Episode 933: Top Tips for Productivity

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 933 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Catherine Cantey: I'm Catherine Cantey. 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 lead yourself and others is key.

[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:33] Scott Maderer: authentically doing that review, reflect, revise, and repeat kind of cycle so that we constantly improve and get better. Instead, what we're doing is setting these vague goals and then trying to hit them with some vague tips. And then when it doesn't work, we just basically look up and say it didn't work.

[00:00:51] And that means I'm not good at goal setting. That means setting goals doesn't work. That means welcome. And thank you for joining us on the [00:01:00] 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.

[00:01:12] 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.

[00:01:23] And today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time. I talk with you about some of the top tips that you can use to increase your productivity. I share why knowing these tips is one thing, but executing on them as another. And I also talk about why many of them come down to communication as we talk about stewarding your time.

[00:01:44] Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it. Just taking too long. 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 [00:02:00] 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.

[00:02:11] Today. I wanted to talk about 10 of the top tips that I've found working with a lot of different people over a long period of time about helping them become more productive. The truth is that you'll see these lists all the time. And a lot of these tips I've talked about before on the podcast, it's separate pieces, but today I wanted to bring together 10 of them that I found.

[00:02:36] A lot of times are the ones that really seem to move the needle quickly for people. If you're struggling with getting not just more done, but getting the right thing done here are some of the top things that you can do to really focus in and make a change that starts sticking. And I'll talk a little bit about why [00:03:00] sometimes that doesn't happen.

[00:03:01] Moving on. So the first one focus on the most important task. First, this idea of identifying what is the thing that is the most important that I get done today or this week, or this month in any time period. And what can I do to focus on that first? Put it early in my day, put it first on my calendar.

[00:03:24] Make sure it's the thing that I get done before. Anything else happens, make sure. I do that. And this isn't about eating the frog. This isn't about doing the thing. That's the most difficult or the thing that you want to avoid. It's about putting forward. The thing that is the most important, the second one.

[00:03:46] Is cultivating and creating times for deep work, making time available in your calendar that you schedule with yourself, you block off you don't multitask, you don't pay attention to other things you [00:04:00] actually focus in and do the deep work that's needed in a difficult. Environment to move the needle.

[00:04:08] This pairs weld with that focusing on the most important task has usually your most important task requires periods of deep work. Number three, keep a distraction list. Pay attention to what's distracting. You pay attention to what pulls you away from the work to what interrupts your deep work, and then make sure that you keep that list and you look at it.

[00:04:36] And when something distracting or something pops up in your mind that you've got to get done. Just add it to the list, just add it to the list and then go right back to what you were doing. Use that distraction list to capture those things. So you don't get on that long path of going from one item to item and task to task.

[00:04:54] Ask number three, I've taught before about the Eisenhower matrix, [00:05:00] making sure that you're identifying the things that are urgent and not urgent, and the things that are important and not important so that you actually spend a develop some time to do the important, but not urgent tasks. Look at it things with the 80 20 role, try to find the things that if you can spend 20% of your time on it, it gives you 80% of the results.

[00:05:25] Find the places that are the levers or the leading indicators that indicate, Hey, if I put time and energy here, things will. Make sure that you're taking big tasks and you're breaking them down into smaller pieces because a lot of times what happens is we get overwhelmed by the big task. Therefore we don't ever get started because it just seems too big, write a blog post, write my book.

[00:05:50] These are too big to really do number six. Taking breaks. This is one of the reasons that I love the Pomodoro technique. This idea [00:06:00] of working in 25 minute blocks and then taking a five minute break and every fourth, one taking a 15 minute break, finding ways to break your mind up, even so that when you do a deep work session, you still have a break after it so that you can rest your mind.

[00:06:16] Number eight, try to make fewer decisions, automate decision-making or simplify decision-making. This is one of the reasons that you'll hear a lot of really famous people who keep their clothing very simple. They only wear a few different choices of clothing because it eliminates one more decision from their day.

[00:06:36] Number nine, eliminate inefficient email. And inefficient communication. Try to spend less time going back and forth, create templates, create signature lines, create other things and pick up the phone and call people so that you don't go down the rabbit trail. And then number 10 in a similar vein find things that you can automate or [00:07:00] outsource and get them off your plate.

[00:07:03] Now the truth is I listed off these 10 tips and probably you've heard me talk about several of them before. You've probably heard them and seen them on other lists. And yet you're not necessarily using them. The truth is knowing these tips and executing them are two different things. We can know that we should have deep work sessions, and yet we get interrupted day after day and never have them.

[00:07:29] We should know that we should work on the. Important, but not urgent task. And yet those always fall off the bottom of our to-do list. And part of that. I said it comes down to communication. And what I mean by that is oftentimes we're not communicating well with either the people around us and therefore we're allowing them to interrupt us, or we're not communicating well with ourselves.

[00:07:55] We're not doing a good job of assessing where we're at, of paying attention to what [00:08:00] needs to be happening. We're not doing a good job of authentically doing that review, reflect, revise, and repeat kind of cycle so that we constantly improve and get better. Instead, what we're doing is setting these vague goals and then trying to hit them with some vague techniques.

[00:08:16] And then when it doesn't work, we just basically look up and say it didn't work. And that means I'm not good at goal setting. That means setting goals. Does it work? That means trying these techniques don't work, but the truth is it's not the technique that doesn't work. Oftentimes it was. This is one of the reasons that working with an external accountability partner can be helpful working with a coach or someone else because they can help you dial in on where is it that you need to change the goal?

[00:08:45] Where is it that you need to change the technique or the process? Where is it that maybe it's not that you don't, that this tip doesn't work, but you're using the wrong tip in the wrong place. They can help you dial in and move the needle faster because they're not [00:09:00] emotionally attached. They don't have that moment of beating themselves up for, Hey, I didn't get this done or this didn't work, or this is a bad thing because at the end of the day, what happened, does it matter to them?

[00:09:15] You matter to them as their client or somebody they're helping, but whether or not you got the gold on isn't that important, they can help you identify the why's and the reasons behind the struggle and then help you fix it. So if you've been working on this, if you've been trying to be productive for a long time and you're continuing to struggle in it, reach out to me, send me an email.

[00:09:38] scott@inspiredstewardship.com. I'd love to set up a 30 minute with you and talk to you about which of these tips can work, why and how to make it work for you and get better each and every day. Thanks for calling.

[00:09:52] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you [00:10:00] to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your call. 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 4 4, 2, 2, 2 time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time.

[00:10:36] Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world. .