Video Transcript: How to Manage part 1 - Time

All right, you got a business running, hallelujah. I mean, getting going is the  hardest part. So if you've tried, if you've only tested, some things good for you  just I want to encourage you just step out in faith nothing is going to happen  unless you start trying and fail and fail, but learn and change and adapt. Okay,  let's say you've done that. You're getting things off the ground. Maybe it's even  working a little bit, if it is then we need to talk about managing, how to manage a business. Now we're going to look at three videos. We're going to spend one  week on this topic. There's a whole course that I did on management, and half  of it deals with the small little book called Philemon. So if you're really going to  get going in this management thing, you should really take a whole course.  Anyway, we're going to talk about management management for three sessions. So how to manage a business. Part One, a manager's favorite verse in the Bible is I Corinthians 14:40, but everything should be done in a fitting and an orderly  way, a fitting and an orderly way. This. This verse is the favorite of people at my  denomination, because we are a group of people that like to do things in a fitting and orderly way, and sometimes we are sort of arranging the chairs on the deck  of the Titanic as it's going down. Titanic is going down, but we're going to have  every chair in its proper place. So order is not everything, but order is important.  Why is that? Why manage number one business is made up of many parts that  happen at different times. There's selling, there's ordering, there's shipping,  there's talking to customers, there's assembling products, and all these things  have their own timing. And as things start growing, it starts getting more and  more complicated. At first you can keep it all in your head. The average person  can only keep track of so many things. A telephone number is seven digits, and  if I give you a telephone number here, I'll give you mine, 616-893-7516, can you  repeat that? Probably. Well, say it again. 616-893-7516, now some of you that  are really good can do it, but if I had a 20 digit number, you couldn't do it. You  wouldn't be able to hold onto it. Well, in a business as it's growing, there's more  than 20 things to keep track of. Sometimes. Now we keep track of seven things  over here and seven things in this thing, and seven of that we can do it, but  ultimately it fails and we forget things, and so we have to write them down. Well,  that's what people do. As things get more complicated, they just write them in  one place, but soon you have 50 things written down, and you need to start  organizing. It's like some of you people that have a desk, and some of you  manage by the mess on your desk. You have 50 things on your desk, and let's  see, I had that piece of paper, I think I put it over in this corner, and that's how  you do it. Instead of getting folders that that are organized in some way that you  can actually keep track of more things, someone has to coordinate the parts the  time, the things, the people that make everything happen. Now the problem is a  lot of inventors, people that are salesman type people, people that are out there  generally, are not great at managing generally, it's not the same kind of person,  or a person that's very orderly and likes everything done decently in order isn't 

very risk taking isn't very creative. Now maybe you have both, and that's that's a great combination, but a lot of times it isn't the same person, so you might need  help in this area. We're going to look at three key management areas. We're  going to look at time, how to manage time, how to manage money, and how to  manage people. With this session, we're going to look at time. Why manage  your time? Rick Warren, pretty successful pastor here in the United States. He  said this, time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of  it. We're all on this planet, 70, 80, 90 years, and that's it. Everything else we can  replace, but time keeps drifting away. You can't replace time. We only have so  much of it. Make the most of your time. Psalm 90:12. Teach us to number our  days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Ephesians 5:15-17. So then be  careful how you live. Do not be unwise, but wise making the best use of your  time. Whose time is it? I love this one Psalm 31 my times are in your hands. My  times are in your hands. Proverbs 27:1 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do  not know what a day may bring. And I put an example of a planner back in 1996  Henry Reyenga and I both moved from our church plants, we moved to  Chicago, we started our own nonprofit, and I had taken a management class  and a time management thing, and I told this story in an earlier video, but we  made that planner, remember we we decided to make a planner that had verses in it, and our goal was to make a planner that really followed These two verses.  My times are in your hands. Before we came up with our Christian planner, I had a planner, and I was putting God into one of my To Do lists. I will pray, I will do  my devotions, and I made that one line in my to do list. So I take the infinite  God, the God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and I limit him to one  line in my planner, Lord, I'm going to squeeze you into my times. We thought,  no, let's make the whole planner God's. And we squeeze our stuff, our to do list,  the things that we're going to do, we're going to squeeze that into him, into what  he's all about. Then finally, we put this verse, Proverbs 27:1. We put this at the  end of our we had a to do list that we called a prayer list. Your to do list is your  prayer list, because anything that you're going to do today, why wouldn't you  want God to bless you? Put it before God. God, I'm planning to do all these  things, please bless this endeavor. So the to do list is my prayer list, and at the  end of that, we put this verse, Because Lord, I'm not, I'm coming to you and I'm  presenting my to do list, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna assume anything. I'm  not telling you what to do. I'm in the humble chair, and I'm asking that you bless  what it is that I'm trying to do, because I don't know what tomorrow brings. I'm  relying on you time as it relates to goals. A goal is a desired result or possible  outcome that a person or a system envisions, plans and commitments to  achieve a personal or organizational desired end point in some sort of assumed  development. So A goal is a broad thing. We're going to try to sell this product to as many customers as we can, or we're going to try to sell and make a profit  with this service. That's a broad goal. Or my goal is to lose weight or to get in 

shape. Goals are big things that have many, many, many different steps. Lot of  times when we get up in the morning, we write in on our to do list all the  individual things that we're going to do, but maybe we're wasting our time doing  all those little things. What goal do you have in mind with all this stuff? So  sometimes you get a step back and go, What are the goals of this company?  The big, major goals that we're trying to do time as it relates to tasks or projects.  A task or project, project management is an activity that needs to be  accomplished within a defined period of time or by a deadline. So I have this  goal of selling planners. But now I have a task of printing them, of selling them,  of assembling them, of shipping. I have all this. I have this task of actually  making something happen. So goal is this broad thing, a task now is. Sort of like the next step. Now, tasks still have many steps to them. The task of selling a  planner, it's little less than a goal, but it's this task, and I have to figure it out.  Now, how does one go about this task? And that is time as it relates to steps. So we have goals that's big and broad. Then within goals, there are certain tasks  that we must accomplish to meet those goals by certain times. And then each  task has its individual steps. If I have to do step one, I first have to talk to the  printer, I have to get a price. I have to figure out whether that's good, maybe I  can find a competitor, then I have to decide how many are gonna get printed.  You know, there's all these steps to this particular task, and when's it going to  happen? Where am I going to put them? So there's a lot of steps to each  individual task. A step is a specific thing that must be done contributing to some  task. When people use planners, they often fill their pages with many steps,  maybe a few tasks, but seldom goals. So if you really want to grab hold of your  time management, you have to think first broadly. What are the broad goals of  my life? What are the broad goals of this business that I'm starting. Secondly,  what are the tasks that I must engage in to accomplish these goals? What are  the deadlines? How's this going to happen? And then finally, each task has to  have steps, and you have to keep track of all three of these. Keep track of all  three. A lot of times, people will concentrate on one. They just put the broad  goal, but there's no tasks or steps, so the goals never happen, or people have  all these steps, but they lose track of why they're even doing what they're doing.  Particular system. This is the one I took, this time management thing. It was this  big, long seminary seminar all day long, and blah, blah, this, that, and the next  thing, a lot of stuff that most people know. But the one thing that I got out of the  whole seminar I'm going to give to you, it's called the tickler system. How does  something come back to me? A lot of times, what we, most of us do is we, we  we have all this stuff that we should do, and sometimes we write it down,  sometimes we don't, but we have this whole mountain of things that we should  do. Some of those things are things we should do today, some of those things  we should do next week. Some of these things are a month from now. Some of  these things are three months from now, but they're all just sitting there. They're 

all sitting like a dark cloud hanging over us and and we can't hold on to them.  And then we get to a point and we forgot to do it. And even when we're on top of things, there's this weight that's always on our shoulders, because we don't, we  don't know, we can't let go of it. I have this thing that I have to have done next  month, and it just sits there on top of me. So the tickler system is designed to  help you. You know, have all these things, but there's certain things I don't need  to think about again until, you know, like two weeks from now. So how does the  tickler system work? For example, someone will call me and they'll want  something they you know, hey, in six weeks, we're going to have a men's  retreat. That's what's happening now. At our church, we have a men's thing in  six weeks. Okay, that thing is just hanging I have to come up with the whole  what are we going to do? What are we going to study and all of that. So there it  is, and it just sits over me. Now, instead of having it sit over me for the next six  weeks, what I need to do is just get out my calendar or my schedule and say to  myself, when do I want to deal with this? I don't have to deal with it today. I don't  have to deal with it tomorrow. When do I really want to deal with this? Well, I'm  going to deal with it next Wednesday. So what I do in my planner is I write, you  know, today I just write in the margins. Okay, retreat. Have to come up with  study all the all their relevant details I put there in today. I just write it all in phone numbers, anything associated, everything that I know about this. I'm just going  to put in today's thing. But when do I want to look at this again? I just advance in my planner two weeks in advance, and I put see today's date, you know, see,  what is it? February 2. So I'll just put in, you know, I'll put February. I don't want  to think about it in February. So I go to my planner, I go to a page where  February is, and then in the to do list. I say, See February 2, and now I don't  have to think about it again for the next two weeks. I don't think about it. I don't  worry about it. Why? Because when I want to think about it, worry about it. It will  come to me automatically. I just go through my life all of a sudden. I'll get to  page, or I'll get to February 12. I'll open it up. Oh, there's something already  there. See, February 2, I forget what that is. I go to February 2. There's all the  information about the men's retreat. I gotta do the men's retreat. See, then, see,  I can, I can just, I can tell my planner when I want to think about it again. So  when things happen to me, someone calls they want something. There's  something that I should do. I don't just add it to my to do list. And now I have 20  things in my to do list every single day, and I don't get to half of them. I decide  when it comes to me. When do I want to deal with this? I don't have to deal with  this for two months. I'm going to put it two months from now, and then I'll deal  with it. See, then it's off my mind. It's not like this weight oppressing me,  because it's taken care of. The information all is all there, and it will come back  to me when I want it to come back to me, not randomly, and then I don't have to  worry about forgetting it. Try it. If you just try it, I think you'll like this system. All  right, there's different ways of managing your time. There's calendar time 

management. So you look at the whole calendar, and you can do this particular  system with a calendar. You know, this is February, and here's March. What are  the things that I got to do? Here's the steps, here's the task, and you try to  squeeze it all into a calendar. It's one approach, a topical To Do List, time  management. I have one on my phone. It's got stuff for my church, personal  projects, any kind of topic that you want. So I can just list the things that I have  to do under topics. Then there's project time management. Okay, this project  and it's many, many, many steps. How am I going? How am I going to lay this  project over some kind of a timeline? I have to have this done by this week.  Then it has to go to the printer here. That takes three days, and so I have to  outline my project in terms of what needs to be done. And a lot of times it's  collaborating with other people, so you have to involve them. They have to know what the whole plan is so everything can get done together. All right, so that's  management time. Next we're going to look at how to manage finances and  people.