that happened. But what you can control is your response to that. So maybe this year, when you lost your job, you sat back and kind of wallowed in it for a couple of months. And the lesson you want to learn is about putting things into action quicker,
00:06:35 making sure that you're moving to the next thing as quickly as you can, whatever it is, what were the things that happen that you want to take forward into 2021 lessons? What would be something that didn't go well? And then the third question is what would I change? See, that's the action question. What things do you need to put into action in 2021?
00:06:58 And these begin to become the groundwork for your plans, for your goals, for things that you're focused on for 2021, what are the things that you would put into action so that you can change them and recognize change? Here can come from both the good and the bad. Sometimes you identify something that was good this year, but maybe by changing something,
00:07:19 you can make it even better. It's not just about removing the bad things. It's also about growing the good and so change is not meant to imply fixing things. It's meant to imply making things different. And so you can sometimes generate 20 or 30 things, go through your budget, ask yourself these three questions. What went well, what didn't go,
00:07:45 well, what would I change? Go through your calendar. What went well, what didn't go? Well, what would I change? Go through your journal. If you keep a journal, what went well, what didn't go? Well, what would I change? Look at everything that you have really reflect. Spend some time on this. This is not an activity that you should sit down and do in 15 minutes.
00:08:08 And then you can begin to move to planning 2021, because the truth is you always want to have plans even, or even, especially when times are unsure. The funny thing is psychologically, and this has actually been studied when we have a plan. When we think through, when this happens, I'm going to do this. When this happens, I'm going to do this.
00:08:33 This is the next step. And you try to develop as much of a plan as you can. And then you begin to execute on it and things don't play out the way you expected. You still do better. You're more likely to complete your goals. You're more likely to finish the task. You're more likely to have success than if you had no plan at all,
00:08:53 because the truth is, as you begin to think through the plan, you also begin to think through alternatives. You also already are beginning to think through what do I do if that doesn't work, you need to think about it in terms of the next steps all the time. And as you do that, that already makes you more resilient. It makes you more likely to continue to act,
00:09:17 even if things get challenging. And so that's why at the end of the day, having a plan, even in a chaotic time is better than having no plan at all. 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 listened, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:09:52 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.