00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 58. I'm Shelly Lombard, founder of Millie money. Learning how to invest. We'll give you options for your future and to help others get inspired. One way to do that is to listen to this podcast, inspired stewardship with my friend Scott Maynor See the truth is we often get these in the wrong order too.
00:00:36 We think about do as the first step. Do I need to do this task? Let me just get it done. When the truth is we first should run it through the filter. We need to think. Is this a task that I even need to do if not Dump it. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:00:57 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 column. In the inspired stewardship podcast, we'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact. And tonight's Saturday night special. I talk with you about the four DS of task management dump delegate do,
00:01:34 and defer. I talk about why we often get these in the wrong order and how to recognize why looking at these can actually help you get a lot more done. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really,
00:01:59 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. 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,
00:02:30 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, 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
00:02:53 slash launch. When it comes to task management, when it comes to productivity and getting things done. One of the filters that I use that I try to teach people to use is what I call the four D's of task management. And those stand for dump delegate do and defer. Now one clarification underneath delegate. I also include automation or automate in part because I can't come up with a D word for automate,
00:03:24 but anyway, that's grouped with delegate. Cause it's another way of taking a task that normally would take some of your time and energy and removing it and putting it onto a tool or a process or a person that does it for you. That's that delegate step. So I want to talk a little bit about what these four DS are. And then I want to talk a little bit about why,
00:03:48 you know, we sometimes put them in the wrong order or think about them in the wrong order. So if they're somewhat clear what they mean, but just to make sure we're all on the same page and looking at these the same way dump is getting rid of a task dump is when you identify that something that you're doing is no longer worth doing. You just want to get it off of your list.
00:04:13 Completely. Sometimes this happens because you've allowed something into your life. And then later you discover that this is something that really isn't alignment is not in alignment with your goals and your values and your priorities. And so you want to remove it. Sometimes a dump is when you've had a task that's been sitting around for a long period of time. You've had it on your to do list for six months and you just haven't done it.
00:04:39 That may actually be a task that's worth, just dumping, getting rid of, because the truth is, it's just admitting that you're never going to do it delegate and automate this. This is about taking the tasks that normally would be your responsibility or something that you feel like you have to do, but finding a way to either have a tool, do that for you or finding a way to have a person do that for you.
00:05:05 You know, it could be hiring a VA who takes care of certain administrative tasks. It could be hiring someone to do a, uh, graphic design or work on your website or do some other task. It could be hiring someone to come in and clean your house so that you don't have to do it or mow your yard. All of these are examples of finding a task where it's worth taking it off and putting it into someone else's hands,
00:05:29 or you can find a tool or a resource that does it in some sort of automated way. Now, one thing to be careful of here is a lot of times we will spend a lot of time and energy delegating and automating tasks that are ones that we don't do very often because we don't enjoy doing them. There's something that maybe we only have to do every six months or eight months or something that really doesn't take that much time to do the real power and delegation and automation comes in.
00:05:56 And those tasks that are repetitive that you do all the time that happened. We kept her week, day after day, month after month. And even if they don't take very much time individual individually, that time adds up over a period of months. And because of that delegating or automating that pays good dividends. There's a lot of return on the investment of spying,
00:06:21 finding the time to delegate it or to automate it. Because one of the biggest complaints about delegation and automation is it's just easier to do it myself than it is to teach someone else how to do it. And that's true, but it's not true when you look at it over a year or six months, if you're, if you're delegating those tasks or automating those tasks that are very repetitive and you do them many,
00:06:44 many, many times during that six months or a year long period do is for those tasks that you just need to get done. You need to schedule a time on your calendar. You need to block off time to do it, and you just need to get it done. You need to crank it out, sit down, put some rear end glue on your rear end and sit down in front of the computer and do it.
00:07:06 Or you need to just get out and take care of the task and go buy what you need to buy or do what you need to do that one's fairly straight forward. The problem with it is we often see all tasks as being tasks that are due when the reality is they may not be. And then defer is when you consciously make a decision to take a task and say,
00:07:32 it's not something I want to focus on right now. I'm going to put it off for a period of time. Now here's where this gets again, tricky. The idea here is to do that with intentionality. Oftentimes what ends up getting deferred is the stuff that falls to the bottom of the, to do list that you simply couldn't get to today and you just keep putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off.
00:07:57 And eventually that task may need to be dumped or just knocked out and done. So differ often happens by default instead of with intentional thought. See, the truth is we often get these in the wrong order too. We think about do as the first step. Do I need to do this test? Let me just get it done. When the truth is we first should run it through the filter.
00:08:21 We need to think, is this a task that I even need to do? If not dump it? If it is a task I need to do, is it a task where I do it often enough that there may be some value in finding a way to delegate or automate this task? In which case I now have a new task find how to delegate and automate this task,
00:08:42 or is this something that really, and truly is not in alignment with what's the most important things to do today? Maybe I need to defer that task because it's not the most important thing to do. And only last do we actually think about doing it? See we default to do. And that's one of the reasons we feel so busy, but don't feel productive because we don't get the right things done.
00:09:08 We just get a lot of stuff done. We default to do when we first need to think dump, delegate or defer. Do I need to do one of these three things? If you recognize this, it actually helps you not only get more things done, but actually get the most important things done. So this four D filter helps us become more productive over time.
00:09:36 Try to implement that with your task list. Take a look at it, look and see what you've got on there. Look and see if there's anything that you can dump. Look and see if there's some candidates that need to be examined for delegation or automation. Look and see if there are any tasks where you need to defer them with deliberate, intentional thought,
00:09:56 and only then what's left becomes those things that you really need to do. 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. If you enjoy this episode, please,
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