Episode 973: Time Management is Hard

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 973 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Ryan Englestad: I'm Ryan Ingolstadt from pop psych 1 0 1. I encourage you to find health. And one way to be inspired to do that is by listening to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:18] Scott Maderer: I've got pretty good at it over the years. And yet the truth is time management is hard over the years of studying this and working with other people, I've discovered that there's not a simple app or a trick or a hack or a single technique that works for all people that turns us all into the super organized, highly.

[00:00:40] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship. 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, [00:01:00] invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:06] In today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time. I talk with you about why time management is so difficult. I share 10 reasons why time management is really hard. And I also share some tips on what you can do with. 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't.

[00:01:31] 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/. No, the truth is that we talk a lot about time management on the show and I've gotten pretty good at it over the years.

[00:01:57] And yet the truth is [00:02:00] time management is hard over the years of studying this and working with other people, I've discovered that there's not a simple app or a trick or a hack or a single technique that works for all people that turns us all into the super organized, highly productive. Instead, it is about experimenting, trying different things.

[00:02:22] It's a work in progress. It's something that you have to do and work at each and every day. And you have to begin to recognize and focus on yourself, your own strengths and weaknesses and tools and techniques that help inject that into your. So I want to talk about 10 specific reasons why time management is hard.

[00:02:44] And for each also give you a little bit of a tip about what you can do about it. The truth is we all want quick fixes. We all want solutions, but often times there's a degree of self-discipline that's needed. I've talked [00:03:00] before about how systems and processes Trump discipline, but there is a need to have a certain amount.

[00:03:08] Clarity on your goals that lends itself to being disciplined about them. Discipline is often the way to get started while systems and processes are the way to continue. And so one thing you can do to inject that self-discipline is get crystal clear on your goals and why you're trying to do it. And what's the why behind it.

[00:03:31] Why do you care about your. The second tip is we often get unclear on what is our real priority. It's true. You can use something like the Eisenhower box. So that's the one we've talked about before with an important and urgent kind of grid, dividing it into four boxes and other things to delegate and identify which task you should really focus on.

[00:03:54] But beyond that, you also need to pay attention to what are your real values what's important to you? [00:04:00] And why do you care about. You'll notice that in each of these so far, I'm talking about us as well as just tools and techniques. The third thing is as much as we'd love to have control over everything, we often don't.

[00:04:17] There are things that happen to us that are beyond our control. And what you have to do is learn to focus. The things that are really in your control. Yes, you can develop contingencies, you can develop other plans, you can develop resiliency and all of these other skills, but at the end of the day, when life happens, you have to learn to focus on what you do have control.

[00:04:40] The fourth thing that makes time management hard is distractions because we live in a world with constant distractions messages that are meant to pull us off of our task and make us pay attention to things that aren't really important. But it's [00:05:00] easy to get sucked into that rabbit hole each and every day.

[00:05:03] And what you can do is begin to identify what are your distractions? What are the activities that suck up your time and begin to block or eliminate them during times when you're trying to pay attention, which brings us to the fifth thing, maintaining focus. We're often not really good at maintaining.

[00:05:23] Focus. This is where techniques like Pomodoro and meditation can help begin to train your brain into how to learn, to focus on the things that are most. The sixth, the fact that work is seldom finished anymore. Unlike doing something like manually building a shelf or building a wall, it's hard to know where the beginning, the middle and the end.

[00:05:51] So it's important to sit down before you begin a task and decide for this particular task, what is done? What is [00:06:00] complete? What is finished? What is good enough to be off my plate and move. The seventh, a lack of boundaries. This is related to the one we just covered, but the truth is with laptops, smartphones, wifi, all of these things.

[00:06:16] It also means that our work often blends into the rest of our life in a way that blends it together. And it's where you have to create and set boundaries between your personal and your work, whether you're self-employed or work for someone else, you have to establish. Those boundaries. The eighth reason that time management is hard as this idea that we can plan our way to success that we optimistically spend all of this time predicting what will get done and how much we'll do, and never actually begin to work on it.

[00:06:53] And because of that, we often end up starting way too. And so this idea of doing [00:07:00] early rapid implementation or action quickly is so important to managing our time. The ninth reason is this idea of present self versus future self psychologically. We often decide what our future self will do, but ignore the fact that when we get there, it's our present self that makes the decision that early morning run.

[00:07:26] That sounded really good. Last night is really hard to do whenever you wake up at five in the morning. And this is one of those things where you have to work on the delayed gratification habit. You've got to work on the systems and processes to help you. And the last reason why time management is hard as sometimes we have that day where we just say everything stinks and we don't want to pay attention to it.

[00:07:52] We just want to waste some time. And you know what, it's important to remember that's actually okay. As long [00:08:00] as it's from time to time, not each and every day, as long as it's few and far between and something that you do when you really have to recharge your batteries, there's nothing wrong with just saying, you know what, today I'm not going to be productive and that's okay.

[00:08:17] Thanks for that.

[00:08:18] 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 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 [00:09:00] time until next time.

[00:09:03] Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.