Growing businesses deal with the same problem, too many tools, too much back and forth and not enough time. ODU helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform, fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, so your team can spend less time chasing information and focus on growth, whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service. ODU gives you one place to manage your business.
Visit ODU.com to book a demo. It's ODOO.com. Welcome to Heart of the Matter Radio with author and host, Cynthia Elsimmons. How does a godly woman live in a world out of sync?
Cynthia digs into the issues women face in our complex culture to set a path through the chaos. It's for women seeking the elegance of God's wisdom. So prepare yourself to listen, learn and rest. Now here's your host, Cynthia Elsimmons.
What is time? What is time? It impacts us, even controls our lives and choices. We measure it, we count it, but what is it?
I went through scripture this morning and looked up the phrase at the appointed time and I found that listed 13 times in scripture. Don't take that for law because I may have missed one or two, but that's a lot. So God is concerned about time and of course in Ecclesiastes it says, for everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to plug up what was planted. Time is important in what you do when you do it.
There's one more verse that I found that was really important in it's from Ephesians 5, 15 to 16. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil. Have you ever heard someone come to you and say, well, I don't have time to do that. Well, that statement is a little crazy because all of us have the same number of hours in our day and those are important moments for us to do what matters.
Today, I have Cheryl Giesbrit and she is going to talk a little bit about time management. Welcome, Cheryl. Thank you, Cynthia. Welcome to you too.
Teach us a little bit about how we can use our time more wisely. Well, wouldn't it be great, Cynthia, if we could stand on a street corner and ask people to give us the hours that they weren't using or maybe the hours that they wasted? I thought, wow, what a concept, but we all know that we can never do that. I think what we're going to do today is think about some ways that we can sharpen ourselves and some people call it sharpening your axe and, you know, woodcutter would never dare go and cut wood for a wood stove or anything with a dull axe.
And that's what this type of concept of kind of training ourselves or re-training, reinventing our habits so that we can be better at what we do better at using our time. You're already quoted Ephesians 5, 16. I love that scripture because, you know, we all want to make better use of the time that we've been given by God. And I've thought about this many times since, really, my life was given back to me.
I'm a stage four cancer survivor. In 2004, I was told that I had stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. So I did a lot of re-evaluating that whole year. As I was going through chemotherapy, I had three surgeries.
It gave me a lot of time to think about life and think about really whose life is this anyway. And so praise the Lord, God healed me through lots of prayer, of course chemotherapy and my doctor, I followed directions very well that year. But I also just decided when, if God chose to let me live, I want to make good use of my time because really, this is not my life. God has given me a certain amount of days on this earth to live and to serve Him.
And what is it that He wants me to do? So I did a lot of re-evaluating. And I think that's the first place to start, really, is what are your core values? Some people call it a vision statement.
Some people call it, what's your why? What gets you excited? What gets you out of bed in the morning? For some of us, we just love a good, strong cup of coffee.
And we're looking forward to that. But in some ways, I'm just kidding. But I'm also thinking, what is it that motivates us to serve the Lord and why would we want to be better in better control of our time? Now, that's an interesting thought.
You know, I've noticed from my own husband that he is very goal-oriented. And so he really wants to, and that even did set up a list of goals and put them on the bulletin board in the office and so on. But women tend to be a little bit less like that. But let's think about, as women who love God and who want to be wise with our time, what are some things that we should value and put at the very top of our list?
Well, I think for me, it's obviously time with God. I feel like that He's the one that I want to get my marching orders, if you will. He's the one who I serve. So I start out with my quiet time.
And not all people are morning people. I know that sometimes it helps to not have that first thing when you get up. But it really helps set the tone for my day. In fact, I got convicted about it.
As a pastor's wife for years, I had a lot of early morning meetings because I had kids in school and even when I homeschool. I had to get up and out the door early to have my meetings with my people that I was working with. I was counseling women or even discipling different women. And so I go out the door and meet with them before I met with God.
And I thought, there's something wrong with that. So as far as I, for my own personal desires and how kind of I like to set my day up, I have my meeting with him first. I don't think about it as a meeting. I think about it as kind of our time where we, he and I get together, I say, you are my priority.
And when I do that, it's like I'm putting into my personal emotional, spiritual, also my time bank account because it's like the first investment, my first choice of the day is having God tell me how He wants me to spend His time because really, He's given me this life. He's the one that says, okay, you can still keep breathing here. Right. And that we realize that every moment we have is from God.
And I'm sure your illness probably taught you that. Life is precious and you shouldn't be wasting any of it. But yes, and I've had some of the same issues myself because sometimes I have to be out the door early and I find myself trying to drive and pray. And so I'm praying all the time, which is not a bad thing.
But sometimes it does mess up that early morning time, which I'm not a morning person. So it isn't my best time. But it is a good time to set aside if you can. But if not, pray all the time until you get a time by yourself, which is kind of what I do sometimes.
What else would you consider to be a really hugely important issue that you'd put right at the very top? I think it really helps me to plan my day before I get into it. And one thing that I really like to do, it doesn't always happen every single day, but I like to do it the night before. I mean, this for those of us that work out of our homes, like I do and you do, we really have to be on top of the email thing and this texting and Facebook.
And we have to have kind of a schedule of things that we want to accomplish during the day and that maybe I should preface the whole conversation about schedule with what goals do you want to accomplish. Think about a few, maybe three. I call it a priority three. Number one goal that I want to finish for today is finishing editing a manuscript.
That's at the top of my list today. Number two is I'm interviewing someone for one of my friends is writing a book on mentoring and I'm interviewing one of my mentees this afternoon. So I'm preparing interview questions for her so that I can, when I go to meet with her, that I can ask her the right questions and also I'm taking a signature form. I released that this person wants me to send in.
Number three is I'm preparing for someone that's going to start working for me on Wednesday. I'm preparing a list of things that I would like for her to do. Responsibilities. The first thing is just now retired and she only wants to work about eight hours a week and she's a good friend of mine.
So you can see things that might be a negative. I can think of things that I don't want to waste her time but I also have some things in my office that I need done that I know that she can do but is it better for me to do those things or her? So you can see you have to just think through the top priority three that you want to do. And then you can, if you don't get them done today, then put them at the top of the list for the next day.
Right. What about can people that have children? Wouldn't children be on that top somewhere? I think so.
And I am sorry. I didn't think when I homeschooled I had to work in the school thing before I did anything. Everything else. And so I do my things during our lunch break.
Oh, okay. Yeah. And I would my children would know that they were responsible to make the lunch, to clean it up and to do some free reading while I was working on my freelance writing projects or scheduling to speak for a church or whatever it was that I needed to do. Usually we'd be at home together even on the same dining room table.
My office at one end in their school at the other end and that was a fine thing to do. It was and they knew they understood our boundaries and my responsibilities as well. That's something I'm always telling women that they can do is that they need to see those children as a resource. So you train them to do the household chores and so on so that they can kind of free you up.
Now, it doesn't mean you don't ever check behind it because my kids would do great for a while and then all of a sudden they would stop. They start leaving things out. That's part of life. And they don't learn that in school, which they should learn in school.
You should be teaching kids to clean vacuum, wallpaper and all kinds of lovely things like that. Make that part of your life. It really does help both of you and you're kind of pulling together. So that's a really good one.
Your husband, I'm sure you're married now, right? Yes. I got remarried after my first husband was killed in an accident. And so he is just an amazing man.
He does things that I never knew and did for themselves like make his own lunch. He makes a chin and it's just as remarkable to me. But he also is gone most of the day. So what I do with him though is we make it a priority to pray together before he leaves for work.
And we've started out with a praise. We praise the Lord together. We try and sing. We don't really sound that good and we are not singers by church service or anything like that.
We just know how important it is to worship together. So even out here, if I turn on the radio, I get kind of distracted. I try and just when I come out to my work or I'm doing things around the house, I try and bring a word of praise into what I'm doing. It really helps my attitude.
But it also reminds me who I'm doing this for. It's all about God. It's all about he's wanting me to focus on him and worship him, whatever I'm doing. Whether it's cleaning my bathroom, putting in a load of laundry in between, taking care of my husband by praying with him and helping him take his bags out to the car.
He has several briefcases of the so I will walk with him out to the car and we usually pray together before he leaves for work in the morning. I think that is a great thing. I want you to share how that impacts your relationship. Well, we are just still newlyweds.
We'll be married two years in April. I think when God asked me to consider getting remarried, it was like, Lord, how can I serve this man? It's different than I was married to a pastor. My first husband was a pastor of 28 years.
I kind of knew what to do as a pastor's wife. I'm working in the church in a lot of different ways, but also kind of picking up slack where he needed me to. It's different for me being married to a businessman and it's good. I've really had to think about ways that he needs for me to love him because he's very self-sufficient.
This man took care of his ailing wife who had breast cancer. She was sick for five years. He was used to doing everything around the house. That meant he would hire the housekeepers.
He would do the house cleaning as well, make the meals. I just asked the Lord, what does he need for me? He'll tell me if I'm overdoing it for him. He's like, you're not my mother.
You don't need to do that for me. He's been good about telling me. It wasn't like I was patronizing at all. I wanted to show him love.
That was the thing with our praying together before he leaves for work, singing together, also just helping him not have to make. If I didn't help him with his briefcases, he would be making three trips out to his car. He doesn't need to do that. I can help him, especially when I know he leaves and then my walkout to my office isn't that far.
I don't get in my car and go to the office like he does. Well, I had a husband who was sick for a period of time. The relationship changed during that time because I had to do some of the nursing sort of things when you take care of someone, but it became very clear at one point that I had to back office he started to get well. His men don't want to be mother if they're not sick.
It was different, but I did it and we went and I made my mistakes, but I learned a lot from that. Talk a little bit about, is we as women, I believe that every woman should have a ministry of sorts using her gift. Can you talk about that in terms of time management goals and so on? Yes, I think you find out more about what your gift is the more you use it.
I didn't realize that God had given me amazing gifts for administration until I had to go back to work, meaning I had to. I wanted to help my family income when my husband and I, my first husband and I had some financial problems and this was when my son was two, he's now 29. So this was a very long time ago, but what I found out was that I had to force myself to be more organized and I had to look for shortcuts and it wasn't getting out of work. It was, you know, what's the best way for me to help our family stay functional when I was at home doing the household stuff like I was used to doing.
And so what happened with me was it worked best for me to do as much as I could the night before and then the mornings got to be a lot easier. You know, mornings are very tough, but mornings really do set the tone of our day and that's why it's so important to do a little pre-planning the night before or even early, you know, if you can do it, if you can get up any earlier than your family, but for most of us, that's just not reasonable, especially if you are a mother with young children who, if you're kids of an apple night, you just feel like I can't get up any earlier because I'm exhausted. So I think it's a matter of understanding what your gifts are, how you can contribute and actually thinking that some of the ways that you're serving the Lord might be to your family for now. And I think for women, we have seasons of our lives for a while.
I was a working mom with two little kids and then I was able to come home and that's when for about the first year I was working as a volunteer within the school and seeing ways that I could help out in my kids' classrooms. But then after that, God really called us as a family to come home and I homeschooled my own for about five years. Yeah, it was a total of about six, but it was something that I didn't understand that God had prepared me for through these other opportunities. My ministry's changed because at first I think when I was a working mom, my ministry was to the mothers, the other believers that were at my job.
And then as a mom who had kids in school, I had more time for the teacher and I found out that there were people that had needs. Women who were overwhelmed and wondered how they could handle the challenges that we have as women and some didn't know Jesus as their Savior. So I would actually ask them if I could pray for them and they didn't know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, but they allowed me to pray for them. So I realized that, wow, I really did care about the needs.
So that was, I didn't think of it as a ministry at the time, but I think it probably indeed was because people need to know that God is just a prayer away. And then when I came home to home school, it was wonderful because I got to see that God had allowed me this opportunity to be a bigger part of my children's, not only their education, but their character development and their spiritual development. And it was wonderful for me to see that as a ministry. But I had to also let go of something else that at the church they had asked me to do.
And I had to basically say, I don't think I can do this. I felt too spread out and it was a disappointment to the women at my church who had asked me to take on a leadership role there, but I knew that I just couldn't do it all. Right, right. You have commented that there were several things about time that kind of helped us understand and understand our priorities.
Six things, perishable, expensive, measurable, continuous, irreversible, and irreplaceable. Can you talk about those just a little? Yeah, I think a scripture that I remember came up when I was going through cancer was Psalm 90 verse 1. You probably know that one, I'm sorry, Psalm 90 verse 12.
And it's the prayer of Moses. And he talks about it's about letting God teach us to number our days so that we will present to him a heart of wisdom. Because we don't know, none of us really know how long we have on this earth. But if we go to God in the morning or whenever we can ask him for help, we can ask him how he wants us to spend our time and where he wants us to focus our efforts.
And for some, it's, you know, your ministry is your family for a while, your ministry, and really your ministry is always for your family. But I'm talking about when your kids are underneath your roof. You know, I think it changes once they're adults. It does because they're not here.
But, but I think as far as letting God show, letting, letting God show us what he wants for us and asking him for help. We need God. We need him to show us how to redeem the time because the days are evil. Time is going to be, is going to be over before we know it with our children.
That's what perishable is about. Perishable means that it's, it's expendable and it won't, what we have to do today, maybe here tomorrow if we don't get it done. But, but basically the time that we have with the people that are underneath our own focus points right now, they'll be gone. Some of us have children that are younger and that they're going to grow up and we need to make good use of the time that they're with us.
Time is expensive because we cannot gain it back once it's gone. But it's also really valuable to ask God how he wants us to spend that time. Measurable that talks about goals that we need to have defined goals that are specific and measurable. Otherwise, we won't know if we've achieved some of the things we've set out to do.
Continuous, I think this has the realm of eternity. I think about what every day am I going to do today that has value for eternity. I talked about the lady that asked me to pray for her. I asked her if I could pray for her on the public school campus.
And that was something that I remember even today. And I think I was obedient, but I don't know if it made a difference for her eternity. I hope it does. But there are lots of opportunities that we have to do those types of things during each one of our day, whether or not we're standing in line at the grocery store or waiting on a prayer request to be answered or a bill to pay.
Is it continuous? Is it eternal? That's a better word. I think that's a good question for us to ask.
All of those things, like am I doing something right now that's going to matter 50 years from now? Is this going to matter for eternity? And I think allowing ourselves even time to rest can be part of that because it's so important that we do have time that we're not always putting out, but that we have ourselves time to rest. So I think all those things would help us to focus our mind on what is the most important.
You think of life in terms of your ultimate demise. When you get to your bed, to your death bed, what are you going to be glad that you did? I know. And that brings us to the next one, the irreversible.
Irreversible. What is it that you, I don't want to live a life with regret as far as making decisions. I know sometimes if you second guessed a decision, you think, oh, why did that go down that way? You know, shouldn't have done this.
And you know, we can't really do that to ourselves. That's a trap that the enemy gets us into. But we can also learn from those things that we wish we wouldn't have done. But then the last thing is irreplaceable, irreplaceable.
I just think, oh, we've got to, you know, that movie. I don't know if you remember that one, Dead Poets Society, where he stood on the top of the desk and he said, sees the day boys. And basically that's what it's all about. It's not about, you know, living life lustfully.
It's about saying, this is God's plan for me. This is God's life. I want to be filled up to overflowing with him so that I am effective for his kingdom work and continue to build the kingdom. Right.
Exactly. What about being willing to say no? If something is you can't do it, let's talk about how we can do that. Because that's a hard thing for a lot of women to do.
It's so hard. I think it comes back to the core values. And that's really, I'm in a situation right now where I had to call a meeting with the group that I'm working with. And basically, we're not functioning well as a team because we're, there are lots of job descriptions that are not being followed.
And we're not really sure of who's doing what when. And it's about understanding what role each person needs to play. And I think if we know what role we are supposed to be playing within our family unit, within our ministry, within our jobs, then it's much easier for us to feel like if that doesn't fit, maybe like the ministry that I had to move away from. Once I started homeschooling, I just knew that it would, the ministry would require a lot of meetings, a lot of interruptions, a lot of phone calls that I didn't want to partake in because I wanted to stay focused on my new call, which I knew was obvious that I had to do.
So if you know what you're called to do and what you're supposed to do, then you can keep interruptions to a minimum. You can also say no to obvious things that you feel like this is not what I'm called to do. This is not in my realm of desire, but it's asking God, you know, well, maybe I should consider doing this. Maybe it is.
Maybe it's something that he wants me to do. And if it is, then you'll feel it's going to align with these four questions. The four questions are who are you in Christ? And this is a whole other section on vision statement, mission statement, understanding your core values.
You ask yourself four questions. Who are you in Christ? What unique gifts and abilities has God given you to serve him? Because of that, number two, what has God called you to do?
Number three, what do you want and what motivates you? Number four, who have you been called a minister? And if you understand your core values and your mission statement, maybe you think, oh, I'm just a person who is at home with my children. I don't need a mission statement.
Well, it helps you say no. Exactly what you're supposed to be doing. It really helps you to say, you know, maybe you can call me back again next year if I'm still, you know, an option for you. I had to do this a year ago when somebody asked me to take over a ministry that I could have done.
I could have done a great job, but it really wasn't the thing that was going to beat my heart or it was just something that I thought, no, I'm not the one. It's new, but it was hard to disappoint people. And that's the hardest thing is just to say, sorry. Well, when is it time to ask for help?
Oh boy, that's a really good question. I think anytime we feel overwhelmed with what we're doing, if we feel panic attacks, if we feel depressed, it's time to not only tell your husband what's going on, but tell a close friend. Some people are really close to their mom or one of the pastor's wives at their church, but just let somebody in. I think the enemy's biggest lie for women is that nobody will understand.
So why would you want to tell them about what's going on with you? But I know from personal experience, there was a time in my life that I was very depressed. I couldn't get up out of bed. I was having, I couldn't sleep at night.
I had a lot of different things happening and I didn't understand what actually was going on until I told my husband about it and we sought professional help through a counselor. And it was great to see that I wasn't going crazy, that I could get better and he knew what to do to help me. So with these two strong men in my life, I was able to let God in to help me through some difficult things that I hadn't dealt with us that had happened to me when I was a teenager. So when if you have anything like that that comes up, I mean, that's very extreme, but I can tell you that you need to pay attention.
Something like that, where you're having meltdowns, because for me it was, it started with I just couldn't stop crying and feelings of insecurity can be part of it. And those have been going on for me with me for a very long time, but I didn't pay attention. But also fear, I had a lot of fear, I had anxiety, pay attention to those things and invite someone into your feelings and ask them, you know, what do you think about this? Am I going crazy?
And no, you're not, but you need to tell somebody about it. That's the first thing to healing is being honest. Okay. What value do you see in a 24 hour time log?
How could that help someone get more organized? Well, that is wonderful that you ask that because it has to do with the schedule thing that I talked about, planning out kind of your day, the night before or the morning of. And I'm not saying that you have to stick with the schedule, but when you do a time log, when you write down every hour or every 30 minute increment of time, how you spend your day, you are going to be amazed about how much time that you waste. Do you know that there's been a recent study done that does this that have iPhones?
Yes, I do. We check it up to 150 times a day. Oh, my goodness. That's what I did not know that.
So here's what I'm doing. I'm going to just tell you that this is my first day and I've tried this unsuccessfully in the past, but today I've decided I'm only going to check it in the between eight and nine. When I check my email, I check my iPhone. Now this is difficult because I have six adult children actually with their spouses, there's 12 of them that could potentially text me.
So I may be missing a text, but I'm willing to do it because I feel that I waste too much time using my iPhone. So if you use the time log, what you're doing is you're writing down how you spend your time for 24 hours so that you can see where you are wasting time or where you can double up on a few things. One way to double up is when you go somewhere and maybe you're taking your child to an appointment, I used to have kids in piano lessons. And one of the deadest times was when I would sit there at the lesson while they were playing.
So I had two kids and for 30 minutes, I would sit and wait for one and then they'd switch. So I'd be there for over an hour and that didn't count the time traveling to and from the piano lesson. So I would be creative and I'd take different projects that I knew that I could only do or I would only do while I was waiting in the piano waiting room. And so I do things like writing thank you notes or catching up on some recipe copying or just different little things that I would probably not have done otherwise had I not been sitting there and then I keep them in a bag by the door.
So there would be no reason for me not to have them. And sometimes I just leave them in my car for weeks and weeks. So and I'm sure that some of you have ideas about that too don't you? Yes, I have done that.
I have done plenty of things in waiting rooms and so on. We would all go to the panel together because I had five kids. Let's see, I guess the time I had the fifth one, we might have not been doing the older one, but I mean, we just all went to the panel and we all came home. Then the kids exercised together and all go together and then all come home.
So it made it a lot easier than having to go one kid here, one kid there, one kid there and try to see what they're both doing and so on. I could get into that. So Cheryl, I want to thank you for your time. You've given us a lot of great ideas on how to use time wisely.
Can you give me some input about where we could find you on the internet? You can find Cheryl on her website. It's called from ashestobuty.com. She has lots of information there.
She also has a test you can take to find out if you're doing better, if you're improving and she'd love to know how you're doing. So you can find her there. Thank you, Cheryl. We really appreciate your time.
You've been listening to Heart of the Matter Radio with Cynthia Elsimitz. Your comments and questions are always welcome. Contact us at Cynthia at CLSimons.com. We'd love to hear from you, whether you're an author, young mom, a mother of teens, a homeschool mother or an empty nester.
Join us next time as Cynthia once again sets a path to grow in wisdom and a closer walk with a savior here on Heart of the Matter Radio.