00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 61. 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 really find your gifts and calling is a key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this,
00:00:25 the inspired stewardship podcast by my friends, Scott Mader, The things that are urgent, derail, the important if, if Padrig three is where you're spending most of your time. And a lot of us are, then we're never getting quadrant. Two things done. We'll get quadrant one done. We'll do the urgent and important tasks because those are on fire and we see that they're important,
00:00:56 but then we'll continue to work on urgent task and not ever get to the ones that are important. 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 color. In the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:01:19 We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world and denied Saturday night special. I share the Eisenhower decision matrix. I talk about why the urgent in your life so often derails the important, and then I give you some tips on how you can manage this and prevent it from happening. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity.
00:01:56 Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this, and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done.
00:02:23 What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work,
00:02:45 but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. I've talked a bit before about this Eisenhower decision matrix that was made popular by Stephen Covey. The, this idea of looking at work and thinking about it on a, on a matrix or on a quadrant,
00:03:13 where is it urgent or is it important or is it not urgent, not important? And kind of thinking about these four boxes that are created, if you create a, an up and down line that is from urgent to not urgent urgent at the top, not urgent at the bottom. And if you cross that with a left to right line, that has not important on the left and important on the right,
00:03:36 you create four boxes quadrant one, two, three, and four is what they call it. And this decision matrix, this idea of looking at things that you do and thinking about it, are they urgent things? Are they important things? And where do they fit, allows you to help thinking about what you want to do with your time? See,
00:03:58 the truth is one of the biggest problems we always have is that we end up being very busy, but we're not very productive. We ended up getting a lot of things done, but they're not the things that are actually the most important things. They're not the right things. So let's walk through the matrix a little bit. And then I'm going to talk about how you could actually use this first.
00:04:21 I think it's important to define the word urgent and important in this case, urgent is a task that requires immediate attention. These are the things on your list or that come into your life. That just scream out. Do me now by definition, an urgent task puts you in a reactive state. You have to react to the emergency by doing something. This is a defensive posture.
00:04:50 This is negative. This is hurry. This is that busy feeling that we all have. And we don't like, it just feels like the life is coming at us instead of us taking control of our life important task, our tasks that contribute to our longterm mission, that, that expand upon our values that help us achieve big goals that are in alignment with our calling.
00:05:16 These are the things that sometimes they are urgent and sometimes they're not, but they're things that are important to really move the needle for us to make our life better. In this mode. If we're dealing with important things, we're in a responsive mindset, this is where we can be calm, rational, opened a new decisions. It's different than reactive. And of course,
00:05:43 there's also things that are not urgent and they're things that are not important. So this is somewhat intuitive. We, we can usually begin to put things into these categories. The problem is the intersection of these categories. So quadrant one task are urgent task that are also an important task. There are things that really move the needle for us, like responding quickly to an inquiry from a client about a new opportunity or an event that's coming up or something that we could do in our business or their task.
00:06:20 That for instance, someone in our family has gotten ill and we need to take them to the doctor and treat this thing. That's an urgent important task quadrant two, on the other hand, something that's not urgent, but is important. These are things like weekly planning. These are the things I talk about a lot on the podcast. These are things like doing an annual review.
00:06:46 These are things like working on the systems and the processes in your business. These are things like working on a budget. These are things that don't have to be done right this minute. It can be put off indefinitely and yet actually are important to the larger scale of your business. And then quadrant three, these are urgent, but they're not important. These are a lot of emails that come into our life.
00:07:12 These are even phone calls that come when your phone rings. We feel like we need to answer it immediately. That's an urgent feeling. And yet the truth is most phone calls are not important. You could let them leave a voicemail and get back to them relatively quickly. And it's not a big deal. And then of course, quadrant four are not urgent and not important.
00:07:36 These are most of the time wasting activities that we do. This has bingeing on Netflix. This is things that are pure entertainment and add no real value to our longterm life. Now don't get me wrong. That's not to say that they're all bad. Either. We need some relaxation. We need some downtime. We need some fun time, but the problem is sometimes though can really grow and expand and become much bigger.
00:08:02 The truth is the biggest Problem is quadrant a quadrant Two, which are things that are really important, but they're not urgent getting re you know, getting disturbed, getting railroaded, getting derailed by quadrant three tasks that are urgent, but not important. The things that are urgent derail, the important if, if quadrant three is where you're spending most of your time.
00:08:31 And a lot of us are, then we're never getting quadrant. Two things done. We'll get quadrant one done. We'll do the urgent and important tasks because those are on fire. And we see that they're important, but then we'll continue to work on urgent task and not ever get to the ones that are important, but not urgent. Why does this happen?
00:08:52 Because oftentimes those quadrant three, those urgent not important tasks, there are things we can check off our list. There are things that feel like we're getting a lot done. There are things that allow us to help others and serve others in a good way, but they're not really the things that are the most important when it comes to helping and serving others,
00:09:13 they don't build the longterm sustainability. Oftentimes they're busy task, not productive task. So what can we do about it? Well, first off, if you're thinking about your task list, you can begin to apply these filters and identify what are the things on my task list that are urgent. What are the things that are important? And what are the things that are the combination of those two.
00:09:38 And then as you do that, when you look at the quadrant one task, those are the tasks that you just knock out. You just put them on your calendar, you get them done. They're the do now task, but quadrant two things are things that you need to put on your schedule. The not urgent, but important tasks have to have time blocks dedicated to them.
00:09:58 These are the things that you actually put down on the calendar. You make an appointment with yourself or with others to do the planning task, to do the development tasks, to work on your business, instead of in your business to work on your relationships. Instead of just being in them, the quadrant three tasks, you look for ways to delegate or to eliminate them.
00:10:23 The things that are urgent, but not important. You try to get them off your plate and the not urgent and not important tasks. You can also look to eliminate or reduce those two are the place where you want to get rid of them in some way, find a way to automate it. Find a way to delegate it. Find a way to eliminate it completely so that you can spend more time on the due now and the scheduled task.
00:10:51 And if you do this long enough, you'll begin to Uplevel your productivity and get not just more done, but get the right things done. 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, listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:11:24 If you enjoy this episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest time, your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.