podcast

Whatever you are doing I can almost 100% assure you that there is an easier way to do it.

Scalability is hindered by complexity. The more complex the system, the harder it will to sustain and to scale.

Looking for ways to simplify is a gloriously fruitful way to spend some time, thought, and energy because the payoff will blossom over time.

https://davidleemartin.com/spending-habits/

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So this month so far, anyways, all 10 days of it, I’ve been sharing just some things about productivity. I prefer to use the word fruitfulness, prefer to think of it as kind of the outflow of what’s happening on the inside, as opposed to just kind of getting a bunch of stuff done. And but but I was inspired. Strike provoked, made to think about things by something a friend of mine posted in a Facebook group that were part of and we were talking about productivity.

And this friend of mine very honestly shared that he is seeking to address some of the hindrances to his productivity, physical clutter and inefficient workflow. You know, for example, how he records and collects his ideas, etc. and this kind of clutter clutter digitally, clutter physically, and in that it makes it difficult for him to kind of get on with some of the projects that he’s got in his heart because, you know, there’s actually a job to do before you do the job.

And I think that sometimes we can all fall into that kind of trap where we haven’t we don’t have things organised in a way that make it easy for us to act and and ease of action. Removing the friction can make such a huge difference as to how easily and how much we can produce. And but what was so vulnerable about what what he said was that he said it’s all seems quite easy, you know, when you just think, OK, I just need to organise my thoughts.

I just need to organise my physical space, you know, easy. Just do it. But he said all this is quite easy to solve. But in one sense, it brings up emotional pain, a bit like the the hoarders that you see on some of these TV programmes that, you know, physical clutter is certainly a big deal, but emotional and emotion, emotional and mental clutter can be even more so. And I just thought it was so insightful that my brother recognised that many of our actions and habits are both good and bad, but often in a negative sense have emotional hooks and roots that need to be dealt with if we ever hope to deal with the outward circumstances and the outward way that we are working is certainly if we want to change that on a long term basis and say, I was just thinking about this and, you know, although change may look very easy from the outside, sometimes we can look say at someone else, someone else’s life.

And I’m sure like I’m in a number of groups where I’m in the same way as my brother did here, make myself quite vulnerable. And I’m sure some people are kind of like, oh, man, just do it. Just just just change your way of thinking or just change the way you see yourself or just change the way you do. You’re doing that. And that’s that’s very easy to say. And it can look easy from the outside.

But actually but actually changing takes real courage, I think. And in thinking about this, I thought, you know, whatever we’re doing, whatever we’re involved in, there is almost always an easier way to do it. And scalability is hindered by complexity. Productivity and production is hindered by things being too complicated. The more complex a system, the harder it is to sustain and to scale and looking for ways to simplify what we do, both in personal and professional, in our personal and professional lives is time well spent.

I think I think because the pay off is something that blossoms over time, you know, if we can find a way to shave ten minutes or ten dollars from a regular activity. Yeah, 365 days later, we’ve harnessed three thousand six hundred and fifty minutes. That’s 60 hours. We’ve really we’ve reclaimed a week. Of working time in our life that can be better spent doing something else, and we’ve saved three thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, that we can either treat ourselves to something special or invest in other activities.

The compound effect of small savings has been well documented, you know, and and these small savings can make a huge difference when they stack up over time. And and I think time is the most especially precious thing that we have. And I actually like to think of time in a different way. Sometimes we can think of time in such a and abstract way. But time is life. Your time, what you spend your time on us, spending your life on, you, trade life for whatever return you get from that that transaction, you know, like we exchange and invest life for life.

When we put our thought and care into our marriage and children, we exchange our life energy when we trade our minutes for money each other. You know, sometimes we call that work. We swap life for a payoff, whether that’s for a personal dividend or a professional one, we are exchanging our life for whatever we get in return. Time can only be spent. You know, you’re not going to get a refund. And, you know, and it just made me think about how important it is, therefore, for us to look for areas in our ecosystem, you know, the the kingdom that we’re building, the life that we’re living and look for places where time is leaking unnecessarily through the cracks.

How can we better do something so we can reclaim those precious minutes and with it potentially reclaim precious money? And it has been said that time is money. But I think time is far more than that, to be honest. I think there’s far more precious things that that that time is pregnant with than just extra income. But we will have both and not either or. And. We are as human beings, we are hard wired to avoid pain more than we are inclined to pursue pleasure.

We generally will act more aggressively in the in the in the best sense of the word to avoid pain than we will to pursue some goal or some vision or some dream that we carry in our heart and are having a great vision and dreaming big and all of that. It can be really helpful. But rightly, framing what is true right now sometimes is even more essential, because when we realise that it’s the short minutes of a finite life that we are trading for whatever payoff we gain in exchange, it begins to colour every transaction that we make.

What are your spending habits? And I’m not talking about dollars. I’m talking about minutes, hours, days, weeks and sometimes years and decades. What are you pouring those into? You know, like like and when we begin to think of it like that, we realise that actually the sometimes the pain of staying the same when we when we begin to frame things in that way, the pain of staying the same is far greater than the pain of change.

And that is a prompt to move courageously toward a different a different way of living, a different way of doing. You know, if we think of it, you know, and I’m I’m like a gadget guy, I love gadgets. Yeah. And I’m sure, you know, most of us love to shop at some level, you know, but when we think this object that I’m purchasing didn’t, you know, we could say, oh, well, it cost me, you know, 60 pounds or it cost me 100 hundred dollars or twenty pounds or whatever.

But really, it’s what it’s costing you is the amount of life you spend to earn that money. There’s always an exchange going on. And when we think like this object that I’m purchasing cost me two days of life and this shiny, this shiny object, I’m putting my money on the table for cost me three weeks of life. That that project that I’m postponing whilst I scroll my news feed so far has cost me 16 hours of life. And, you know, I wrote a blog post this morning, and then I’m spending some time kind of sharing some thoughts around this and I could say, OK, well, this is the article that I wrote, cost me 34 minutes of life.

And I’m privileged and happy to spend those 34 minutes with you. And and then there’s like the bonus drops that I get on top of that to to post it, to formatted to send it. Some people could actually consume it and read it and benefit from it. And then there’s the time I’m taken to stand here in my office on a and unfortunately very rainy day here in Burgess Hill and to share my thoughts with with whoever chooses to to engage with them.

I’m choosing to spend my life. Doing what I’m doing right now because I see benefit in it, I see I, I consider it a a privilege and like, I feel very blessed to be in a position to spend my time this way and share things that I believe can be helpful and beneficial with other people like and like. Leveraging technology is certainly one way in which we can reclaim time and we can really multiply our effectiveness and multiply our reach and multiply, multiply our ability to benefit other people.

There are lots of ways that we can begin to leverage different technologies in order to do that. And so I just encourage you to today, when we’re thinking around the subject of productivity and fruitfulness, to just take some time to consider how you are spending your time, what are your spending habits and how could you better improve those spending habits to be more fruitful and ultimately in that be more fulfilled? Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today.

If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.

https://davidleemartin.com/action-taker-and-the-one-great-reason-why/

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00:00:03.890]
Good morning. Hopefully you are well, if you are watching this this month, I’m taking every day or at least every day in the week to talk a bit about productivity. I think needless to say, my family are rather productive. If anything, we could probably do it leaning in the opposite direction sometimes. So, yeah, we’re quite a driven bunch. We feel a need to put all that we’ve got on the table out there in the world.

00:00:44.670]
I think there will be plenty of time for kicking back and resting when the day comes, although we do want to learn. Certainly I do want to learn to live and act and produce and bear fruit from a place of peace as opposed to a place of striving. And nevertheless, I think that the kind of the weight of the general way that many people operate leans not so much toward action taking, but toward procrastinating or hedging bets and never really making bold moves.

00:01:32.840]
And obviously, I would never advocate a reckless decision making, reckless actions. But at the same time, there is a sense in which if we don’t make the decisions that I spoke about yesterday and really just begin to take action on the things that we are learning, the things that we know, and especially the things that we feel that the Holy Spirit has placed within our heart to actually step out and do it. It’s really just daylight robbery. We’re robbing ourselves of the possibility of what could happen if we choose to do that.

00:02:19.370]
But we’re also robbing other people of how they could benefit from us, sharing our value in ways that they can engage with and ways that they can consume. I do really very much like this particular verse. Let me just quickly jump in here and. And I’ll bring this verse up so we can look at it together. Now, when they had gone through, I don’t even know how to say this word, Vergeer In the region of Galatia, they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia that’s found in Act 16, verse six.

00:03:10.690]
What I find interesting about this particular verse is, is that it’s. I clearly indicates that Paul was very much a yes now go type mentality, had an attitude of action as opposed to passivity, and the Holy Ghost had to pull the reins in rather than kind of smack his rump to try and get him moving. And I think it kind of would benefit us as as Christian creatives to have a bit of that fire in our belly. That kind of requires that the Holy Ghost kind of pull the reins in sometimes and say, hey, whoa, hang on, don’t go there yet, don’t do that yet.

00:04:05.400]
And be people who assume a yes from the Holy Ghost. If we feel something on the inside, if we feel impressed or inspired to step out in some way that we would assume. Yes. As opposed to a no. I mean, some people really, instead of just taking an action toward what they believe God has asked of them or what they believe is stirring in this spirit, they wait for like six signs from heaven, some kind of voice from from the clouds to fleece confirmations aside contract by the Godhead, signed in triplicate by a host of witnesses, whatever else it may be before they’ll actually step out and make a move.

00:04:56.550]
And as I say, I’m not advocating being impetuous. I’m not saying be thoughtless or reckless. I’m just pointing out that it’s probably better to lean toward action rather than passivity if we’re looking to get things done, if we’re looking to make a difference, if we’re looking to make a dent, really, it is people who have been kind of courageous enough to step out and try something at the very least, as I mean, Yoda would say, don’t try, do I won’t do Yoda voice.

00:05:35.220]
Don’t worry. But, you know, as I said, something about you. But the honest truth is. Yeah, don’t try. Do yeah. I get that. You know, we don’t want to step into things. We’ve kind of racked with doubt. But at the same time, we’re also aware that often times are doing really is trying. We’re just having a go. We’re giving it our best shot. And I think that that’s commendable.

00:06:03.760]
I do I think sometimes it’s very easy to wait for some kind of. Kind of. Guarantee that something is going to work before we step out, but because we can never be guaranteed that something is going to work in the way that we expect, we never step out. And it’s sometimes not until we step out, it’s not until we take action that we actually will know if something is going to work or something is not going to work. And and as well, I evolved.

00:06:37.580]
I found this on a number of occasions, both in my life and the lives of my my family, my wife, my kids, that sometimes we’ve stepped out. And the immediate results have been somewhat disappointing. But down the line that that content that we put out, that action that we stepped out on, that that that that boldness that we exercised back in the day really comes to the forefront at a later time that that, you know, God was preparing the way.

00:07:14.480]
And because we chose to act, not based on immediate results or immediate feedback and despite disappointments, continued to put ourselves out there. You can get down the line and then look back and think, oh, wow, look, what I did back there has really played in to what is working right now today, you know, whether that’s a lesson or whether there’s just a timing to things. And like what we what we did previously just finds its audience or finds its place.

00:07:55.520]
And so I really encourage you to be people who step out. You know, the Holy Ghost is there to partner with us and he’ll soon speak and steer us in the right direction. If we go running off in our own kind of like just run after our own crazy thoughts, he’ll say, whoa, he can pull us back in, trust him, trust the Holy Spirit to lead you, trust the Holy Spirit to walk with you, trust the Holy Spirit to pull the reins if you run too hard or pull in a certain direction.

00:08:35.690]
I remember when we had the kids and they were like real tinies and you put those little kind of strappy kind of reins on them. And then like when they’re learning to walk, you know, you got those reins on them to try to say it so they don’t run over. And so if they fall over, you can just kind of hold them up so they don’t smack their nose on the floor. I think the Holy Ghost is well able to put some child reins on us if it’s necessary when we’re stepping out into new things, when we’re when we’re taking those first baby steps and then and then as we grow and we become more kind of muscular in our ability to take action, he can he can throw a saddle on us and he can put a bit in our mouth and he can put some reins on us and really, really take charge.

00:09:29.480]
But he needs sometimes, you know, with an action taken attitude, at least the Holy Ghost has some momentum to direct, very difficult to move a stationary vehicle, very difficult to turn a dead weight. But where there’s movement, where there’s momentum, it takes a great deal less energy to move that vehicle in the right direction. I believe it’s the same for us in in our activities that the Holy Spirit is our guide. The Holy Spirit is our director.

00:10:05.420]
Our leader is able to move us in in a much more sensitive way when we are actually on the move ourselves. It’s a partnership that we share with him. And, you know, both of these elements are important and action taking attitude and a humble hearing ear. They’re both, you know, that one. And one of them kind of is like, go get them. And the other one is kind of lean back and yield to the leading of someone else.

00:10:41.870]
It’s almost like the two in some ways could be seen as quite. Quite the opposite of one another. But it’s not wilfulness I’m talking about its willingness, not wilfulness and willingness, willingness to act, willingness to believe that the Holy Ghost will direct if we give him something to work with. And then like one more willingness, I think that’s worth adding to the mix. It’s not really an ingredient that we are all so keen to to have in in the pie.

00:11:22.050]
But nevertheless, it’s still necessary in an entrepreneurial, creative life is the willingness and the readiness to fail. You know, it’s been said that being willing to fail quickly is often an element of overall success, being willingness, a willingness to try something, a willingness not to get so hung up, not to let ego get so much, so involved in the process of taking action and doing things that we we just simply never step out, you know, that that we we refuse to bear the shame of something not working.

00:12:11.760]
But often times you find that success story. Is that the road to success and if you look back, is often strewn with many, many seeming seeming failures, seeming disappointments. And they were all part of that character building, they were all part of that that that learning, that cultivating that that leaning in that that turning of the that inclining of the hard all of that. These are things that we learn and they are best learnt in the trenches of actually taking action and and stepping out.

00:12:56.550]
You know, I often say that the the the disciples learnt to pray in the upper room, not in the schoolroom. It’s in the doing that we learn and grow and you know as well as the you know, the the ever present. Fact that if we put our head above the parapet, we face the threat of criticism, we expose ourselves to ridicule. I mean, some people may even watch these live videos that I put out and just shake their head and think, man, who does he think he is?

00:13:39.880]
I’m aware of that. And that’s and I’m actually OK with that, because, quite honestly, I probably agree with you. I’m under no illusion that, you know, that that we’re all just here on the planet doing the best, we know how they’re putting out the best we can in the in the best way we know how to do it. And, you know, I’m kind of I would like to say I’m completely over this, but like, I’m really getting over myself a bit and I’m getting over comparing myself with other people and judging myself by whatever measures, you know, maybe I once did all measures that maybe other people or I may think that other people measure me by.

00:14:36.680]
I just it really is quite. It’s it’s really not important at the end of the day. I’m reminded of a you know, because because when we have that willingness to fail, we also we also open up the possibility of success. We open up our options, open up the likelihood that something good will come, that something good will happen, that some awesome connexion will will just come into place, is is increased exponentially when we get when we actually provide opportunity for it to happen in some way.

00:15:22.270]
You know, and maybe I call is not to evangelise the known world like Paul the Apostles was maybe I call is a little more kind of humble than that in some ways, but it doesn’t make it any less significant in the big kingdom picture. You know, it may seem it may seem insignificant or irrelevant to you in comparison to whatever else it is you want to measure it by. But it’s very significant to the people that you’re called to touch and the people that you are called to encourage.

00:16:00.730]
And ultimately, our call is not about us. It’s about them. It’s about the people were called to reach. I remember I was reminded of a story of General Buth William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. And in his in his later years, he was unable to attend the convention of the Salvation Army and instead was constrained to just send a telegram to the conference. And of course, he didn’t have Zoom’s they couldn’t just like zoom in on the big screen and do his live address to the waiting troops.

00:16:38.590]
You may yet use the technology of his day and sent a telegram. And in the telegram there was literally just one word o t h e r s others. And that that friend is why we move. That is why we overcome our tendency to play safe and hejab. That’s that’s that’s why we overcome our tendency sometimes not to play it all. That friend others is why we choose to take action. Well, thanks for listening, hopefully. It’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at DavidLeeMartin.com.

00:17:33.180]
Have a great day.

Where procrastination is king no movement is possible. 

Life and business require that we be decisive. Cutting the ballast from your lives so you are not dragging confusion and fear every step of your journey is an important step to take. It is one that needs to tackled fiercely because there is an ever present temptation to so hedge our bets that we are hemmed in on every side.

Here are some thoughts to get you moving…

https://davidleemartin.com/de-cisions/

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00:00:03.850]
Okay, yeah, I want to continue talking around the whole subject of productivity. I want to particularly talk about decisions today and the importance of becoming comfortable with making decisions. I’m really the I remember hearing a great teacher strike preacher entrepeneur. I called Dale Barona talking about decisions one time and he talked about the actual word itself and how the word decision includes within its very etymology. I think that’s the word for it. The idea of a decision like we have incision’s like we have scissors.

00:00:56.560]
You know, a decision means that we seize our options with every choice of for something, something else is sliced, OK? And I think that this is often why the decision making process is fraught with the fearful but fallacious thought that if we make the wrong choice, this guy is going to come down upon us. And, you know, it’s it’s like that. And I think people are fearful to make a move sometimes because of an unknown future that may result as a consequence from whatever decision that they make.

00:01:40.300]
The problem is with that kind of thing, what happens is we end up amongst the multitudes, multitudes in the valley of to be honest, it’s not even so much the valley of decision. It’s the valley of indecision. Now, I’m not saying that that particular quote from Joel can be applied to the many of the inconsequential or, you know, merely time based decisions that we make, OK, that obviously that particular scripture is talking about something far more significant than, you know, what should I have for breakfast today?

00:02:20.830]
But the truth be told that that place of indecision is like a valley. Yeah. And many people have made that camp there. But I can promise you where procrastination is king. No movement is possible. Yeah, life and business require that we be decisive and cutting the ballast from our lives. So we’re not dragging confusion and indecision with every step and every step of our journey is something that’s important to make. And with every decision that we make, we we have to step in with confidence.

00:03:01.120]
We have to step into whatever decisions we make with a level of faith, you know, and and to be honest, sometimes I like just making any decision is better than making no decision at all. There is a positivity and a possibility that opens up with saying, this is what I’m going to do. This is the direction I’m going to go. You know, the honest truth is oftentimes we just simply do not have a guarantee that we step into every decision comes with a certain level of question mark over the top of it.

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But to be able to move in, to be able to to move forward, we have to become comfortable with just saying, OK, this is this is the way I’m going to go. This is what I’m going to choose. And, you know, sometimes the the I’ve got a couple of decisions that I believe are healthy ones that we can make. And these decisions can be applied to both our personal and professional lives. Number one, the decision to daily and do at least one thing that moves us toward our dream or our goal, whatever we’ve set out hard to do, whatever we’ve set out, hard to accomplish, making the decision that I’m going to do at least one thing, however big or small, that moves me towards the fulfilment of that is an important and a powerful decision.

00:04:46.660]
And we do it whatever, you know, we do it. We do do it not just because we feel like it, but we do it because we’ve made the decision once and we’re going to just roll over that decision to every single day. So. It becomes a habit, and secondly, I think the decision to intentionally begin removing the things that prevent or block our progress now some of these may even be good things, good in the sense of, you know, they’re not they’re not bad things.

00:05:21.480]
They’re not things that we’re doing that are particularly negative. They just don’t play into moving us in the direction that we want to travel. Now, an example of this for me was I used to have a Web design business for local businesses where I lived up in London. And it was a good it was a fairly kind of lucrative little business that I had alongside the other things I was doing. But ultimately, I had to come to the place where I made the decision.

00:05:54.780]
This is not where I want to be putting my time right now. This is not something that I necessarily want to be doing five, six, seven years from now. And I had to begin to make sometimes the financially negative decisions to say I’m going to cut that off so I can concentrate on the things that I believe that God is calling me to in this season. And in doing so, you know, in the short term, sometimes it can be painful, but in the long term, it actually frees up a lot more room for you to concentrate on the things that really matter to you in the in whatever particular season you are in, because the decisions can become the friction in the system.

00:06:48.270]
They can become that that they’re the bumps in the road. You know, whenever and wherever we need to make a decision is potentially somewhere that will halt our progress. The potential for pause or derailment is increased. And if the pathway is strewn with decisions to that, we need to make the journey from inception to completion can become very, very painful. And at best, they like speed bumps at worst decisions. I like that they can completely stop the flow of traffic and the danger and frustration is multiplied.

00:07:32.010]
Obviously, when indecisions accumulate, when we fail to make a decision and we continue to fail to make decisions across a number of different arenas, it can really put us in a place of where it’s very difficult to move the wheels. But with every decision that we make, you know, we begin to get momentum and it becomes much easier to then make subsequent decisions. And I would encourage you to ask yourself today in your own productivity and your own moving toward the dreams and the desires that you have in your heart for your creative destiny, your creative life is ask yourself, can I make a decision concerning this particular action?

00:08:29.100]
Can I make the decision once and apply that same decision every time I face this point of action? Again, remove the need to make for a decision to be made again and again, document the process if necessary, and then stay with that. I know that I’ve very much built my publishing business on this very on this way of working. I’ve looked at each of the elements of my business and thought, what needs to happen in this circumstance? What needs to happen in this situation when X looks like this, what is Y and then documented that either I or someone else can implement and the same processes can be implemented again and again.

00:09:26.280]
I do not need to make that decision. I’m no longer the bottleneck because the decision has been made, it’s been documented. And now really all that needs to be done is for that decision to be applied when that point of action or when that circumstance arises again. You know, and if you do this for every working part of whatever system you are applying in business or your personal lives, your home life, whatever, erm you’ll soon have a great deal more mental energy.

00:10:02.710]
The decisions that dig deep and dig far below just your everyday activities, ground breaking and life changing thoughts, travel based on neural pathways that are not congested with all of the accumulated indecisions of like a string of yesterdays where you failed to take action, you know, make what decisions you need to make today and keep the traffic moving, create bypasses through documentation, through systems, through processes, make those bypasses for the daily traffic to flow freely, and then that will just open up precious ground for new thoughts to sprout and for for a bigger dream to be born in your heart because you’re not crowded in.

00:10:58.480]
You know, many people hedge their bets with so many things that they never really make a decision that just cuts off other options. They hedge their bets so much that they end up completely hemmed in and unable to really move with any gusto, with any vitality in a particular direction. Sometimes it’s saying like like cutting off your options that actually frees you up to really move forward and to and then the decisions are no longer shall I Shandi, the decisions become who or how am I going to accomplish what I have decided.

00:11:43.240]
And so I encourage you today to look again at your decision making process, make decisions that you can make today concerning like repeated actions, steps that you know, that you take again and again, make the decision once and then just a place where you can just slice off certain things that hinder your progress. Make the decision that I’m going to believe in what I’ve been called to do. I’m going to believe in what’s in my heart, and I’m going to make the decision to to move forward daily towards seeing that that decision and seeing that dream be come in to a bigger reality.

00:12:37.180]
And actually my reality and my dreams and my hopes to bring those two things together through my daily actions. And so God bless you. You have a great day. Hopefully that was helpful for someone. Have a wonderful day. God bless you. Bye. Well, thanks for listening, hopefully. It’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at DavidLeeMartin.com.

00:13:04.580]
Have a great day.

A potato story.

The farmer went to his potato patch to sow.

Some seed was swallowed, some trodden underfoot, some strangled.

The seed that found its happy soil bore fruit, some 30, some 60, some a hundredfold.

How many potatoes the farmer harvested depended on which plot he plowed and populated. Some were significantly better than others.

So said the Master in Matthew 13.

So much can be said about this prime-cut parable.

I just want to point to one thing. Even the good ground yielded varied results.

If you knew that your efforts in one place bore more fruit than exactly the same effort expended elsewhere, what would you do?

https://davidleemartin.com/paretos-potatoes-a-surprising-recipe-for-success-in-any-area-of-life/

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00:00:03.320]
I want to tell a story about a farmer today, it’s actually a story that Jesus told, but I will probably add a bit of my own flavour to it and probably get a bunch of stuff completely wrong about how farming works. In fact, I know I will because I’m not really a farmer, nor am I a fisher. You know, my fishing stories and my farming stories, my growing stories of things in the garden are nothing short of embarrassing.

00:00:39.950]
I mean, like seriously bad results. So maybe I’m not the best person to really share what I plan to share today. But in other areas, I have learnt to tend my garden well. In other areas I’ve learnt to grow a good crop. In other areas I’ve learnt to pull out some fairly warping fish. So. So I’ll just lean on that. I think Jesus told the story of a guy who went to succeed in a field. And I’m going to just say that is going out to plant a potato field.

00:01:18.950]
So he goes out to his potato patch to sow his potatoes. I can’t remember what they call. They’re like a special potato, aren’t they? That that, like other potatoes sprout from. So it’s not quite a bag of seeds. And he must have just had a really big bag with all of these kind of seedling potatoes in there. And the parable that Jesus told us about this, Soha tells us that some seed was swallowed, some was trodden under foot, some was strangled, but some seed found happy ground.

00:01:52.100]
So they found some happy soil and then yielded a crop. And then Jesus told us some 30, some 60, some 100 fold. And, you know, really the number of like let’s go back to our potato man. The number of potatoes that the farmer got for his efforts depended on the plot that he ploughed and populated, and some were significantly better than others. The results and the return on investment in one patch was a great deal more than the same effort and the same investment in another area.

00:02:33.170]
Same seed, same amount of work, same amount of ploughing, same amount of the same input. But the output was different even in the good soil. Thirty six hundred. And you know, there’s so much we can say about this. The actual parable, not the potato parable, but the real parable in the scriptures. But what I want to what I want to draw out today in the context of productivity is that even our best efforts are going to yield a different amount.

00:03:12.110]
You know, even if we are putting all of our efforts into good soil, even there, there’s going to be kind of a variation of the return that we get for the amount that we sew and the the activities that we engage in, the effort that we so the investments that we make in whatever area of life. Because this this applies to personal and professional and spiritual, of course. But they’re going to give a range of outcomes. Some will whether but with wisdom, we can scout the ground, focus on the good.

00:03:49.700]
And but even here are our return on investment is going to differ and set into the field, walks Perito. OK, the Italian economist. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Perito, the Italian economist, but he was a very good friend of the potato farmer, it seems. And so. Wilfredo Parata walks in and tells the farmer about this discovery that he came to when he was in the University of Lausanne and he noted that noted that approximately this was like way back in 1896.

00:04:32.810]
And he noted that approximately 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. OK, but this but this principle of 80-20 just went viral like 89 to 1896 style. And from it, we have now derived something that is largely known as the potato principle or the 80-20 rule. Some people call it the the the rule of the vital few or the principle of the vital few. And the project principle, as it’s now called, states that for many outcomes, roughly 80 percent of the consequences of the results come from 20 percent of the causes.

00:05:24.750]
Yeah, 20 percent of our efforts result or lead to 80 percent of our results. A few vital tasks are responsible for the majority of our wins. And so that leaves a whopping 80 percent of like trivial expenditure. That’s only giving us a very small yield like the 20 percent. And oftentimes it’s far, far less than that. Much of our effort is expended into things that are bearing kind of inconsequential results, whereas there are a few vital tasks that we engage in that give us the majority of the results that we actually enjoy and that we see.

00:06:13.490]
And and this rule really does work. It’s a it’s a key that we can utilise in our productivity and our business in in how we spend our time and our efforts, even within a family context. And if we can determine what the few vital activities are that give us the biggest yield, the 60s and the hundredfold type yields, you know, even thirtyfold is like a radical harvest. You know, even like the good ground is good ground full stop.

00:06:48.830]
But how how how about if we were able to lean right in to the top yield arenas and say these are the activities. These few vital things that I do each day are the very things that lead to the majority of the lifestyle results that I’m enjoying. And the key here is to determine what those few vital activities are, and really you only you can determine what they are in your life. And I really do want to stress as well as I was thinking about this, obviously I’m thinking from a business perspective, but a good yield is not always the number of potatoes that you have in your bag.

00:07:34.950]
Quality of life and a depth of love and laughter are as much a part of our harvest as anything that we can hold tangible in our hand. So we need to choose carefully how we so both time, money, effort, energy. A lot of people sewing like crazy into just one arena of their life and the other areas I’ve like, I’ve been laying fallow for decades, overgrown. We want to be we want to enjoy a holistic, prosperous life, wholeness, the fullness of life.

00:08:24.000]
And, you know, I can I can think of this very much if I take it as a business example, I can think of it from my publishing business. There are a number of different things, you know, in my publishing business. I could give my time and my attention to many, many, many different things. But ultimately, there are just a few vital things that actually lead to people purchasing books and me earning money from them and like stacking up some royalties.

00:08:52.800]
And I could be tweaking my website and I could be trawling social media. I could be doing all sorts of activities. But I really need to determine, is that the best place to expend my the the the lion’s share of my thought and my attention and my time? You know, we could you could spend like days and weeks tweaking your author website, say it’s the best looking website on the planet. But really, is it through your website that the traffic and the readers are coming to your books to read them, or are they going direct to Amazon?

00:09:29.970]
And would it be better to like look at what’s happening where the people are that you’re looking to try and reach and find ways to be more direct in how to reach them? And then, of course, I’m just talking from my business perspective. But the same is true for any business. There are certain activities and certain arenas that that are going to give a much bigger bang for your buck than if you kind of twiddle around on all of the peripheral things.

00:10:01.020]
We really do need, I think, in in life and in business, personal and professional, to find out, man, what is really working, what makes the difference, what really moves the needle. And and sometimes I think and then learn to focus the lion’s portion of our attention on the activities that are delivered, delivering the 80 percent of our results and slice those 20 percent yield activities right down to their their minimum. So we don’t get swallowed up in inconsequential bills and spend the bulk of our time doing things that aren’t actually getting us the kind of results that we’re looking for.

00:10:47.820]
And again, I’m talking like personal and professional sense. This is not just about your bottom line in your business. This is about your satisfaction and your fulfilment as a human being, your relationship with others, your relationship with God. What are the things that you can do within those contexts that really do kind of give you the biggest move and like get get get get that upward trend happening? And sometimes I think the simplest, most direct and obvious activities are the ones that give us the biggest bang for our buck.

00:11:27.630]
Like I say, complex complexity is like sometimes just gets you so tangled up that all of your energy is taken is taken up trying to maintain it or even figure it out, you know, some type of complexity and and things that are very complicated sometimes just bleed energy. Where can we simplify? So we come down to the things that really matter and then focus our attention and our efforts on really doing those things with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength, you know, and where we’re tangled up wrestling in the 20 percent result arena, you know, we need to be moving our attention and our efforts to to simplify those things or to even eliminate them.

00:12:28.260]
So the majority of our energies can be poured into 80 percent yield activities. And so I would just encourage you today to give some thought to what those activities, what those few vital. Activities are for you and you can apply them to different areas of your life, because what’s true in one arena may not be true in another. But definitely, certainly this idea of the 80-20 20 per cent of input results generally in 80 percent of the results is just such a great conversation to have, even if it’s just have that conversation with yourself and ask yourself, man, where is my energy, where is my time, where are my efforts and my income best spent?

00:13:29.470]
So I get the greatest reward from that expenditure. God bless you and have a great day. Well, thanks for listening, hopefully. It’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.

Productivity and progress are the result of exercising consistent pressure in one direction over time.

HEY!!! YOU!!! Look Here! Don’t Be Distracted!

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00:00:02.100]
I’m going to continue talking today about productivity, and today I want to talk about not being distracted and about the dangers of being distracted and living a life of distraction. I mean, it is really honestly, I think the biggest danger of the generation that we live in now is that our time just pours out in all directions because of the various distractions that come our way every single day. And I like our pocket. We carry distraction around in our pocket quite literally nowadays.

00:00:43.650]
And oftentimes what you find is people are so, so addicted and so used to always having something kind of bombarding their attention that they never have any space to live to think if someone’s standing in a line in the supermarket, they’ll have their phone out and they’ll be scrolling. If there’s a moment to breathe at any point during the day, there’s going to be it’s going to be filled with something. And as soon as we begin to enter that world, what happens is there’s a constant pull for us to jump from our point of focus and fascinate over something else and say, you know, the most expensive currency in today’s society, particularly in countries, Western countries like ours, is our attention.

00:01:42.810]
That’s really what people are paying for. That’s what advertisers are paying for. And that’s what these different platforms are craving and looking to possess. Is your attention in the highest bidder? You know, has has a barrage of offers behind whatever their attention grabber is. But at the outset, they’re looking to hook your attention and then once they’ve got it, they’re looking to keep it. But there’s that there’s this amazing verse in the book of Ecclesiastes that says the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the filled with hearing Ecclesiastes one, verse eight.

00:02:27.840]
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the Earth filled with hearing. I can promise you it does not matter how many how many things you look at on your wall. It does not matter how many images you imbibe of. It doesn’t matter how many songs or sermons you listen to. It doesn’t matter. You know, your eyes and your ears are always going to crave the next thing. And I think that that is very much a picture of how we can run our lives.

00:03:04.740]
You know, we can where our attention can run from one distraction to the next until our attention and our energy is so exhausted that we’re no longer left with the capacity to pour into our own projects. And so learning to place great value on where you place your attention think is something that you really want to develop and something that you really will need to strengthen. And so then instead of being consumed by what everyone else is saying, doing or selling.

00:03:45.980]
Yeah, your energies can be rightly directed into what you are producing yourself, and I really believe that productivity, if we can if we can harness and take back hold of our attention, then productivity becomes really very much more possible and productivity and process. I often say to people the result of exercising consistent pressure in one direction over time, productivity and progress are the result of exercising. Consistent pressure in one direction over time now exercising, you know, we all know that exercise is not something we necessarily like, but it’s true.

00:04:46.270]
Nevertheless, we must exercise our will, our skill and our courage to create. It actually takes some reps to get into the process and get into the habit of exercising yourself to be a producer rather than a consumer. And I like, you know, overnight success is really generally is preceded by many, many days of learning. It does take work to win. There is exercise and there is effort involved in being a creative and actually being a productive person in whatever sphere you’re involved in.

00:05:25.750]
And so just be sure that your efforts are not spilling in every direction. I exercise your best reserves to create things of value rather than pouring all of that attention and energy and thought and into kind of endless streams that where you just scroll and just pour all of your attention down the drain. So exercising consistent pressure, consistent daily habits and established disciplines are going to have a far greater impact on your ultimate success than short spasms of activity in a short amount is assured, disciplined.

00:06:11.740]
A daily habit is going to make a great deal more difference than like one or two days a month where you enter the zone and and like, say, I’m in the inspired flow. I much prefer to just do the work. And then you can still enjoy those times of inspired flow and the like. Hallelujah, Hallelujah chorus moments. But in the meantime, just do the work consistent, be consistent with it. And you know, and I say exercise consistent pressure because you do have to push through.

00:06:53.320]
You know, we don’t always I don’t always want to stand up here and do this. I would say that that’s probably true of today, I’ve been doing a lot of recording for some courses that I’m teaching, and quite honestly, I’ve been I’ve been talking to the screen for for a number of hours now. You know, I don’t necessarily feel like still standing in front of the camera again and doing this, but I’ve made a daily discipline of going live.

00:07:24.610]
I’ve made a daily disciplining of recording and encouraging podcast. I’ve made a daily discipline of writing a blog post every day. Those are my basics that like that. That’s my staple. And so there there’s always going to be various pressures that want to kind of have you back off, give up, press pause, make an excuse, blame someone or something for your inactivity or lack of production. It’s always there and it’s there for us all. But as I say, in exercising consistently, you build a much greater muscle and it becomes a lot more it becomes a great deal easier to to do the discipline days so you can enjoy the daylight days.

00:08:16.200]
But those disciplined days are just as important, just as powerful. And just as I really ultimately kind of build the the grit that will take you to the finish line in one direction, exercise consistent pressure in one direction. You know, it doesn’t really need to be highlighted that if we expand our energy and our attention and and in all sorts of different directions, that the old kind of proverb of spinning too many plates in and if we’re spinning too many plates, ultimately one at least is going to fall.

00:09:00.180]
It’s the same for our attention and our energy. You know, you only have a certain amount of there’s only there is a finite capacity that you have. Now, you can optimise on that and you can multiply that through working smart, working with outsourcing, working with team partnering and various other productivity hacks, if you want to call it that, and different ways of working. Absolutely. You can produce far more than your own personal capacity. But even so, if you’re in if you are in the process of producing personally, even if that producing is boils down to managing other people’s energy, OK, there still is a capacity there that you have to manage.

00:10:01.140]
And so trying to do too many things sometimes will lead to like your energy just bleeding in all directions and no one project really moving forward to fulfilment. And so I do encourage you to really focus in on just one or two things rather than trying to do 10. I listened recently to some interesting training that spoke about the motivation curve. And, you know, we generally begin a project or a new venture with a high level of uninformed optimism. You know, it feels fabulous.

00:10:43.290]
We’re excited and we’re hopeful. But then comes the decline into the valley of informed pessimism. We we we we find out that, man, this wasn’t as easy, as cheap or as quick as I expected it. It’s actually work. And maybe the results sometimes in the short term, disappointing because we’re learning. Because we’re growing. Yeah. And sometimes in this place of informed pessimism where we realise, oh, wow, this wasn’t what I thought it would be, we can sometimes turn back and we can look back up to that that where we began and we can want to just like quit and make our way back up to that place of uninformed optimism and run in another direction.

00:11:35.580]
Grab another opportunity. Instead of staying with the one that we started with, instead of sticking with what we know we are supposed to be doing and like like going through the pain of growth, going through the pain of discipline, going through the pain of learning. But if we do that, instead of jumping to another offer or another promise or some other shiny object, if we will venture beyond that and get through that sometimes what could be described as disillusion?

00:12:14.370]
Yeah, we can begin to make our way up the other side of that valley into a place of informed optimism. And this is an optimism that’s tempered by experience. It’s not just kind of the rosy, rosy glasses or what is it, rosy spectacles. You know, we actually understand, okay, this is this is what it takes to complete. This is what it will take to maintain, you know, we’ve maybe made whatever necessary course corrections were needed.

00:12:50.540]
We’ve overcome some of the challenges that the task or the project posed for us. We’ve worked our way through those with and rolled help where necessary, maybe learn some new skills, leaned in to prayer. And here on the other side of the valley, we can be we can really begin to build something remarkable. And so exercising consistent pressure in one direction over time and energy and time are the chief ingredients that are required for us to successfully produce the kind of things that we want to produce.

00:13:32.180]
Time is required, whether it’s yours or someone else that you hire, and every impactful project or publication will require more time than you generally kind of expect at the outset to know if you’re like me. But I’m hugely optimistic about what I can produce in in a short period of time. I think I’m going to produce like a book a week or a course every week or some some remarkable thing every month. But but like life happens and you know, but I say taking time, you know, you need time to think.

00:14:15.110]
You need time to implement. You need time to outsource. Time to assess. Time to improve. Time to maintain it. Everything takes time. And so we need to come into our kind of with that mindset, you know, when we’re talking about producing, when we’re talking about building a legacy, when we’re talking about like completing on our creative ideas and creative projects, we need to understand that time will be required at all sorts of stages and all sorts of levels.

00:14:50.630]
And that’s why it’s like really very, very key and very important for us to value how we spend our time and make sure that our time is spent well and poured into projects. That is significant both to us and to the people that we’re seeking to serve and that we don’t fall into this distraction trap, pouring years and years of our life into black holes of endless distraction and a really learn to direct your days with purposeful intention. Well, thanks for listening, hopefully.

00:15:30.490]
It’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidlee.martin.com. Have a great day.