Episode 768 Measure Results to Know if you are Productive
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 768 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:07] Wade Galt: [00:00:07] I'm Wade Galt. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to live, to work.
[00:00:22] Instead of working to live is key. And one way to be inspired to do that. Listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.
[00:00:39] Scott Maderer: [00:00:39] Yeah. I've had people where they've got a decision and they've got a lot of different ways they could go and they get frustrated because one of the things I'll tell them is pick one. They're like, wait, what do you mean? Which one should I pick? And at times the answer is, it doesn't matter yet because you haven't met.
[00:00:56] I've heard any results. There's no way for us to [00:01:00] know which one you should pick. 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 work
[00:01:34] In today's episode about developing your influence by stewarding your time. I talk with you about looking for results to know if you are really productive. I also talk with you about why you need to run experiments, commit, and be consistent to really know. And I also share how this allows you to break free from needing to know all of the answers first.
[00:01:56] As we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great. If you could [00:02:00] support this podcast and do it without just taking, taking too long, it turns out you can't. All you have to do is we 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.
[00:02:14] Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. So we come to the end of the year. I have encouraged you over the last couple weeks to do a review, to really look back at what you've done this year and think about, find the wins, find the things to be grateful for, but also find the things that have been struggles.
[00:02:40] Find the things that have been problems, and then ask yourself what you want to change. And one of the things that I like to ask is people all the time come to me and they're asking about time management, but I actually tell them it's much more about energy management and productivity. To me, it's less about getting more done and less [00:03:00] about managing time, which the truth is we can't manage time.
[00:03:03] We can only manage what we do inside of that moment of time. We all have the same amount of time. But instead, I like people to look at their results to decide if they're productive. See, oftentimes we look at it this way. I've got a bunch of stuff on my to-do list. I haven't gotten everything done.
[00:03:24] Therefore I'm not productive, but that may or may not be true. It's possible that you've got a long list and you haven't gotten to those things. And that's because you're not really being good with your time. You're not really being good with your energy and you're not getting good things done. It's also possible.
[00:03:42] You have a bunch of things on your to-do list and you knock them all off, crossing them all the way down the list. And yet the truth is you aren't getting the most important things done. You aren't moving the needle on big projects. You're simply getting a lot of little things done that don't really do much for you, and that's not productive.
[00:04:00] [00:04:00] It's also possible that you have a big long list and you get everything done on it, and you're getting the right things done at the right time, the best way that's productivity. And it's also possible. You get all long list of things and you only get a few of them done, but they are the most important things.
[00:04:19] The things that really move the needle. And I would argue that that's also productive may not be perfect yet, but it's already. Productivity. See the truth is. It's not about how much you get done. It's about, are you getting the right things done? This is one of the reasons that one of the things I like to look at when we're thinking about productivity is what stage are you at?
[00:04:45] Are you at the stage where you're just optimizing the task? Are you just trying to get things done more efficiently? So this is a task that you do over and over again, let's take driving to work. And so if you can figure out the [00:05:00] route. And the activity that gets you there at the best time possible.
[00:05:05] This is a good thing. This is optimization. So used to, when I used to have to drive into the office, I knew that if I could leave by a certain time in the morning that drive only took me about 20 minutes. But if I left literally five to six minutes later, it would take me closer to 40 minutes because of traffic.
[00:05:23] So my optimization was leaving before that cutoff time. So that I could get there as quickly as possible. Are you at a stage where this is about increasing things? So now it's no longer about optimizing it's about doing more things, but doing it well, it's about adding additional task at the same time.
[00:05:47] Multitasking. So maybe it's about carpooling three days out of the week. So on those three days, you can answer some emails while someone else drives. That would be an example of [00:06:00] efficiency increase or is it about managing this is where you add other people who can do some of those tasks for you so that you can multiply your time by having other people do things so that it frees you up to do things more powerfully or things that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get to.
[00:06:18] Cause you wouldn't have had enough time to do it. Are you at the focus stage, and this is where it's really about eliminating things. It's about cutting the things out. That aren't the most important things that aren't the things that really move the needle for you. Are you at that stage? See it throughout all of these, what you have to do to really measure your results is you have to consistently try new things.
[00:06:46] I call that running experiments. You test something. And when you test those things, then you look to see, did you get [00:07:00] results? So you test, you commit to the test for a certain amount of time. You have to sit down up front and say, I'm going to do this for three months or six months or two weeks or whatever it is.
[00:07:10] And do it consistently with skill and optimized abilities and do it as best you can and then measure the results and out of those results, you can determine whether or not this is something you want to continue to do. Is it worth optimizing? Is it worth managing? Is it worth adding to, or is it something you need to cut out because it's not really going to move the needle for you?
[00:07:36] See, this allows you to break free from having to know everything, having to know all of the results, having to know all of the steps, it allows you to begin to re recognize that all you really need to do is know what am I going to try next? I've had people where they've got a decision and they've got a lot of different ways they could go and they get frustrated because one of the things I'll tell them is pick one.
[00:07:59] They're [00:08:00] like, wait, what do you mean? Which one should I pick? And at times the answer is, it doesn't matter yet because you haven't measured any results. There's no way for us to know which one you should pick. You might be able to talk to someone else and learn from their experience. But the truth is unless they have the exact same situation at the exact same time with the exact same inputs, all it is your, their best guess which one will work.
[00:08:27] So oftentimes it's best to just try one. Commit to it, do it with consistency, do it with skill and do it for a certain amount of time and then measure the results and then try something else are tweak. What you're trying. It makes you break free and move forward quickly and efficiently so that you can optimize, manage, focus and do all of those things to make yourself not just getting more done, but getting the right things done.
[00:08:55] So that you can look up and go, yeah, I got the right stuff done [00:09:00] today. I truly am being productive. Thanks for listening.
[00:09:10] 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 or texting four four, two, two, two time tips.
[00:09:47] 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 [00:10:00] and impact the world. .