Really productive people know the secret to creating more time. They realize that God has given us each the same amount of time in a day and they learn to manage themselves in the time given

Today I’m sharing how you can identify your Time Identity, figure out what your real priorities are, and how you can say goodbye to the time-wasters in your life.

Resources Mentioned:

Free How to Create More Time Workshop: https://ashleyvarner.com/time

Highlights From the Episode:

Really productive people know the secret to creating more time. They realize that God has given us each the same amount of time in the day and they have just learned how to manage themselves well within the time that they’ve been given.

So today I’m going to be sharing how you can do the same thing, how you can create more time. I’m gonna be talking about how you can identify your time identity, we’re gonna figure out what your real priorities are, and I’m gonna show you how you can say goodbye to the time wasters in your life.

Let’s jump in and get started. Hey there and welcome back to “The Renewed Mind.” I am so glad that you’re here. If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe so that you are notified whenever new videos come out. I release a new one every Thursday. And each month, we actually talk about a different topic, and this month we’re talking all about time management. So if you haven’t checked out last week’s video all about how to manage your time, well, make sure to check it out.

Identify Your Time Identity

Today I wanna talk to you about how you can create more time. I’m gonna give you three ways that you can start looking at your time and your tasks so that you can have more time to do the things that you love to do, the things that maybe God has called you to do that have always been on the back burner for you because of all the other urgent things that are going on. So the first thing that I wanna share with you today is identifying your time identity. So we often have this idea of ourselves and how we relate to time.

The Perfectionist

You might consider yourself a perfectionist, where there is just everything has to be perfect. And really the Bible tells us that no one is perfect except God alone.

If you are a perfectionist, you probably aren’t a very good time manager. Now you probably think that you are, but really whenever you look at it, you are spending so much time wanting to be perfect and making sure that everything is perfect, that you end up wasting time and end up just not being super productive.

Now there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be excellent and doing your best. But we have to realize that nobody is perfect except God alone. And sometimes perfection can paralyze us from doing what God has called us to do because we just want it to be perfect.

So I say this a lot in my line of work when I’m working with women who wanna transform their lives, they wanna do this mindset work and changing and transforming their lives but they just want everything to be perfect, they wanna be able to check off all the tasks to do, a perfect job on their to-do list, and they end up being really paralyzed to make any kind of change in their life.

The Procrastinator

Now, another time identity is the procrastinator and that might be someone who is just constantly overwhelmed by the thoughts that they have of all the tasks that they are dealing with.

So there are the circumstances that are in your life, maybe the things that are on your calendar, there are obligations that you have, roles that you need to fill, maybe committees that you serve on, and then there’s also all like the tasks that you have to do. Fold the laundry make dinner, those kind of tasks, turn in that report.

There are the things like caring for elderly parents that are huge obligations that actually probably have a lot of tasks that are required in that obligation. And then, like I said, there are the small tasks.

Well, a procrastinator is going to look at all of those things and they’re gonna wait until the last minute to try and complete all of these things. And really the Bible talks over and over about not being lazy or not being slothful. And as we really start looking at this idea of being a procrastinator, sometimes people will say, “Well, I do my best work under the gun.”

But really if you give yourself that leeway to spend more time on a task, like say you have a deadline of Friday and you say you do your best work between four and five o’clock on Fridays, maybe if that deadline was on Tuesday, you would get your best work done between four and five on Tuesday. It really is all about your thinking about time.

If you see this as your identity in time, then I really want you to consider the idea that the overwhelm that you feel that is leading you to procrastinate your tasks, that overwhelm is created by a thought in your mind. That thought might be, “I have so much to do,” that thought might be, “I have everything on my list “that I just need to take a break.”

We kind of give ourselves leeway to rest and we do this in a way that is more not planned. So it’s kind of spontaneous. We want to just relax and take a break. When really if that break isn’t planned, you’re not gonna enjoy it as much. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that also.

The Planner

The last time identity that I wanna share is the planner, and there is an example in the Bible of this that I think is so good because anytime that I talk about planning or making decisions ahead of time, I often get emails from ladies who let me know that they just don’t think that it is right to worry about tomorrow or to think about tomorrow. But really that is just being wise.

So you can plan for tomorrow without worrying about tomorrow. And the story that I have is in Genesis whenever Joseph is placed in Pharaoh’s home because there is going to be a drought, there’s gonna be seven years of famine, and before that seven years of famine there were seven years of plenty. Joseph had the wisdom and the knowledge from the Lord to make plans ahead of time for the famine that was coming. So during those seven years of really plentiful crops and harvest, Joseph planned and stored away all the excess food from this plentiful time into barns so that it was available for the people whenever there was a famine happening.

Now, whenever you are a planner like that, Joseph wasn’t doing it while he is biting his fingernails thinking, “Oh no, what are we gonna do? “How is God gonna take care of us?”

You can plan without worry. I can meal plan for the week without worrying about where my food’s gonna come from. And so if you are concerned that maybe being a planner means that you’re worrying about tomorrow, just consider the idea that planning ahead of time isn’t the same as worrying or feeling anxious about the future.

So which one of those are you? And there probably are plenty more identities over time that people have about time. But these are the three that I see the most often. And usually, someone turns from being a perfectionist or from being a procrastinator into becoming a planner. And what ends up happening whenever you plan is you have more peace.

It’s not because you have everything on your calendar that you have more peace. It’s about the thoughts that you have about all the tasks that are on your to-do list. So once everything is out on paper or once it’s out on an app that you use, you have different thoughts about all of those tasks and that leads to more peace in your life.

Identify Your Priorities

So as you are thinking about your time identity, I also want you to think about your priorities. We’ve identified your time identity. Now let’s identify your real priorities.

What you say that you care about is different than what you really care about. Now let me explain myself a little bit in regards to these priorities. Your priorities, if you say that your priority is something but your actions aren’t reflecting it, then it’s not your real priority.

I want you to think about this idea that so often we think that our priorities are thoughts in our minds. Like I’m thinking that my family is a huge priority for me. Now if the evidence in my life, so the outcome in my life is that I work 15-hour days but I say that my priority is my family, can you see how the evidence of your life, the actions that you’re taking in your life, are showing what your real priority is? Now there’s nothing wrong with work. I enjoy my work, but I also make sure that the outcome of my life is showing my true priorities.

So priorities are… We need to get the priorities out of this idea that they’re just our thoughts and what we think but they’re really the results that we’re getting in our lives. So if you want to know more about how this works, make sure that you check out my free workshop.

It’s called Make More Time. You can access it by going to Ashleyvarner.com/time. It’s a free 20-minute workshop. I condensed all the information that I wanna teach you into 20 minutes because I know that your time is valuable. It’s a completely free workshop to check out. I really hope that you will sign up and just watch this quick video. I guarantee it’s going to give you more hours in your week if you just give me 20 minutes to teach you how to make more time. And in this video, I’m also gonna be teaching about this idea of priorities and how they are really, your priorities, are evidenced by the way that you are spending your time, not what you say that your priorities are.

Now realize that whenever you are looking at your priorities, it has to line up with the actions that you’re taking. Let’s just go back to that example, if your priority is your family, and one way that you show that priority is by tucking your kids into bed every night, maybe one way that you show that priority is you might delegate everything else in your house but the one thing that you wanna do is make sure that you’re there whenever your kids get home from school. Maybe it is that you want to be the one that takes your kids to school. Maybe it is you wanna have dinner at the table every night with your family.

Think about how what your priorities are, what you say that they are, think about how they’re showing up in your day-to-day life. Think about the actions that you’re taking. Do they line up with what you say your priorities are?

Identify Your Time Wasters

The last thing that I wanted to share with you today is to identify your time wasters. Now, this is something that can be really difficult for us, especially if you are a people pleaser or you love to be busy. If you love this idea and this identity of being busy and having like a huge calendar, then I want you to consider the idea of the no-factor.

The No Factor

Learning how to say no is going to be a huge way that you create more time in your life. Not everyone needs 100% of you, 100% of the time. So it’s okay to say no. It’s okay to choose and reassess obligations that you’ve had in the past. So this is something that I’ve had to do very recently in the last few years is to look at the list of obligations in my life, look at the list of commitments in my life, look at the things that I have to do, and then determine, are there things that I can delegate? Are there things I can say no to? Are there things that I, now looking at this list, are there things on my list that I no longer am passionate about? Or are there things that I no longer feel like I am obligated to do? Maybe you’ve served on a committee for a long time and it’s something that no longer really brings joy to you and you need to change that.

Be willing to reassess all the things that are on your plate and determine if there are things that you can delegate or things that you can just flat out say no to and take off of your plate completely.

I want to end this lesson by talking about time wasters that are really just time that is spent avoiding emotion. So if you are feeling a lot of overwhelm in the thoughts that you have about all the tasks that you have to do and the obligations that you have in your life, and that’s leading to a lot of overwhelm, sometimes that emotion, we don’t know what to do with it. We feel overwhelmed and we think that feeling overwhelmed would lead us to doing all the tasks that we have to do, or checking off all those things off of our list.

But so often we avoid that emotion by participating in other kinds of activities. And anything that you do to avoid emotion, the biggest ones that come to my mind are overeating, over-drinking, overspending, spending way too much time on social media or watching TV, if these activities are planned, say you have a plan to watch a certain TV show from seven to eight o’clock in the evening, if it’s planned out, you know that this is what you are going to do, you can enjoy that time.

If you come home from work and you’re super overwhelmed because your house is a mess and there’s just so much to do, and so you sit down in front of the TV because you want to avoid the overwhelm with all of this time that you have, like all of the tasks that you have and all the demands that you have on your time, then what you’re doing is you’re really just avoiding emotions. And this is a huge time-waster for many people. I see it in watching TV. I see it in over shopping. So maybe you’re like really on your phone on Nordstrom buying a bunch of stuff or you’re on social media or whatever it is.

I want you to know that not only are these types of activities wasting your time, but they’re also not fixing the problem of overwhelming.

Whenever you are experiencing and feeling like overwhelmed or really any emotion that you’re trying to avoid, and so you end up doing other things to kind of counteract or kind of avoid that emotion, you’re not fixing the emotion, you’re not getting rid of the emotion. And in fact, I would even venture to say that what you’re doing is you are just adding guilt and more negative emotion on top of the first emotion that you’re trying to avoid.

I really want to encourage you to be paying attention to the way that you spend your time and the reason that you’re spending your time that way. Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with sitting down and watching a TV show. If you’ve planned it out, you’ve been waiting all week for that show to come out or whatever it is, that’s different than just sitting down because you’re overwhelmed and letting time pass you by because you’re not being intentional about it.

I want you to go and take this work and really apply it to your life. I want you to identify your time identity, I want you to identify your priorities, your real priorities, and I want you to identify those time wasters. If you do those three things, you will create more time in your life, and whenever you have more time, you have more freedom, more joy to really just experience the parts of your life that you want to experience. You will have more time to enjoy the things that you love to do, to do the things that God has called you to do, and to really just have the kind of life that you wanna have. Whenever you plan, whenever you are intentional about the way that you spend your time, you end up creating a life that you love, and that’s what I want for you.

All right, I will see you guys next week. Make sure to sign up for the Make More Time workshop. I will see you in there, and I hope that you enjoyed this. If you did, make sure to subscribe, and I will see you next time. Thanks for watching.