Plus why we should be far more intentional about budgeting time than money
In this episode, authors Mark Batterson (Win the Day and Do it for a Day) and Jordan Raynor (Redeeming Your Time) discuss:
Want to go deeper on these topics? Pick-up a copy of Mark's books (Win the Day and Do it for a Day) and Jordan's (Redeeming Your Time).
Download Jordan's personal "Time Budget template" here
[00:00:11] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Redeem the Day, a seven-episode series aimed at helping you be more purposeful, present, and productive. I'm Jordan Raynor, author of Redeeming Your Time, and I'm joined by Mark Batterson, author of Do It for a Day and Win the Day. Hey, if you've made it to the seventh episode of this podcast, thank you. Right, Mark? I can't believe somebody would want to listen to us for this long.
[00:00:38] MB: Right. I feel like there ought to be some kind of honorary degree for seventh podcast episodes.
[00:00:45] JR: So to our spouses who are left listening to this seventh episode, thanks for being on. They’re not listening to us. Who are we kidding?
[00:00:50] MB: Our moms.
[00:00:52] JR: That’s right. Hey, so in this final episode, we're going to be discussing a few things. Number one, we're going to touch on the difference between busyness and hurry, and try to put a finer point on this idea. We're going to talk about how a timed budget can help you hurry less and accomplish more. Finally, we're going to share a little bit of detail about how Mark and I structure our time budgets to embrace busyness, eliminate hurry, and eat the frog. I promise that will make sense in a minute.
But before we go any further, I got to state the obvious that we've borrowed this eliminate hurry language from our friend John Mark Comer and by extension Dallas Willard. When I was writing Redeeming Your Time, I love this. I sent John Mark a message. I said, “Hey, do you mind if I title one of my chapters eliminate hurry?” He said, “Dude, I stole this from Dallas Willard.” Now, we’re all stealing from each other. Great artists steal, absolutely.
So, Mark, in your book, Win the Day, you said that in our current cultural moment, many of us are suffering from hurry sickness. You mentioned this in a previous episode of the podcast. What does hurry sickness look like? How do you define this?
[00:02:02] MB: Well, I think it's trying to do more and more in less and less time. It’s the byproduct of almost everything now happens at the speed of light. Whereas you read the parables, and they happen at the speed of a seed planted in the ground that has to take root before it bears fruit. So we are incredibly impatient, in a sense. We want in two years what our parents spent an entire career to accumulate. We want it faster. We want it yesterday. Patience is not high on our virtue list. So I think hurry sickness is you always want to break your previous record faster, faster, and faster. It's the Red Queen, so to speak, where you go faster but you gain less ground. I think most people in our culture really feel that hurry sickness. It's just this malaise that we aren't sure what to call it.
[00:03:11] JR: Yeah. I think words matter, right? We got to get really clear on the definitions of this stuff because I think busyness is good, right? John Ortberg once said, “Being busy is an outward condition, this condition of the body. It’s having a lot to do.” But being hurried is this inner condition, this condition of the soul. When you look at the Gospels, Jesus was crazy busy, right? There was one time Jesus was so busy, he was too busy to eat, and his family thought he was “out of his mind.” Go check out Mark Chapter 3. But he was never so busy that he became angry with other people or frantic or anxious.
In my mind, that's part of the line between busyness and hurry sickness. Would you agree, Mark? Like what do you see is the difference between these two ideas? Or is there not a difference?
[00:04:03] MB: Well, there is an urgency that is born of anxiety, and there is an urgency that is born of conviction. I think in the gospels, it talks about being about the father's business. I think we ought to give all of our time, talent, and treasure to the gospel, the gospel message to the father's business to advancing the kingdom. Nothing wrong with that. Let's be busy with the right things, and that would be the father's business. I think the difference with hurry is sometimes it's just trying to keep up with the Joneses. It's literally putting pressure on ourselves to keep up with everybody else. I do think that busyness has become a little bit of a badge of honor.
In that sense, I think it can be a negative. But idle hands are the devil's workshop, I think, is the old axiom. So there's a fine line here between idleness and hurry, and it's not easy to find. But I think that's what we're called to find, to find that rhythm or balance in our lives.
[00:05:20] JR: Yeah, I think so too. For me, where this shows up, I think it's easier to find in like real world scenarios than it is in dictionary terminology. Like busyness for me is having a lot of meetings on my calendar, right? Hurry is having them back to back where I have no time to look other human beings in the eye as I'm walking from one meeting to the next, right? Like busyness is tomorrow on Saturday, I got a lot of errands to run. Hurry, I'll know I'm hurried if I get mad about choosing the “wrong line at the grocery store” because I couldn't afford to lose 30 seconds. That's it.
[00:06:01] MB: Yeah. I mean, that's the famous study about the Good Samaritan. Not the parable but the study that was done.
[00:06:09] JR: Yeah, talk about this. This is great.
[00:06:11] MB: Do you remember the – Basically, it was seminary students who were given – They had to get somewhere and they staged actors to kind of play the role of, “Hey, I need some help.” Those seminary students that were in a hurry to get to that next appointment would, by and large, just ignore the need and walk right over them, whereas those who were not in a hurry would take the time and actually play the Good Samaritan. It's crazy that, again, it comes back to literally whether or not you're a Good Samaritan depends on how much of a hurry you're in. So even allotting margins in your life can allow you to exercise that kindness or that thoughtfulness and really play the role of the Good Samaritan.
[00:07:05] JR: So in summary, hurry, bad, right? Busyness, good, right? Again, going back to episode one, the Apostle Paul says that our response to the gospel, part of our response to the gospel, is to redeem the time because the days are evil. To buy up, ransom, get good at managing our time so that we could do more good works for others. You talked about this in Win the Day that Sabbath is part of the solution to hurry. I completely agree. If you skipped that episode of the podcast, don't miss it. Go back to episode five. Listen to the episode on Sabbath. That’s one of my favorites.
But I think another part of the cure for hurry sickness is just getting really good at counting the cost of our time, right? Like everybody I know has a budget for their money, and almost nobody I know has a budget for their time. I legitimately don't understand this. This boggles my mind. By God's grace, all of us can earn more money. None of us can earn more time. Years ago, I had a mentor who just showed me how to do this, to design a simple time budget. What you call an ideal day in your book, Mark. I'm convinced this is one of the most powerful tools for ensuring that I am busy, I am productive, but I got margin on my calendar and I unhurried, right? So do you have a budget of sorts for your time? Like what does your ideal day look like, Mark?
[00:08:33] MB: Well, I hate to say it, but my ideal day doesn't have very many scheduled meetings, Jordan.
[00:08:41] JR: Yeah, that's great.
[00:08:43] MB: I think we talked about this in an earlier episode that I have days dedicated to different functions. So on a meeting day, I'm in meeting mode and small margins in between. But I pay the price because then I get back a study day or a writing day. Generally speaking, I'm up and at it by 7:00 AM. I'm not a morning person by nature. I'm a morning person by discipline. It took many years for me to cultivate that early morning habit. If I'm in a writing season, my day often begins earlier than that. But what I'll do is 90% of my creativity happens before noon. Then I hit that low in the afternoon. The only thing that buys it back is if I can get a nap. I think a 26-minute nap increases productivity 34%. It's a NASA study. It's one of my favorites and it gives me two windows of creativity. So then I get a morning window of creativity. I get an afternoon window of creativity. That is where the productivity happens for me.
The thing I want to be careful of, Jordan, is, okay, a lot of listeners with a lot of different goals, and goals take time. If you're training for a marathon like I did a few years ago or a bike century, which I did a few months ago, it’s like a part-time job, Jordan. You have to budget your time. I was getting to the point where I'm doing two, three four-mile bike rides just to try to prep for that bike century. Or let's say maybe it's writing a book. I think it's 81% of people who say they want to write a book. I love what Tim Ferriss says. You got to write two crappy pages a day. It's about structure your time that whether it's 15 minutes, two pages an hour, you have to find a way to prioritize it. Then you start plugging away at it. If you keep doing that, you're going to see some progress, and it's going to encourage you to keep on keeping on. So I think that's a critical starting point.
[00:10:55] JR: Yeah. So your time budget, essentially, I mean, I use that terminology, but begins with eating frogs, right? You talk about this in Win the Day. What does this mean? Where did this term come from and what does it mean for us?
[00:11:09] MB: Well, it's probably – It’s vaguely familiar, I'm sure, to a lot of listeners. It's this old Mark Twain-ism that he is purported to have said that if you have to eat a frog, do it first thing in the morning because then you know that the hardest thing is behind you, which is kind of hilarious and ridiculous. Not real plausible. I think he also is reported to have said, “And if there are two of them, eat the bigger one first.” So eat the frog is one of those habits in Win the Day that you just prioritize. You get the hardest thing behind you and you will have a sense of accomplishment.
I would say, though, as well, like my daily bible reading plan is usually the first thing that I do every morning, and there's a sense of accomplishment. I have an app. It’s the YouVersion, the bible app. When I check that box that says, “Okay, I've fulfilled today's reading plan,” Jordan, it's amazing how even that little check mark is a sense of accomplishment, and it starts the day on a positive note.
[00:12:24] JR: I want to talk to you my time budget in a second. But before I do, you just released this new book, Do It for a Day, on how to build any habit in 30 days. So talk us through how to do this, how to build the habit of eating the frog or starting the day in the word. Whatever the habit is that our listeners want to develop, how would you show them how to do that?
[00:12:47] MB: Well, you have to take the goal, you have to reverse engineer it, and then you have to turn it into daily habits. So if you're going to read the bible cover to cover, let someone else do the hard work for you. Take that bible reading plan. It'll break down. I think it's 1,189 chapters in the bible. Let them break it down into 365 days and put it into practice. If you're going to run a marathon, it's probably going to be my plan was 72 runs, 475 miles over six months. So you reverse engineer it.
If it's writing a book, hey, let's say it's a 50,000-word book, you figure out how many writing days you're going to have. Then how long do you want it to take? Well, you're going to need x number of words every day. If you miss a day, you're probably going to need to double down that that next day. So it really is this art of reverse engineering. It's almost hacking habits. But whatever it is, it's going to happen one day at a time, so you have to do it for a day. Then you get up and do it all over again. Simply put, show me your habits, I'll show you your future. If you can turn it into a daily habit, then that daily habit is going to become your destiny because you are what you repeatedly do.
[00:14:08] JR: I want to talk to you what I repeatedly do, my time budget. In fact, just to make this visual, I'll make sure we add this into the show notes. But five o'clock AM, I think I mentioned this in episode one, I'm at my dining room table and spending time in the word. I mentioned in that episode, this is the keystone habit for my day. It also ensures that I start my day outside of the kingdom of noise that we talked about in episode two. Then from 6:00 to 7:30 in the morning, that's my morning routine. That's when I'm hanging out with my kids, getting them ready for school. 7:30 to 9:30, that's my first block of deep work, which we talked about in episode four when we talked about C.S. Lewis. That’s when I'm working on eating the frog, related to one of my big hairy audacious goals that we talked about in episode three, right? Doing the hardest thing of my day, two-hour block, phone's on do not disturb, and I'm just going after it, right?
Then from 9:30 to 10:15, I'm taking my first break throughout the day, right? I'm embracing productive rest, like we talked about in episode five. Then I'm back. I got another block of deep work from 10:15 to 12:15. Mark, back to your point from a minute ago, I'm only four hours, roughly four or I got four hours of deep work done, by far, easily 90% of my creative output for the day by lunchtime. So if the rest of my day is choppy, that's okay. Like a lot of times it's not. But even if it is, who cares, right? So the afternoon, that's the first time I check messages, going back to what we talked about in episode four, got meetings, and then plenty of margin baked in to ensure that I'm unhurried, right?
So I'm curious for you, I won't talk to the rest of my routine, you guys can see in the show notes, but how do you make sure you got plenty of margin in your days so that you're not hurrying from one thing to the next, Mark?
[00:16:00] MB: It's so hard. It's so hard, Jordan, because it would be humanly impossible for me to take every meeting that is requested of me. I couldn't pull it off as a pastor, let alone as a writer. So what I've had to do, I think it was Eugene Peterson who had his assistant schedule two or three-hour meeting with FD, Dostoevsky, who was dead. But he knew he needed three hours to read. So if you put it in his calendar, then he could say in good faith, “I have a meeting.” So what I've learned to do is block off parts of my calendar, so I don't feel the guilt that, “Oh, no. It is empty.” No, fill it with what it is that you want to do, need to do. It could be dream. It could be pray. It could be read. But you fill in that slot and then you protect those margins.
I do have one question for you, Jordan. It's this. I mentioned that, for me, taking a nap is one way I reset and get an extra window of creativity. But the other mechanism is exercise, and I'm wondering if that's true for you and how you leverage that?
[00:17:21] JR: Yeah. So the first break of my day, every day, I do two hours of deep work where I'm eating the frog, and then I go for a run. I have headphones in my ears but I'm not listening to anything. I basically do that, so I don't look like a weirdo running around my neighborhood with no headphones because who in the world does that. But, no, it's just my time to – It’s a time to exercise my body. But more so, it's a time to exercise my mind and make creative connections between what I'm writing, what I'm thinking about in my work, etc.
But I will say this. I want to go back to what you said a minute ago about Eugene Peterson because I don't think enough people have given themselves permission to schedule appointments with themselves for the work they believe God has called them to do in this life. You have permitted. Nobody needs you to give you permission for that. But if you need permission, I'm giving you permission, Mark. I'm sure he's giving you permission right here to do that, right? Like we have got to develop this habit, and actually this is kind of the conclusion of my book, Redeeming Your Time. I help readers build a time budget, which is essentially a second calendar that lives alongside your existing calendar that represents appointments with other people. But your time budget are the appointments that you've made with yourself, right? To eat the frog, to go after the goals, to be in the word, to write that book. Whatever it is that you want to do, you got to make the time for it. You got to calendar it. I'm going to show you really practically how to do that.
Hey, Mark. It's time to land this plane. We’re wrapping up the Redeem the Day Podcast. What words do you want to leave our listeners with? We've talked about so much, but what do you want to conclude this thing with, Mark?
[00:19:02] MB: Well, we've been talking a little bit about hurry and busyness. Isn't it interesting, Jordan, that we sometimes feel guilty taking a Sabbath, but we ought to feel guilty probably not taking Sabbath because that's when we're violating God's rhythm. Or we almost feel guilty with downtime or resting or relaxing, like I can't enjoy this too long or maybe something's wrong. We have to rewire ourselves, in a sense. I would say that leadership starts with self-leadership. You have got to get good at just taking care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, you aren’t going to be good to anybody else. So whether that's your exercise routine or finding margins to read, whatever it is that is restorative to you, you're going to be a better and higher use to the people around you if you take care of yourself. So don't make any apologies for that. That isn't selfish. That's selfless.
I think the Golden Rule talks about do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or love your neighbor as yourself. You've got to take good care of yourself. Jordan, your book is just a priceless gift in that regard, so many practical tips. I would be remiss at the end of this podcast series if I didn't say thank you. Some of these practices and best practices that you've shared are so helpful, so encouraging, and what a joy to be able to, hopefully, help us and help listeners redeem our time a little bit better.
[00:21:00] JR: Well, hey, and I'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for your work over the years and years and years and the many gifts of books you've brought in the world, but also Win the Day. My only regret was that Win the Day came out a month after I had to turn in the manuscript for Redeeming Your Time because these books are so complimentary. I think in Win the Day, you've really helped us with the mindset around what it takes to redeem our time. Like you said in your endorsement of Redeeming Your Time, it's just hyper practical, right? Like here's a roadmap for how to take what you've learned in Mark's book and in my book, and put it into practice.
So, guys, I'll just close out with how we started this podcast in the Apostle Paul's words in Ephesians 5:15 and 16, which is the basis of this podcast. See then that you walk carefully, not as fools but as wise. Redeeming the time, redeeming the day, winning the day because the days are evil. Guys, we just scratched the surface on this topic. Mark and I have a ton more to say about all of this in our respective books. Go pick up Mark’s books, Win the Day and Do It For a Day, or my own book, Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive. There's also a lot more free content from us and markbatterson.com and jordanraynor.com.
Thank you guys for spending a few hours with us over the course of the seven episodes. We're praying that you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, go leave a review or a rating of the show on Apple podcasts. Blessings to you all. Mark, my friend, thank you so much for doing this.
[00:22:41] MB: Thanks, Jordan.
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