Episode 813 Do You have Time Triggers
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 813 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:06] Bob Lotich: [00:00:06] I'm Bob melodic from seed time. And 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 grow your money.
[00:00:19] Like a seed is key to learning God's way of handling money. And one way to be inspired to do that as they'll listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.
[00:00:38] Scott Maderer: [00:00:38] that means that a year you've wasted over a thousand hours of wasted time. That's 43, 24 hour days are over 80 days, 86 days of 12 hour days. It means you've wasted tons of time. And yet that's [00:01:00] honestly what most people do. 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 calling.
[00:01:16] 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.
[00:01:33] in today's episode about impacting the world by stewarding your time. I talk with you about things that trigger you to waste time. And I also talk about how you can establish triggers that help you actually use time. And I share some ways that this can really add up over time. As we talk about stewarding your time.
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[00:02:18] We all have certain things that trigger us to do certain things. If you think about what a habit is or a routine is it's simply a cue or an event or some something that then triggers a set reaction or pattern of behavior in response. And then of course you tend to get some sort of reward that continues to reinforce that behavior.
[00:02:43] And the truth is when it comes to your time management, when it comes to how you use your time, you have triggers that can cause you to waste time. Think about it for a minute. The truth is how many times have you found yourself [00:03:00] unconsciously checking Facebook on your phone or checking your email one more time, even right after you just checked it.
[00:03:08] In fact, literally as I'm recording this part of me wants to reach out to my phone right now and check Facebook because it's sitting within sight. And for me, that's one of those things that can trigger that distraction. It triggers part of my brain is focused on the phone instead of the task at hand.
[00:03:28] The same thing can happen when you have email open on your computer, when you have it open on that tab. And then all of a sudden there's a number on that tab or when there's that little red number on your. Icon on your phone that tells you that you have an unread message on Facebook or on Facebook messenger on, or your notifications or on your email.
[00:03:48] Those things are triggers that cause you to become distracted. They cause your attention to go in that direction instead of focused on the tasks that you're actually trying to [00:04:00] focus on. These can become triggers of wasted time. These big can become that 10 minutes. That turns into 45 minutes of staring at Facebook and just mindlessly scrolling up on that face book feed time after time.
[00:04:18] But by the same token, you can begin to create routines and habits and triggers that trigger you to not waste time sample. I've created a dedicated workspace, a space that when I go to it, that's the space where I work. And so by definition, it begins to reinforce the idea and the behavior that this is where I go for work.
[00:04:41] This is what I do for work. And when I'm there, I'm working. That work then becomes the time and the space that I use for work. And only that. And guess what? Now being distracted and wasting times a little harder. [00:05:00] I take my phone whenever I want to do focused work and not be distracted by the phone. And I place it off of my desk, out of sight, out of arm's reach.
[00:05:09] And by doing that, it begins to tell my mind, Hey, this is focused time. This is time that I need to pay attention. This is time that I need to be working, not playing even more turning on the computer. And I have these lights that I set beside my computer that are really bright. I use them delight me during zoom meetings.
[00:05:28] What I turn on those lights and turn on my computer in the morning. That's the beginning of my work startup routine. That routine then triggers us certain set of activities that I do each and every morning without fail. And by doing those that sets my brain up and my pattern up to begin dropping straight into work to do the next most obvious thing.
[00:05:53] You can create triggers to shut down your work so that you can leave it behind. These triggers [00:06:00] are ways that you can use your body's own natural tendency in your mind. It's a natural tendency to associate events with patterns of behavior and rewards, and you can use them to set up and trigger using time.
[00:06:16]Just as surely as you can use it to trigger wasted time. The first key to both of these things is to actually begin to pay attention to what cues your behavior. When do you check Facebook? What draws you to that? When do you get distracted in your work each and every day? When do those open tasks come up?
[00:06:38] When do you suddenly look away from the task at hand and turn to email or to Facebook or to other distractions that are wasting your focus time? What is it that triggers that behavior? What is it that triggers the walk down the hall to go get a cookie or a snack and waste your time? That way? [00:07:00] What is it that distracts you from focused work?
[00:07:03] When you begin to notice those things notice the event of distraction, think it back. What triggered that in the first place? What was the cue that caused you to do that? Because the truth is even a short amount of wasted time begins to add up. Imagine for a minute that you simply wasted 10 minutes every single day in a five day work week, that's already an hour of wasted time, almost across a seven day workweek.
[00:07:33] That's a 70 minute waste of time at first glance. That doesn't sound like a lot. But then across a month, that's four hours of wasted time every single week and across a year, that's going to be 48 hours of wasted time, two full days of wasted time. But the truth is we usually don't waste five or 10 minutes in a day.
[00:07:58] In fact, there are some [00:08:00] studies that show that in an eight hour Workday, we waste anywhere from four to six hours of it. So what happens if you're wasting four hours a day across a five day work week? That's 20 hours a week and in four months out of the year, that's 80 hours a month. That means that a year you've wasted over a thousand hours of wasted time.
[00:08:29] That's 43, 24 hour days are over 80 days, 86 days of 12 hour days. It means you've wasted tons of time. And yet that's honestly what most people do. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that you use this so that you can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That's not the point, but the point is, if you can reduce yourself from wasting four to six hours of day to only wasting two hours a day, [00:09:00] you suddenly have increased the amount of effective work you get done.
[00:09:05] And by doing that, you become much more efficient. You become much more productive, you become much more effective. You become much more successful. And it all starts with figuring out what are the things that actually trigger your distraction? What are the things that draw you away? What are the things that get you into those loops of wasting time?
[00:09:27] And then you can begin to break those. Thanks for listening.
[00:09:37] 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 like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up. For our [00:10:00] stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four four, two, two, two time tips.
[00:10:14] And that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world. .