00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 68, I'm Darryl Lyons, author of 18 to 80. 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 right behavior with your money is key to doing that. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this,
00:00:29 the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader, And then one more. And then one more it's about knowing what's next. Not knowing everything. That's what allows us to make forward progress. That's what allows us to be diligent. That's what allows us to improve and out of that improvement come simplicity. That makes it work welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:01:08 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, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And tonight, Saturday night special, I share why we often make things way more complicated than they need to be.
00:01:42 I share why the simple is often powerful, but ignored and how even in a complicated situation, we can find the simple to focus on. 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, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion.
00:02:11 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.
00:02:37 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
00:03:00 slash launch. One of the biggest problems that I think we have as humans is our tendency to try to make things overly complicated. We often think that the more complicated something is the more complicated a solution is the more steps there are, the more complexity and in our life or in our situation somehow or another. That seems like it's almost a better thing.
00:03:27 I know that sometimes whenever I talk to people about budgeting their money and how it's basically just a matter of planning, what you're going to do tracking back against it, and then making adjustments to your behavior and your plan as you go, people are like that. That's too simple. There's got to be more steps to it. There's gotta be more process to it.
00:03:48 And, and the truth is that often something that is simple is not easy. And that simplicity, that act of looking at just the basics often, lets you make massive changes that lead to improvement. But all too often, what we want instead is either the one simple thing, the one trick, the one, one single step, the one tool,
00:04:14 the one app, the one, whatever that instantly fixes everything, which doesn't exist by the way. Or we want something that sounds like it's a really complex set of solutions and steps so that we know that we've mastered something because the truth is if it's something that we're struggling with, the answer to it, the fix to it has to be complex, obviously,
00:04:39 because if it was simple, we would have already understood it. We would have already done it on our own. But the truth is we often ignore the simple, in a complicated situation. We instead try to focus on the complexity and make the situation even more complex as a way of answering it in part, because I think we think exactly what I just said that if it was simple,
00:05:04 if it was this easy, I would've done it already, but all too often, you haven't even tried the simple fixes you haven't done the basics. You haven't taken the first step. You haven't stopped and thought about what it is that you need. You haven't actually looked at any sort of simple measurement and the truth is you can always find the simple,
00:05:27 it's really just a matter of asking the question, what is the smallest action that I can take that would move me in the direction that I want to go? What is the smallest step that I can take that would move me in the direction that I want to go? Or if this is a bad situation, what is the smallest step that I can take that moves me in a positive direction?
00:05:49 That moves me towards what I want. That simple question. Often bubbles up new and new techniques and new steps and new things that you can try because the truth is all too often, we're trying to solve the entire problem. That's what makes it complex. We're trying to solve all of the various moving parts. We're trying to make everything work exactly the right way.
00:06:13 But the truth is if instead we just take one small action and then one more and then one more it's about knowing what's next. Not knowing everything. That's what allows us to make forward progress. That's what allows us to be diligent. That's what allows us to improve. And out of that improvement comes simplicity. That makes it work. Now earlier I said,
00:06:40 it's often simple but not easy because see the truth is executing on the simple, doing that small thing day after day after day, isn't easy. Sometimes it isn't easy because we don't see it as sexy. Sometimes we don't see it as, as cool enough or interesting enough. Sometimes it's not easy because the truth is our brain and our other systems and habits will fight against us improving and making change.
00:07:07 That moves us in a positive direction. Sometimes it isn't easy because the world around us or other people fight against what we're trying to do and push back on it. But the truth is regardless of why it's not easy. If you continue to focus on taking those simple steps, each day gets a little bit better. You begin to improve. And out of that,
00:07:29 improvement becomes its own momentum. See momentum can spin us downward or momentum can build us up. But all too often, we try to make it take all of the steps at once. And the truth is you can only take one step at a time. So what's your next step that moves you in a simple direction towards what you want to have. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast.
00:08:05 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, 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,
00:08:45 invest your time, your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact.