February 3, 2025 • 33 mins
Have you ever wondered how you can juggle a bustling career, family responsibilities, and personal time without feeling overwhelmed? This episode explores the Pareto Principle, emphasizing that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. We discuss goal-setting strategies based on this principle, the importance of prioritizing meaningful relationships, and practical tips for managing time effectively.
With wisdom drawn from Psalm 90, Ephesians 5, and Mary and Martha from the book of Luke we reflect on the true worth of time, offering practical tips on goal setting and prioritizing the things that truly matter.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Exhorter podcast, where we aim
to stir up love and good worksthrough bite-sized biblical
discussion.
Welcome back again and we haveanother topic for you, nate.
Nate will be leading us offtoday.
What are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay, well, I'm excited about this because it is
something that I have reallyworked on and I'm continuing to
work on in the past few months.
So I have two jobs I have myfull-time teaching job and then
I also work for a tech companyon the side and I have three
(00:42):
kids and a wife and wehomeschool and blah, blah blah.
So I just don't have a wholelot of time.
I find myself very, very busyand I think a lot of I'm sure a
lot of you listening findyourself just very, very busy
and there are certain thingsthat you want to do that you're
unable to do and maybe certainthings you know that you do that
you're like well, that'sprobably useless and not getting
(01:03):
me the results that I want.
Anyways, a friend of minesuggested a book to me, and the
book was all about a principlethat I had heard about but
hadn't really delved into, divedinto very much, and it's called
the Pareto principle.
It's this idea that 80% of yourresults come from 20% of your
(01:27):
actions, and I thought aboutthat and it resonated with me.
It made a lot of sense.
There are a small number ofthings that we do that result in
the vast majority of theresults that we get, or the
results that we want to see.
And so why does that matter?
My wife and I were settinggoals this year, and do you guys
(01:52):
ever like have a lot of?
Do you ever realize how manythings you want?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Want to achieve in general.
Yeah, have you ever made?
Have?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
you ever, just like, made a list of the things that
you want to do or want to buy?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I generally stay away from feeling sad about myself,
so I want to Jeep, oh, you'vebeen talking about that for
years.
Like years.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I, oh yeah, I can.
I'm too obsessed with it.
Have you ever made a list of,like the projects that you want
to do around your property?
Yes, no, because there's toomany of them.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Okay, yeah, okay.
That's what happened whenAshley and I made goal, set our
goals this year.
It was like I want to do all ofthese things and I heard
someone say one time if you havemore than three goals, you
don't have any right, becauseyou just you're.
You're too drawn out, you'retoo focused on too many
different things.
So then I started to think okay, let's apply this Pareto
(02:49):
principle, the 80-20 rule, tothis list of goals that we want
to achieve and cut it down to asize that is manageable.
And I think that there's abiblical principle here, with
the Pareto principle of 20% ofthe things we do produce 80% of
the results.
So in Psalm 90, verse 12, thewriter says so teach us to
(03:13):
number our days that we may geta heart of wisdom.
Just this idea that our timehere, time here, is valuable.
It is short and we need to makethe best use of our time.
And that's verse 2 in Ephesians5, verse 15, that we're told to
(03:34):
make the best use of our time,and so turning 39 has made me
number my days like I never havebefore.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about Ephesians 5.
Yeah 15 to 16.
Just making the best use ofyour days yeah, timing as
fleeting as possible, yeah, mykids are old enough that having
different types of conversationswith them these days and trying
to create better habits andgenerally around their attitude
(04:05):
about things.
And so we did some resolutionsand we all chose three things we
wanted to improve upon or dobetter this year, and then we
chose one for each of us.
I just kind of passed thepapers around and my family just
wanted more time for me thisyear, and it was kind of
daunting because everyone'sanswer was the same right, which
(04:28):
, if it's.
You know, one person wants onething, another one's another
thing, but they all want thesame thing.
You're starting to realize, okay, well, what am I doing with my
time?
Or maybe they just love me thatmuch and you know they got a
lot of dad.
They want more.
It's probably not that, butit's probably okay.
Making more, um, more time andthat's the thing too is
(04:49):
sometimes we can focus on whatwe want to achieve, and all the
things we want to achieve, yeah,it was really good to um hand
that off to the people I lovethe most and care about the most
and want my time to bemeaningful to them.
And so knowing what they wouldwant from me and that was nice
(05:12):
too, because at that point, ifI'm measuring how much I've
achieved this year, next year,knowing that maybe I made their
lives better, you know, andachieved something that was
valuable to them, I think thatwill feel a lot more
satisfaction than checking fiveor ten things off of a checklist
(05:35):
that I felt maybe had somevalue.
Yeah, so I'm looking forward tothat and you know it's a work
in progress, as resolutions andthose things are.
I think it's just the firstyear into it, so we'll see how
it goes.
But they're not asking for toomuch, you know, from me Well,
you bring up an interestingpoint.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
You're kind of talking about the value of your
time, yeah, and teachingeconomics.
We in my class we often get tothe time versus money debate,
and one of the things that wastaught to me a few years ago is
that it's not time versus money,it's life versus money, because
(06:14):
when you are giving your timeto something that's literally
your life, the time that youspend is the life that you spend
, and so I've started talkingwith my students about when
you're trading time for dollars,you're not trading just your
time, you're trading your lifefor those dollars.
So what are you going to dowith that?
(06:34):
Because that's obviouslyimportant, so it's like your
life is worth what.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, like you're going to spend your time in that
median job for that much timewhere you're gonna find your way
to make your life more valuablebecause so you can spend the
same but make more or spend lesstime making the same money.
You know, as an entrepreneur inthe past and doing different
things, I think I didn't reallyhave a good, healthy mentality
about what my my time was worth.
(07:01):
Yeah, with kids growing, kidsgrowing older and the whole
family you know family of fiveand I feel like it's a lot
easier to see what your time isworth.
Yeah, and it's a lot easier tosay yes or no to people based
upon that time I used to want tosay yes to everything.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So when it comes to, like setting goals for the year,
looking ahead to what it is youwant to accomplish.
How do you guys determine whatit is that you want to do?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I don't do good at setting goals.
I think my problem is I thinkof all these things, I think of
the results that I want, butthen I fail to make a good plan
and I end up just gettingoverwhelmed because I'm trying
to do it all at the same time,like I'm trying to jump over the
Grand Canyon in one leap orsomething.
(07:51):
And then I just end up failingat goal setting because I
haven't made achievable goalsand I haven't focused my goals.
Nate, it sounds like whatyou're describing is what my dad
always used to tell me, and Ididn't understand this as a kid
and I'm only just now seeing thevalue of it.
He would always tell me, lessis more.
(08:13):
And that's what it sounds likeyou're describing here is that
if you focus and maybe if I tryfocusing my attention on fewer
goals three or less and work onactually achieving those goals
because three goals that I valueabove all others, that's an
(08:34):
attainable objective, sure, andthen I would get a sense of
accomplishment and be able tomove on to more.
So is this kind of a less ismore?
Is that really the core of thisteaching here?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
So I hadn't really thought about that particular
phrase, but I think it is veryapplicable.
I think that is applicable here.
It's backwards design.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
If this is true, what you realize at the end of the
year.
Let's say you had some goalsfor your year.
But you realize at the end ofthe year let's say you had some
goals for your year.
You've realized at the end ofthe year, all the things that
(09:19):
you achieve that matteredresulted from the smaller or
more targeted amount of work inthis area here, this 20%.
And so this 20%, all my timeand effort there, made me the
most happy or made me the mostconnected to people, or maybe
the most time focusing on God.
So at the end of the day, whatis that 20% for everyone?
And kind of identifying toshove off the rest of it and
focus in on that 20% and do thatwith more time.
I mean that's the idea.
It's like not keeping it as 20%.
It's removing the 80%.
(09:39):
That didn't get you right.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Well, it's not always removing the entire 80%.
That's not getting you as muchresult, because and this is gets
kind of confusing with numbersbut it says that 20% of your
inputs gets you 80% of yourresults.
Well, the 80% of your inputs,that gets you the 20% of your
results.
That doesn't mean that thoseare necessarily bad.
They're just like eating andsleeping Not as effective.
(10:04):
They're just not as effectiveas all that time I wasted
sleeping.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know whyyou did that, john.
That's just not as effective asthat.
You know small 20 and so like Ithink about the uh, the
apostles in acts, chapter six,when the greek-speaking widows
were being overlooked, and Ithink it was Peter who stood up
(10:27):
and said we're not going to stoppreaching and teaching to take
care of this.
So you guys pick men from amongyou who can handle this
situation and I look at that asPeter was applying the 80-20
rule or it's really justprioritizing.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It wasn't to say that feeding the taking care of the
widows was an unimportant taskand, to be honest, when you look
at the qualifications for thoseseven men, they seem
overqualified for that job.
You're distributing eithermoney or food to widows, but
they needed to be full of theHoly Spirit and I'm thinking
well, even they seemoverqualified.
(11:07):
They should delegate this tosomeone else.
It's a very simple task, but no, it was an important task and
they still needed people thatwere of high quality and high
caliber to take care of it, butalso as an apostle.
There's only 12 of them andthey had things that only
(11:28):
apostles could do, and theyshouldn't be splitting their
time doing things that otherpeople could do, because
apostles, they can't get someoneelse to fill in for them as
apostles.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
For them, it was going to be a better result if
they spent their time focusingon preaching and teaching as
opposed to distributing food.
I'm not saying thatdistributing of the food was bad
in any way.
It just wasn't going to getthem the result that the most
bang for their buck.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I'm thinking in terms of evangelism too.
Looking at my efforts, the lastcouple years, I've tried some
different things.
I paid for a meetupsubscription and had some
meetups and did get someparticipation from folks outside
of our church, folks from thecommunity, coming into our
meetup studies, recurring visits, people that showed a pretty
(12:20):
good interest and had some greatconversations, some great Bible
studies with people.
It was at a Starbucks, but thatdidn't produce a lot of
long-term results.
That didn't get a lot of people.
Um, you know, after a whilepeople would stop coming and
maybe someone else would show upand I'd get them for a couple
of weeks at a meetup study, butthey weren't really interested
in um, learning more about goingdeep.
(12:44):
Yeah, yeah, it didn't go veryfar.
The most successful studies I'vehad were people that have
visited our church.
They already have enoughinterest that they've taken the
step to come visit.
They filled out a visitor'scard, and so I tend to focus my
efforts largely on when I, whenI get a visitor's card.
(13:05):
When I get someone, either theyknow someone here, they've been
invited or they just happenedto to pass by and wanted to
visit because they're curious.
Yeah, those are the people thatalready have a little skin in
the game and those studies tendto, so I prioritize those.
But it doesn't mean I'vestopped doing the meetups for
now, and you could put that inthe same category as, say, door
(13:28):
knocking or passing out flyersor things like that.
It's not saying it's a waste oftime, but if it's taking me
away, if I'm too busy doing thatand getting no results, that I
don't have time to follow upwhen we get an actual visitor
here that shows an interest,then I've missed my priorities.
(13:49):
Does that sound like a goodapplication of this concept?
That's 100% accurate.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You are basically saying I did all of these things
and it's not that it was a badthing and maybe it was a good
thing and maybe in the long runthere will be some sort of
effect from that, but itcertainly didn't have the result
or impact that prioritizingstudies with visitors who are
coming of their own volition hashad.
(14:17):
Yeah, that's a perfectapplication of the 80-20 rule,
focusing on what produces theresults.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Now I'm coming into this episode more as a learner.
I've heard about this beforethe 80-20 idea, or what's the
official name you gave it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
It's the Pareto principle and so it comes from
an Italian economist in the late1800s who was studying land
distribution and he realizedthat 20% of the that about 80%
(15:08):
of the problems in a businesscome from 20% of the clientele,
and so it kind of got a revivaland since then it has been
applied to many, many things andyou can actually take it and
square it where you get 4% ofyour inputs will get you 64% of
(15:32):
your results, and you can squareit again 1% of your inputs will
get you about 52% of yourresults.
It's just the idea that thereare certain tasks that are more
high yielding than others, andwhen I think about this, like as
far as setting goals for myselffor the year, I think about
(15:53):
okay, what are those really highresult tasks that I can do that
are going to make a differenceand that are going to get me the
things that I really want outof life and that God would
really want me to have spiritualthings, family things, Nate,
that was a little too much mathfor my brain, but I think a
(16:16):
certain segment of our audiencewill appreciate that you made it
statistical like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Let me get back to a biblical principle here.
As far as prioritizing goes, Ithink we can definitely see that
principle in the Bible.
In Luke, chapter 10, jesus goesto the home of Mary and Martha
Now Mary, it says in verse 39,is sitting at the feet of Jesus
hearing his word.
She's listening intently.
Martha, however, it says, wasdistracted with much serving and
(16:43):
she approached Jesus and saidLord, do you not care that my
sister has left me to do theserving alone?
And Jesus' answer is Martha.
Martha, you are worried andtroubled about many things, but
one thing is needed, and Maryhas chosen that good part which
shall not be taken away from her.
And a really good summary Iheard about this text is Martha
(17:04):
wasn't making bad choices.
Serving your guest is a goodthing to do and a right thing to
do, but the summary I heard isthat the greatest enemy the
enemy of the great is the good.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant, okay, so.
So this brings up a questionhow do we remove the 80% of
things from our life or ordecrease them that aren't
getting us the results, ifthey're not necessarily like bad
things?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, I've always been a work harder, not smarter,
and maybe I need to startrethinking that I'm.
I'm as I said I'm.
I've turned 39.
I need to start rethinking that, as I said, I've turned 39.
I'm getting close to where Ican't be youthful anymore and
maybe I do need to start workingsmarter, useful or youthful
Youthful.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Well, it's just focusing on the tasks and the
people and the things that bringthe biggest results.
You have to first feelself-aware.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Good self-evaluation.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
That's where it starts right, yeah, a little
self-aware, good self-evaluation.
That's where it starts, right,yeah, we have to know what that
is I mean.
And we like to deceiveourselves.
We like to place moreimportance and hindsight bias on
things after the fact, becauseI could be honest about the
meetup studies.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
I got a little bit headstrong about that because I
know of other churches and othercities where that has worked
really well and I think I juststubbornly focused on that and
failed to realize I'm just notfollowing up with our visitors
here very well.
I'm trying to do what works forthem in their circumstances.
That maybe doesn't work as wellhere, and so I was just being a
(18:36):
little bit stubborn andsticking with something that
worked for other people.
But I needed to be honest andsay it's not really working that
well here and we get maybethese other places where meetups
work.
They don't get foot traffic,but we get visitors here and
that works and I need to put myeffort there.
So I had to do a little bit ofhonest evaluation on what wasn't
(18:59):
working and why.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
So I was reading this book recently Insolvent
Cognitive Biases the one thatjust reminded me of that one is
called Survivorship Bias andthat is when you make the
mistake by focusing on thesuccessful few and ignoring all
the fails.
And so you see, maybe like acongregation that does really
good at meetups and stuff, youoveremphasize the value of that
(19:21):
because you don't see the factof when it fails a lot, you know
like it fails all the time.
So I think that that's one ofthe things that we need to be
wary of when we self-examine andlook at you know our life and
place the priorities andimportances to rightly account.
All the fails and all themisses.
You know all those things.
(19:41):
It can also.
It can just be.
It can be things, but it canalso just be um, kind of a rule
or a mode, like if, if I set, ifone of my 20 things was um, as
soon as I get home every day, Ido not look at my phone until
the next day.
That's a small thing in thebucket, but could the yield of
(20:02):
that over time and over?
You know I won't get a lot ofmemes from Kyle until the next
day, I won't get in real time,but what I would get is maybe
more.
Maybe my family would feel likeI'm more present, and the yield
of that would be exponentialyou know of 80% right, that kind
of thing.
Maybe it's just it's findingthings like that.
(20:23):
That's not necessarily a a time, but a kind of a goal, a rule
for yourself.
I would get a lot more done.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Is that the?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
same thing Does that count.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Oh yeah, totally, that's one of those.
I did that because my wife saidyou know you're here, but
you're on your phone a lot, andshe was just trying to point out
hey, here's an area I think youcould improve.
And so I decided all right,after 6 pm you know, when we sit
(20:53):
down to dinner-ish I'm notgoing to use my phone, and so I
leave it in my office.
And when that first happened,or when I first decided to do
that, I said this is going to beimpossible, there's no way I
can do that.
I have to respond to people.
These sorts of things have tohappen.
And I did it for I don't know,maybe a week or so, and what I
(21:16):
realized was the sky hadn'tfallen, the world hadn't
collapsed, nobody was like Nate.
Why are you not getting back tome so quickly?
It was just.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Do you still do that?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
as a policy, not on weekends, but on weekdays.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It must be hard with the two jobs and honestly, I've
gone without social media on myphone for almost a year and I've
downloaded Facebook every oncein a while when I see that
there's like messages and stuffthat I'm not responding to for
the church website and otherthings, but for the most part,
you know, I haven't had that.
And it's a little harder whenpeople send you Instagram memes
(21:52):
and I have to go to a webbrowser to look at it.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
It's the same for me.
It's kind of a pain, but orwhen people send you TikTok and
you're not going to get that app, tiktok and I'm like what is
this?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
But it gets to the point where once you're over the
lack of dopamine and all theother stuff that you get from
that, once you get over that,just the satisfaction of not
having it and knowing thatyou've at least purged some
aspect of time suck from yourlife feels so much better.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
And I wouldn't want it back.
Less phone means more actualliving.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
I would say I mean, that's the equation he's laying
out, right, that's the equationhe laid out with economics.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
But certainly phone is not the only thing, right?
That's just one example andit's not like.
It's not that there was a lackof something, and it's not that
there was anything bad going onwith the phone.
It's just the fact that it wasnot the highest and best use of
the time.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, I mean, you're thinking about my home Bible
studies or thinking about yourdaily reading, or thinking about
my home Bible studies, orthinking about your daily
reading, or thinking about thepodcast efforts and stuff that
we might do to you know.
Now evaluate them and realize,okay, well, if I'm going to
start trimming things out of mylife, don't trim the things that
have the yield.
Don't do that.
(23:15):
But to do that you still haveto identify.
So you have to identify whatthose high yields are.
But to do that you still haveto identify.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
So you have to identify what those high yields
are, and yeah, and that can bereally challenging.
So one of the things that I didrecently was I literally
audited my time every 15 minutesfor four days.
Dude, I had to do that for work?
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Did you really Some odd time ago like?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
years ago and, oh my goodness, like that's not easy.
I mean, it's kind of like I hadpages of notes because I did it
physically.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
How much time am I wasting by just doing that
versus-.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, no, that was one of the things that I wrote
down, like for this 15 minutes.
I spent most of it auditing mytime.
Yeah, but what it did was itpointed out?
Okay, here are the things thatyou're doing that really are
useless.
They're not getting any,they're repetitive and they're
taking up so much time.
Yeah, like checking email, do Ineed to check?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
email so many times a day.
Well, so that's why I starteddoing.
I'll check.
I set like times on my calendarfor when I check my email and
when I first get in the firsthour of the day and then after
lunch, right?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And then back I check my.
There you go.
Kyle doesn't have that problem.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Do not email Kyle.
Kyle doesn't have that problem.
Something is important.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So I mean, this is a principle that's been used a lot
like in business, yeah, but Ithink that it has applications
in our personal life and even inthe church.
You know, we could probablylook at the congregation and go.
You know, 80% of the thingsthat get done probably happen
from 20% of the people.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
80% of the things that get done probably happen
from 20% of the people.
If you're starting a newprogram or process or something
like that like groups, groupmeetings can you measure the
effectiveness of those?
It's hard because you think ofthe time that you spent in that,
but it's hard to understandeveryone else's connection with
(25:00):
each other.
It's hard to tell if, becauseof that, someone's life is made
so much better because they nowknow there's two or three other
people that are looking out forthem and they're caring for them
.
So it's really hard to quantifysome things.
I think we should always attemptto and try to understand the
(25:21):
effectiveness and that's why Iknow people, I send out surveys
or I love surveys and I lovethat kind of thing and eyes
glaze over another survey fromJohn.
But I feel like the feedbackloop and understanding.
I don't want just to assumethat people are getting
something out of something.
I do think you have to ask, youhave to check in with people
and see if something's effective.
(25:42):
We can see how many peoplelisten to this podcast and you
might be able to judge it justbased upon that one.
But then you can also base itupon the time that we spend in
the Word, preparing for it andthinking about it and
socializing with each other andtalking about this.
You can get lots of differentvalue from these things, and
(26:02):
then sometimes the value of thisto one person is going to be a
lot more than others.
Yeah, and is it worth it?
Yeah, I don't know.
I'd ask you at home is it worthit, please?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
let us know.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Don't send us on Instagram or email, kyle, but
you just comment on the post.
Yeah, you won't hear back,right, I feel?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
this is very much like a lot of things in life
that maybe you don't understandor you're not familiar with the
terminology, but you understandthe principle.
I came into this episode readyto learn about this.
I'd heard about it, but I wasreally curious.
I'd never really heard adescription of it, but I'm
finding myself thinking well,this just sounds like less is
more, and so I'm familiar withthe concept.
(26:43):
I just didn't know thepackaging.
Much like in an episode we didon schadenfreude it's a word
that is puzzling.
It's a weird German word thathas no English correspondence,
but we all know the feeling joyover someone's calamity.
Okay, well, I know that, I justdidn't know that's what it was
called.
And I'm getting the same thinghere, like when I preach a
sermon.
I'm preaching through a textand there's a hundred different
(27:06):
applications I could make, butno one's going to remember a
hundred applications.
So I need to focus in.
There's all these things Icould say about this text, but I
need to focus on the 20% thatthere's the thorns, there's the
pathway and then there's thegood soil, right.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Only one of those truly yields results, right, and
so it's that's 25%, but one ofthem looks like it does until it
(28:02):
doesn't, I mean.
So that's the thing is, you cantrick yourself by not being
very aware.
Examine many different thingsOur lives, what we do with our
time, the church and the effortsthat we are doing to evangelize
or build up the congregation.
Our work, what we're doing atwork.
(28:24):
It's a framework to view thosethings and to improve.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I think that maybe a good.
If I were to do a workshop onthis one, I would start by
having everyone make a flair andmake as many goals as possible
and make you know, like,basically, you're going for the
volume at that point, right,yeah, yeah.
And then reflect on your lastyear, reflect on your time and
everything and think about thethings that you're glad you
(28:50):
achieved, or yeah.
And then think about the threegoals, the small things that you
want to achieve in the nextyear.
If you had to wield it down tothose and then look at all the
other ones and say which onessupport this, and then you know,
basically churn that down,because I think it's really good
to go through the mentalprocess of going what are all
the ideas I have and wants andhopes and dreams I have?
(29:13):
And then what are the ones thatmatter?
Focus on the.
You can only have three, youknow at that point.
Then you start looking at well,all these ones don't matter,
and these ones actually do thesame as this.
So I think that that's a goodexercise to do.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Excellent, I agree.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Is that what you?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
did.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yep, that's what I did, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
These ones is not good english, john, and these um
did several how did you do thatwith your wife?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
how did you sit down?
Well, did you find out what shewanted from this year?
Did you tell her what shewanted from the to?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
uh, to steal something from uh chris emerson
podcast, he did one on goalsetting and he talked about
these five different categoriesof life faith family, finances,
fitness and, I think,friendships, and so we tried to
(30:10):
put goals in each of thosecategories.
How many goals did you do?
Three and eight we did.
It ended up just being kind oflike what you said, John.
We just made a list ofeverything we wanted in all
those categories.
Then we took it and said youknow, all right, what are the
most important ones we want andwhat are the ones we want to
focus on this quarter.
It can't be any more than three.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
And so then we we broke those down and did it like
that.
Well, I hope that this hasprovided some value as a
framework to examine ourselves,as a framework to examine what
we're doing and what we want toaccomplish, that there are a
(30:58):
small number of things that wedo, a small number of people in
our life that produce the vastamount of the results that we
get, and so it's the Paretoprinciple.
I think we see it in the Bible,and it's something that can
help us understand the worldaround us and ultimately achieve
the most important things inlife and use our time wisely.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Well, nate, thanks for that economics lesson but,
more importantly, that lesson onprioritization, something I've
struggled with but I've put alot of attention to with my
impending new decade coming upin a year when I'll be 40.
And so I think, in terms ofless is more is kind of my
takeaway from this that if wekind of declutter our priorities
(31:36):
and focus not all but more ofour efforts on the things that
really matter, think through ourgoals and decide which ones
will produce the best resultsand focus the majority of our
effort on accomplishing thosegoals and we will see, that's
where we'll get.
The more Less clutter with ourgoals will result in more
(31:59):
success in life, kind of mytakeaway on that.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And I think this is just applying Ephesians 5.15.
Make the best use of your time.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well, thanks for listening today.
If you listen to a bunch ofother podcasts, you're probably
all over the place.
You should really focus in onthe 20% of podcasts that get you
the 80% of benefit, and weclearly are one of those.
So please subscribe to ourchannels and tune in every week
for new content.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Thank you, that wasn yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no
that wasn't one of them yet.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
We'll get there.
We'll get there.
Yeah for sure.
If you move to the Ranchos,then Luke's going to get eaten
by a coyote and.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Ella's going to marry her cousin.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
If you move to Sanger a gangbanger will be tagging
your house, I'll get swallowedup by mattresses.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, exactly, you don't want to live out by Kyle.
You might drive into a canal.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Hey man, I built a cool fort out of all the
furniture and mattresses peopleleft behind.
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
There's too many Mustangs over there.
Yeah, right here anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah, well, it's more of a Challenger Dodge
Challengers everywhere.
Welcome to the Exhorter podcast, where we aim
to stir up love and good worksthrough bite-sized biblical
discussion.
Welcome back again and we haveanother topic for you, nate.
Nate will be leading us offtoday.
What are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay, well, I'm excited about this because it is
something that I have reallyworked on and I'm continuing to
work on in the past few months.
So I have two jobs I have myfull-time teaching job and then
I also work for a tech companyon the side and I have three
(00:42):
kids and a wife and wehomeschool and blah, blah blah.
So I just don't have a wholelot of time.
I find myself very, very busyand I think a lot of I'm sure a
lot of you listening findyourself just very, very busy
and there are certain thingsthat you want to do that you're
unable to do and maybe certainthings you know that you do that
you're like well, that'sprobably useless and not getting
(01:03):
me the results that I want.
Anyways, a friend of minesuggested a book to me, and the
book was all about a principlethat I had heard about but
hadn't really delved into, divedinto very much, and it's called
the Pareto principle.
It's this idea that 80% of yourresults come from 20% of your
(01:27):
actions, and I thought aboutthat and it resonated with me.
It made a lot of sense.
There are a small number ofthings that we do that result in
the vast majority of theresults that we get, or the
results that we want to see.
And so why does that matter?
My wife and I were settinggoals this year, and do you guys
(01:52):
ever like have a lot of?
Do you ever realize how manythings you want?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Want to achieve in general.
Yeah, have you ever made?
Have?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
you ever, just like, made a list of the things that
you want to do or want to buy?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I generally stay away from feeling sad about myself,
so I want to Jeep, oh, you'vebeen talking about that for
years.
Like years.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I, oh yeah, I can.
I'm too obsessed with it.
Have you ever made a list of,like the projects that you want
to do around your property?
Yes, no, because there's toomany of them.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Okay, yeah, okay.
That's what happened whenAshley and I made goal, set our
goals this year.
It was like I want to do all ofthese things and I heard
someone say one time if you havemore than three goals, you
don't have any right, becauseyou just you're.
You're too drawn out, you'retoo focused on too many
different things.
So then I started to think okay, let's apply this Pareto
(02:49):
principle, the 80-20 rule, tothis list of goals that we want
to achieve and cut it down to asize that is manageable.
And I think that there's abiblical principle here, with
the Pareto principle of 20% ofthe things we do produce 80% of
the results.
So in Psalm 90, verse 12, thewriter says so teach us to
(03:13):
number our days that we may geta heart of wisdom.
Just this idea that our timehere, time here, is valuable.
It is short and we need to makethe best use of our time.
And that's verse 2 in Ephesians5, verse 15, that we're told to
(03:34):
make the best use of our time,and so turning 39 has made me
number my days like I never havebefore.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about Ephesians 5.
Yeah 15 to 16.
Just making the best use ofyour days yeah, timing as
fleeting as possible, yeah, mykids are old enough that having
different types of conversationswith them these days and trying
to create better habits andgenerally around their attitude
(04:05):
about things.
And so we did some resolutionsand we all chose three things we
wanted to improve upon or dobetter this year, and then we
chose one for each of us.
I just kind of passed thepapers around and my family just
wanted more time for me thisyear, and it was kind of
daunting because everyone'sanswer was the same right, which
(04:28):
, if it's.
You know, one person wants onething, another one's another
thing, but they all want thesame thing.
You're starting to realize, okay, well, what am I doing with my
time?
Or maybe they just love me thatmuch and you know they got a
lot of dad.
They want more.
It's probably not that, butit's probably okay.
Making more, um, more time andthat's the thing too is
(04:49):
sometimes we can focus on whatwe want to achieve, and all the
things we want to achieve, yeah,it was really good to um hand
that off to the people I lovethe most and care about the most
and want my time to bemeaningful to them.
And so knowing what they wouldwant from me and that was nice
(05:12):
too, because at that point, ifI'm measuring how much I've
achieved this year, next year,knowing that maybe I made their
lives better, you know, andachieved something that was
valuable to them, I think thatwill feel a lot more
satisfaction than checking fiveor ten things off of a checklist
(05:35):
that I felt maybe had somevalue.
Yeah, so I'm looking forward tothat and you know it's a work
in progress, as resolutions andthose things are.
I think it's just the firstyear into it, so we'll see how
it goes.
But they're not asking for toomuch, you know, from me Well,
you bring up an interestingpoint.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
You're kind of talking about the value of your
time, yeah, and teachingeconomics.
We in my class we often get tothe time versus money debate,
and one of the things that wastaught to me a few years ago is
that it's not time versus money,it's life versus money, because
(06:14):
when you are giving your timeto something that's literally
your life, the time that youspend is the life that you spend
, and so I've started talkingwith my students about when
you're trading time for dollars,you're not trading just your
time, you're trading your lifefor those dollars.
So what are you going to dowith that?
(06:34):
Because that's obviouslyimportant, so it's like your
life is worth what.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, like you're going to spend your time in that
median job for that much timewhere you're gonna find your way
to make your life more valuablebecause so you can spend the
same but make more or spend lesstime making the same money.
You know, as an entrepreneur inthe past and doing different
things, I think I didn't reallyhave a good, healthy mentality
about what my my time was worth.
(07:01):
Yeah, with kids growing, kidsgrowing older and the whole
family you know family of fiveand I feel like it's a lot
easier to see what your time isworth.
Yeah, and it's a lot easier tosay yes or no to people based
upon that time I used to want tosay yes to everything.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So when it comes to, like setting goals for the year,
looking ahead to what it is youwant to accomplish.
How do you guys determine whatit is that you want to do?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I don't do good at setting goals.
I think my problem is I thinkof all these things, I think of
the results that I want, butthen I fail to make a good plan
and I end up just gettingoverwhelmed because I'm trying
to do it all at the same time,like I'm trying to jump over the
Grand Canyon in one leap orsomething.
(07:51):
And then I just end up failingat goal setting because I
haven't made achievable goalsand I haven't focused my goals.
Nate, it sounds like whatyou're describing is what my dad
always used to tell me, and Ididn't understand this as a kid
and I'm only just now seeing thevalue of it.
He would always tell me, lessis more.
(08:13):
And that's what it sounds likeyou're describing here is that
if you focus and maybe if I tryfocusing my attention on fewer
goals three or less and work onactually achieving those goals
because three goals that I valueabove all others, that's an
(08:34):
attainable objective, sure, andthen I would get a sense of
accomplishment and be able tomove on to more.
So is this kind of a less ismore?
Is that really the core of thisteaching here?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
So I hadn't really thought about that particular
phrase, but I think it is veryapplicable.
I think that is applicable here.
It's backwards design.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
If this is true, what you realize at the end of the
year.
Let's say you had some goalsfor your year.
But you realize at the end ofthe year let's say you had some
goals for your year.
You've realized at the end ofthe year, all the things that
(09:19):
you achieve that matteredresulted from the smaller or
more targeted amount of work inthis area here, this 20%.
And so this 20%, all my timeand effort there, made me the
most happy or made me the mostconnected to people, or maybe
the most time focusing on God.
So at the end of the day, whatis that 20% for everyone?
And kind of identifying toshove off the rest of it and
focus in on that 20% and do thatwith more time.
I mean that's the idea.
It's like not keeping it as 20%.
It's removing the 80%.
(09:39):
That didn't get you right.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Well, it's not always removing the entire 80%.
That's not getting you as muchresult, because and this is gets
kind of confusing with numbersbut it says that 20% of your
inputs gets you 80% of yourresults.
Well, the 80% of your inputs,that gets you the 20% of your
results.
That doesn't mean that thoseare necessarily bad.
They're just like eating andsleeping Not as effective.
(10:04):
They're just not as effectiveas all that time I wasted
sleeping.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know whyyou did that, john.
That's just not as effective asthat.
You know small 20 and so like Ithink about the uh, the
apostles in acts, chapter six,when the greek-speaking widows
were being overlooked, and Ithink it was Peter who stood up
(10:27):
and said we're not going to stoppreaching and teaching to take
care of this.
So you guys pick men from amongyou who can handle this
situation and I look at that asPeter was applying the 80-20
rule or it's really justprioritizing.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It wasn't to say that feeding the taking care of the
widows was an unimportant taskand, to be honest, when you look
at the qualifications for thoseseven men, they seem
overqualified for that job.
You're distributing eithermoney or food to widows, but
they needed to be full of theHoly Spirit and I'm thinking
well, even they seemoverqualified.
(11:07):
They should delegate this tosomeone else.
It's a very simple task, but no, it was an important task and
they still needed people thatwere of high quality and high
caliber to take care of it, butalso as an apostle.
There's only 12 of them andthey had things that only
(11:28):
apostles could do, and theyshouldn't be splitting their
time doing things that otherpeople could do, because
apostles, they can't get someoneelse to fill in for them as
apostles.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
For them, it was going to be a better result if
they spent their time focusingon preaching and teaching as
opposed to distributing food.
I'm not saying thatdistributing of the food was bad
in any way.
It just wasn't going to getthem the result that the most
bang for their buck.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I'm thinking in terms of evangelism too.
Looking at my efforts, the lastcouple years, I've tried some
different things.
I paid for a meetupsubscription and had some
meetups and did get someparticipation from folks outside
of our church, folks from thecommunity, coming into our
meetup studies, recurring visits, people that showed a pretty
(12:20):
good interest and had some greatconversations, some great Bible
studies with people.
It was at a Starbucks, but thatdidn't produce a lot of
long-term results.
That didn't get a lot of people.
Um, you know, after a whilepeople would stop coming and
maybe someone else would show upand I'd get them for a couple
of weeks at a meetup study, butthey weren't really interested
in um, learning more about goingdeep.
(12:44):
Yeah, yeah, it didn't go veryfar.
The most successful studies I'vehad were people that have
visited our church.
They already have enoughinterest that they've taken the
step to come visit.
They filled out a visitor'scard, and so I tend to focus my
efforts largely on when I, whenI get a visitor's card.
(13:05):
When I get someone, either theyknow someone here, they've been
invited or they just happenedto to pass by and wanted to
visit because they're curious.
Yeah, those are the people thatalready have a little skin in
the game and those studies tendto, so I prioritize those.
But it doesn't mean I'vestopped doing the meetups for
now, and you could put that inthe same category as, say, door
(13:28):
knocking or passing out flyersor things like that.
It's not saying it's a waste oftime, but if it's taking me
away, if I'm too busy doing thatand getting no results, that I
don't have time to follow upwhen we get an actual visitor
here that shows an interest,then I've missed my priorities.
(13:49):
Does that sound like a goodapplication of this concept?
That's 100% accurate.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You are basically saying I did all of these things
and it's not that it was a badthing and maybe it was a good
thing and maybe in the long runthere will be some sort of
effect from that, but itcertainly didn't have the result
or impact that prioritizingstudies with visitors who are
coming of their own volition hashad.
(14:17):
Yeah, that's a perfectapplication of the 80-20 rule,
focusing on what produces theresults.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Now I'm coming into this episode more as a learner.
I've heard about this beforethe 80-20 idea, or what's the
official name you gave it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
It's the Pareto principle and so it comes from
an Italian economist in the late1800s who was studying land
distribution and he realizedthat 20% of the that about 80%
(15:08):
of the problems in a businesscome from 20% of the clientele,
and so it kind of got a revivaland since then it has been
applied to many, many things andyou can actually take it and
square it where you get 4% ofyour inputs will get you 64% of
(15:32):
your results, and you can squareit again 1% of your inputs will
get you about 52% of yourresults.
It's just the idea that thereare certain tasks that are more
high yielding than others, andwhen I think about this, like as
far as setting goals for myselffor the year, I think about
(15:53):
okay, what are those really highresult tasks that I can do that
are going to make a differenceand that are going to get me the
things that I really want outof life and that God would
really want me to have spiritualthings, family things, Nate,
that was a little too much mathfor my brain, but I think a
(16:16):
certain segment of our audiencewill appreciate that you made it
statistical like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Let me get back to a biblical principle here.
As far as prioritizing goes, Ithink we can definitely see that
principle in the Bible.
In Luke, chapter 10, jesus goesto the home of Mary and Martha
Now Mary, it says in verse 39,is sitting at the feet of Jesus
hearing his word.
She's listening intently.
Martha, however, it says, wasdistracted with much serving and
(16:43):
she approached Jesus and saidLord, do you not care that my
sister has left me to do theserving alone?
And Jesus' answer is Martha.
Martha, you are worried andtroubled about many things, but
one thing is needed, and Maryhas chosen that good part which
shall not be taken away from her.
And a really good summary Iheard about this text is Martha
(17:04):
wasn't making bad choices.
Serving your guest is a goodthing to do and a right thing to
do, but the summary I heard isthat the greatest enemy the
enemy of the great is the good.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant, okay, so.
So this brings up a questionhow do we remove the 80% of
things from our life or ordecrease them that aren't
getting us the results, ifthey're not necessarily like bad
things?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, I've always been a work harder, not smarter,
and maybe I need to startrethinking that I'm.
I'm as I said I'm.
I've turned 39.
I need to start rethinking that, as I said, I've turned 39.
I'm getting close to where Ican't be youthful anymore and
maybe I do need to start workingsmarter, useful or youthful
Youthful.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Well, it's just focusing on the tasks and the
people and the things that bringthe biggest results.
You have to first feelself-aware.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Good self-evaluation.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
That's where it starts right, yeah, a little
self-aware, good self-evaluation.
That's where it starts, right,yeah, we have to know what that
is I mean.
And we like to deceiveourselves.
We like to place moreimportance and hindsight bias on
things after the fact, becauseI could be honest about the
meetup studies.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
I got a little bit headstrong about that because I
know of other churches and othercities where that has worked
really well and I think I juststubbornly focused on that and
failed to realize I'm just notfollowing up with our visitors
here very well.
I'm trying to do what works forthem in their circumstances.
That maybe doesn't work as wellhere, and so I was just being a
(18:36):
little bit stubborn andsticking with something that
worked for other people.
But I needed to be honest andsay it's not really working that
well here and we get maybethese other places where meetups
work.
They don't get foot traffic,but we get visitors here and
that works and I need to put myeffort there.
So I had to do a little bit ofhonest evaluation on what wasn't
(18:59):
working and why.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
So I was reading this book recently Insolvent
Cognitive Biases the one thatjust reminded me of that one is
called Survivorship Bias andthat is when you make the
mistake by focusing on thesuccessful few and ignoring all
the fails.
And so you see, maybe like acongregation that does really
good at meetups and stuff, youoveremphasize the value of that
(19:21):
because you don't see the factof when it fails a lot, you know
like it fails all the time.
So I think that that's one ofthe things that we need to be
wary of when we self-examine andlook at you know our life and
place the priorities andimportances to rightly account.
All the fails and all themisses.
You know all those things.
(19:41):
It can also.
It can just be.
It can be things, but it canalso just be um, kind of a rule
or a mode, like if, if I set, ifone of my 20 things was um, as
soon as I get home every day, Ido not look at my phone until
the next day.
That's a small thing in thebucket, but could the yield of
(20:02):
that over time and over?
You know I won't get a lot ofmemes from Kyle until the next
day, I won't get in real time,but what I would get is maybe
more.
Maybe my family would feel likeI'm more present, and the yield
of that would be exponentialyou know of 80% right, that kind
of thing.
Maybe it's just it's findingthings like that.
(20:23):
That's not necessarily a a time, but a kind of a goal, a rule
for yourself.
I would get a lot more done.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Is that the?
Speaker 1 (20:30):
same thing Does that count.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Oh yeah, totally, that's one of those.
I did that because my wife saidyou know you're here, but
you're on your phone a lot, andshe was just trying to point out
hey, here's an area I think youcould improve.
And so I decided all right,after 6 pm you know, when we sit
(20:53):
down to dinner-ish I'm notgoing to use my phone, and so I
leave it in my office.
And when that first happened,or when I first decided to do
that, I said this is going to beimpossible, there's no way I
can do that.
I have to respond to people.
These sorts of things have tohappen.
And I did it for I don't know,maybe a week or so, and what I
(21:16):
realized was the sky hadn'tfallen, the world hadn't
collapsed, nobody was like Nate.
Why are you not getting back tome so quickly?
It was just.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Do you still do that?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
as a policy, not on weekends, but on weekdays.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It must be hard with the two jobs and honestly, I've
gone without social media on myphone for almost a year and I've
downloaded Facebook every oncein a while when I see that
there's like messages and stuffthat I'm not responding to for
the church website and otherthings, but for the most part,
you know, I haven't had that.
And it's a little harder whenpeople send you Instagram memes
(21:52):
and I have to go to a webbrowser to look at it.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
It's the same for me.
It's kind of a pain, but orwhen people send you TikTok and
you're not going to get that app, tiktok and I'm like what is
this?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
But it gets to the point where once you're over the
lack of dopamine and all theother stuff that you get from
that, once you get over that,just the satisfaction of not
having it and knowing thatyou've at least purged some
aspect of time suck from yourlife feels so much better.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
And I wouldn't want it back.
Less phone means more actualliving.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
I would say I mean, that's the equation he's laying
out, right, that's the equationhe laid out with economics.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
But certainly phone is not the only thing, right?
That's just one example andit's not like.
It's not that there was a lackof something, and it's not that
there was anything bad going onwith the phone.
It's just the fact that it wasnot the highest and best use of
the time.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, I mean, you're thinking about my home Bible
studies or thinking about yourdaily reading, or thinking about
my home Bible studies, orthinking about your daily
reading, or thinking about thepodcast efforts and stuff that
we might do to you know.
Now evaluate them and realize,okay, well, if I'm going to
start trimming things out of mylife, don't trim the things that
have the yield.
Don't do that.
(23:15):
But to do that you still haveto identify.
So you have to identify whatthose high yields are.
But to do that you still haveto identify.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
So you have to identify what those high yields
are, and yeah, and that can bereally challenging.
So one of the things that I didrecently was I literally
audited my time every 15 minutesfor four days.
Dude, I had to do that for work?
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Did you really Some odd time ago like?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
years ago and, oh my goodness, like that's not easy.
I mean, it's kind of like I hadpages of notes because I did it
physically.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
How much time am I wasting by just doing that
versus-.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, no, that was one of the things that I wrote
down, like for this 15 minutes.
I spent most of it auditing mytime.
Yeah, but what it did was itpointed out?
Okay, here are the things thatyou're doing that really are
useless.
They're not getting any,they're repetitive and they're
taking up so much time.
Yeah, like checking email, do Ineed to check?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
email so many times a day.
Well, so that's why I starteddoing.
I'll check.
I set like times on my calendarfor when I check my email and
when I first get in the firsthour of the day and then after
lunch, right?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And then back I check my.
There you go.
Kyle doesn't have that problem.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Do not email Kyle.
Kyle doesn't have that problem.
Something is important.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So I mean, this is a principle that's been used a lot
like in business, yeah, but Ithink that it has applications
in our personal life and even inthe church.
You know, we could probablylook at the congregation and go.
You know, 80% of the thingsthat get done probably happen
from 20% of the people.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
80% of the things that get done probably happen
from 20% of the people.
If you're starting a newprogram or process or something
like that like groups, groupmeetings can you measure the
effectiveness of those?
It's hard because you think ofthe time that you spent in that,
but it's hard to understandeveryone else's connection with
(25:00):
each other.
It's hard to tell if, becauseof that, someone's life is made
so much better because they nowknow there's two or three other
people that are looking out forthem and they're caring for them
.
So it's really hard to quantifysome things.
I think we should always attemptto and try to understand the
(25:21):
effectiveness and that's why Iknow people, I send out surveys
or I love surveys and I lovethat kind of thing and eyes
glaze over another survey fromJohn.
But I feel like the feedbackloop and understanding.
I don't want just to assumethat people are getting
something out of something.
I do think you have to ask, youhave to check in with people
and see if something's effective.
(25:42):
We can see how many peoplelisten to this podcast and you
might be able to judge it justbased upon that one.
But then you can also base itupon the time that we spend in
the Word, preparing for it andthinking about it and
socializing with each other andtalking about this.
You can get lots of differentvalue from these things, and
(26:02):
then sometimes the value of thisto one person is going to be a
lot more than others.
Yeah, and is it worth it?
Yeah, I don't know.
I'd ask you at home is it worthit, please?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
let us know.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Don't send us on Instagram or email, kyle, but
you just comment on the post.
Yeah, you won't hear back,right, I feel?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
this is very much like a lot of things in life
that maybe you don't understandor you're not familiar with the
terminology, but you understandthe principle.
I came into this episode readyto learn about this.
I'd heard about it, but I wasreally curious.
I'd never really heard adescription of it, but I'm
finding myself thinking well,this just sounds like less is
more, and so I'm familiar withthe concept.
(26:43):
I just didn't know thepackaging.
Much like in an episode we didon schadenfreude it's a word
that is puzzling.
It's a weird German word thathas no English correspondence,
but we all know the feeling joyover someone's calamity.
Okay, well, I know that, I justdidn't know that's what it was
called.
And I'm getting the same thinghere, like when I preach a
sermon.
I'm preaching through a textand there's a hundred different
(27:06):
applications I could make, butno one's going to remember a
hundred applications.
So I need to focus in.
There's all these things Icould say about this text, but I
need to focus on the 20% thatthere's the thorns, there's the
pathway and then there's thegood soil, right.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Only one of those truly yields results, right, and
so it's that's 25%, but one ofthem looks like it does until it
(28:02):
doesn't, I mean.
So that's the thing is, you cantrick yourself by not being
very aware.
Examine many different thingsOur lives, what we do with our
time, the church and the effortsthat we are doing to evangelize
or build up the congregation.
Our work, what we're doing atwork.
(28:24):
It's a framework to view thosethings and to improve.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I think that maybe a good.
If I were to do a workshop onthis one, I would start by
having everyone make a flair andmake as many goals as possible
and make you know, like,basically, you're going for the
volume at that point, right,yeah, yeah.
And then reflect on your lastyear, reflect on your time and
everything and think about thethings that you're glad you
(28:50):
achieved, or yeah.
And then think about the threegoals, the small things that you
want to achieve in the nextyear.
If you had to wield it down tothose and then look at all the
other ones and say which onessupport this, and then you know,
basically churn that down,because I think it's really good
to go through the mentalprocess of going what are all
the ideas I have and wants andhopes and dreams I have?
(29:13):
And then what are the ones thatmatter?
Focus on the.
You can only have three, youknow at that point.
Then you start looking at well,all these ones don't matter,
and these ones actually do thesame as this.
So I think that that's a goodexercise to do.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Excellent, I agree.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Is that what you?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
did.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yep, that's what I did, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
These ones is not good english, john, and these um
did several how did you do thatwith your wife?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
how did you sit down?
Well, did you find out what shewanted from this year?
Did you tell her what shewanted from the to?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
uh, to steal something from uh chris emerson
podcast, he did one on goalsetting and he talked about
these five different categoriesof life faith family, finances,
fitness and, I think,friendships, and so we tried to
(30:10):
put goals in each of thosecategories.
How many goals did you do?
Three and eight we did.
It ended up just being kind oflike what you said, John.
We just made a list ofeverything we wanted in all
those categories.
Then we took it and said youknow, all right, what are the
most important ones we want andwhat are the ones we want to
focus on this quarter.
It can't be any more than three.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
And so then we we broke those down and did it like
that.
Well, I hope that this hasprovided some value as a
framework to examine ourselves,as a framework to examine what
we're doing and what we want toaccomplish, that there are a
(30:58):
small number of things that wedo, a small number of people in
our life that produce the vastamount of the results that we
get, and so it's the Paretoprinciple.
I think we see it in the Bible,and it's something that can
help us understand the worldaround us and ultimately achieve
the most important things inlife and use our time wisely.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Well, nate, thanks for that economics lesson but,
more importantly, that lesson onprioritization, something I've
struggled with but I've put alot of attention to with my
impending new decade coming upin a year when I'll be 40.
And so I think, in terms ofless is more is kind of my
takeaway from this that if wekind of declutter our priorities
(31:36):
and focus not all but more ofour efforts on the things that
really matter, think through ourgoals and decide which ones
will produce the best resultsand focus the majority of our
effort on accomplishing thosegoals and we will see, that's
where we'll get.
The more Less clutter with ourgoals will result in more
(31:59):
success in life, kind of mytakeaway on that.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And I think this is just applying Ephesians 5.15.
Make the best use of your time.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well, thanks for listening today.
If you listen to a bunch ofother podcasts, you're probably
all over the place.
You should really focus in onthe 20% of podcasts that get you
the 80% of benefit, and weclearly are one of those.
So please subscribe to ourchannels and tune in every week
for new content.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Thank you, that wasn yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no
that wasn't one of them yet.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
We'll get there.
We'll get there.
Yeah for sure.
If you move to the Ranchos,then Luke's going to get eaten
by a coyote and.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Ella's going to marry her cousin.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
If you move to Sanger a gangbanger will be tagging
your house, I'll get swallowedup by mattresses.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, exactly, you don't want to live out by Kyle.
You might drive into a canal.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Hey man, I built a cool fort out of all the
furniture and mattresses peopleleft behind.
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
There's too many Mustangs over there.
Yeah, right here anyway.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah, well, it's more of a Challenger Dodge
Challengers everywhere.
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