In this episode, Dr. Sev is joined by Scott Maderer, coach, speaker, and author, for a practical conversation about building a life that fits. They explore how aligning time, talent, and money, and focusing on the right work instead of more work, can help create clarity, sustainability, and intention in everyday life.
Listeners will walk away with reflection questions, mindset shifts, and simple steps they can take to move forward with confidence.
Scott is the author of Inspired Living: Assemble the Puzzle of Your Calling by Mastering Your Time, Talent, and Treasures. He helps individuals and couples make intentional decisions around time, work, and money that support sustainable, values-aligned lives.
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Hey, hey, hey, Savvy Squad. Welcome to another episode of the Dr. Sev Talks Money, YouTube and podcast, where we empower women to manage money confidently. In this episode, we’re talking about what it means to live your calling in a way that’s practical, grounded, and sustainable. We’re exploring how aligning your time, talents, and money can help you focus on the right things.
Not just stay busy. My guest today is Scott Maderer, a coach, speaker, and author who helps people move from simply working to truly living their calling. He helps individuals and couples gain clarity, align their time, talents, and money, and build lives that reflect what matters most. Scott, welcome to the Dr.
Sev Talks Money podcast.
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.
So I’d like to kick off with an icebreaker to ease in if you suddenly found $5,000 that had to be spent on pure joy. No bills, no responsibilities. What would you do with it?
So it has to be spent on pure joy, no bills, no responsibilities.
I probably use it to take a trip with my wife. It probably would be either Disney related or Renaissance Fair related. It just depend on the time of the year and what we wanted to do.
Sound like it would be a fun trip.
Yeah, both of those are my happy places. If I’m at the Renaissance festivals, I’m having a great time and if I’m at Disney, I’m usually having a great time.
So those are kind of happy places for me.
Okay. For listeners meeting you for the first time, tell us who you are and what you do.
So, like you said, up front, I’m a coach full time. I call myself a stewardship coach, helping people master their time, their talent, and their treasure so that they can live out their calling. Where that got to though, kind of going back in time a little bit where it came from.
I actually started my career doing medical research. I did that for a little while, figured out that was really about chasing grant money and I decided I didn’t want to chase grant money the rest of my life, so I pivoted and became a school teacher. I did that for 16 years, taught middle school.
Taught high school was really involved in systemic reform and science education, teaching other science teachers, doing all of that sort of thing. , Loved it. Had some personal things that I’ll come back to in a minute, but just staying with the career track. I left teaching and went into the corporate world, still in education.
I worked for a testing company, so I went from teaching to testing. My students said I joined the dark side. But again, in testing, it was about serving and helping, other folks and bringing equity to education. I did that for 11 years, worked myself up into a senior corporate position, and the coaching business was born while I was in the corporate job.
So what happened is my wife and I, at the end of my teaching career, as it was getting towards the end, I looked up one day and I realized that my wife and I had more debt than I made in a year. I was actually suicidal because of finances. My wife and I, our communication was breaking down. Our marriage was breaking down.
I wasn’t talking to her ’cause I was gonna protect her. She’s not talking to me ’cause she didn’t want to add to my stress. Anyone that’s been in a relationship knows that not talking to each other is not the key to a happy relationship. So we were basically headed towards divorce. I was possibly, you know, considering taking my own life, all of these negative things going on, and some messaging came into our life that made me realized that maybe we could do something different.
And I sat down with her. I came clean and told her everything that was going on, all the stuff I’d been protecting her from. Of course, my wife is a really smart lady and she knew what was going on, but she was protecting me by not talking to me about it. And we began to communicate. We began to radically refine the way we live, the decisions we were making, the way we were communicating about money completely up into the way we were living our life.
And as we did , that’s about the time I started making the corporate change and going into that. And what happened is we started living in ways that other people noticed. And someone actually came up to me one day and said, y’all are weird. Do you think I, you could help me be weird? And it was like.
Yeah, sure. We could help. You got to helping other people first as a ministry later, that became the coaching business, and as the coaching business grew, I kind of reversed and climbed back down the corporate ladder and launched the coaching business full-time.
So I started it part-time in 2011, went full-time in 2017 and still doing it today, and haven’t looked back.
Yeah. That is so fascinating, because a lot of people can relate, I’m sure to the process you went through to get here. There is a point where you say, this is not sustainable.
Yep.
And what do I need to do? And I’m thankful. That you heard the messages and you are still here with us physically today.
So is my wife, despite anything that I’ve done to make it not true. So is my wife.
Alright, so let’s go back to defining what calling is. When people hear that, it can feel vague, overwhelming.
Yep. So how do you help someone begin to identify their calling in a practical and grounded way?
Yeah, so I’ll give you a couple of exercises, but before I go to the practical exercises, let’s define our terms. Again, I was a school teacher. I’m still a big believer in language and words mean things, and so I like to make sure we’re all talking about the same thing.
And so first off, there’s two words that we use interchangeably in the English language, and yet they don’t actually mean the same thing, and that’s career and vocation. We talk about our career and we talk about our vocation, we act like those are the same thing, and technically they’re not. The word career actually comes from the word for cart.
It’s, a method of transportation. It’s something that gets you from point A to point B. That’s really all it is. Nowadays, we would call it the thing that you get paid to do. That’s your career. Vocation. On the other hand, the root word for vocation is vocalize, which literally means to be called. It’s the same thing that means, vocal vocalization, vocation, they all come from the same root which is to make noise or to speak.
And so by definition, if there is a calling, there has to be a caller. Now, in my case, I’m a person of faith. I believe that’s God. Honestly, I don’t care what name you give it, but if you believe that there is something bigger than you outside of you driving and directing you, that’s the thing we would call calling or vocation.
Those two words are interchangeable, but notice career is not, that’s important because your calling shows up in all different components of your life, not just in your career. So my calling shows up in how I’m a coach, but it also shows up in how I’m a father, how I’m a husband. You know how I’m an interview guest on a podcast, all of those things should reflect my calling, and that’s why it feels overwhelming and vague.
So let’s get practical for a minute. I’m gonna give you two exercises. One is a looking backwards exercise. The other is a looking forward exercise. I believe we need both. I think we need to spend some time on the rear view mirror, but we also need to spend time and energy on the windshield. So looking backwards.
Just take a sheet of paper and everyone could do this. Take a sheet of paper, divide it into three columns, left hand column, middle column, right hand column, and down the left hand column. Just begin to brainstorm everything you’ve done in your life. Be as broad as you can. By the way, I don’t just mean everything you’ve been paid to do.
I mean everything you’ve done. Think about your relationships, think about your activities, think about your hobbies, think about the things, whatever you can put in that category of stuff. I’ve done. Then down the middle column for each of those activities, write down things that you loved about those activities, things that gave you energy when you do those activities, things that bring you joy when you do those activities, the good stuff.
And in the last column, begin to brainstorm the things that drained your energy, the things that don’t bring you joy, the things that you didn’t love about it. And let me be clear, by the way, on every activity, you should have something in both of those columns. There is no activity on the planet that you can bring that’s only negative, and there’s no activity on the planet that you can bring.
That’s only positive. All of them always have a mix, so pay attention to that. Begin to look for patterns, look for things that keep showing up. Maybe you use different words. Maybe they have different connotations, but they keep showing up. What keeps showing up in the love column? What keeps showing up in the not love so much column, because out of that pattern begins to become an inkling of what things that you have been created and you have been designed to do.
Because unfortunately, we’re often blind to it because a lot of times it comes easy for us, and so we think it comes easy for everybody. Yeah, and it turns out that other people find the thing that you find easy, hard, they find the thing that you get joy in and they’re like, uh, that drains me. I don’t want to do that.
So a lot of times we’re blind to it because it’s the very stuff that comes easiest and brings the most energy. That is often where our calling lays. So now let’s talk about looking forward and the looking forward activity. I call this the airport activity because back in the day when I worked corporate, I spent a lot of time on planes in airports, in hotel rooms, traveling all over the country.
And so I set this. At an airport. Imagine for a minute you’ve been on a trip, and you know how when you fly home, sometimes you have that connecting airport. Mm-hmm. So you fly home, you land in an airport, you change planes, and then you fly the rest of the way home. So you land in that connecting airport and you trot across the place and you get finally to the gate and you look up and there above the gate is those dreaded words, flight delayed.
So you wait in line, you get up, you talk to the person there at the desk, and you say, how long is the flight delay? And they say, four hours. Great. I’m stuck in an airport in between. I can’t go home, I can’t go back. I’m just stuck here for four hours. So you do what most people do when they’re stuck in an airport.
You go find a restaurant or a bar depending on your particular preference and the time of day and all of that sort of stuff. So imagine for a minute that this trip, this time that you’re stuck in the airport is five years in the future. It’s five years from today, and you happen to be stuck in this airport.
And as you walk into the restaurant, and I’m gonna set it in a restaurant, you walk into the restaurant and across the restaurant you hear a voice, Hey, how are you doing? You look over shocked and surprised, and it turns out it’s a friend of yours that moved away. You moved away. Y’all got busy. You haven’t talked to each other for a few years, but they used to be one of your really good friends and they’re still a good friend.
You just haven’t caught up with them for a few years, and they say, how are you doing? You say, I’m fantastic. How are you doing? Hey, how long are you here? And you’re like, I was only gonna be here a few minutes, but now I’m stuck. Four hours. They go, well, I’m stuck a couple hours too. Let’s go grab a table and catch up.
As you draw together in the table, in the corner of the restaurant, your friend looks at you, looks you in the eye and says, no, tell me truly how have you been these last five years? You think about it for a second. You look at your friend and you go, you know what? This has been the best five years of my life.
Because see, that’s the key. That’s the exercise. You need to write down what comes after that, because. What would make you really look at this person and say, with all honesty and all sincerity, this has been the best five years of my life. What would be true about your relationships? What would be true about your spiritual walk?
What would be true about your finances? All of these components coming together to make you say, man, this is it. This is awesome. Because by those two activities, one looking forward and one looking back, you’ll begin to get an inkling of the direction you need to move towards. To uncover more of your calling.
And I say it that way because I don’t ever think we really arrive at our calling. We just keep uncovering layers. It’s like Shrek, right? It’s an onion, you’re just peeling back layers of the ogre, where you find deeper and deeper meaning.
Yeah. Wow. I love the way you. Use all of those analogies and connected those things because I’m sure even if we haven’t traveled, we’ve seen movies and so we can all relate to that and how that would look like.
And then how, what are we going to say to that person? What would we like to say to that person Exactly. And how can we make that happen? So with that, it leads me to my next question. Many people feel stuck in work that they dislike, but they’re afraid to make a change. So what does a healthy transition look like from a job you hate to a calling you love?
Especially when we have all those responsibilities, financial requirements, all of that. What does that look like?
So there’s a lot of components to it and some are practical and some are emotional. So let’s cover both of them. You know, practically you need to have a plan.
You need to have a runway or some finances. You need to know what your responsibilities are. You need to know what your numbers are. You need to have money saved up. All of these kind of practical things. Usually, by the way, that’s not what gets people stuck. Usually people can write down all the practical plans.
I want a six month emergency fund and I need to, pay off this debt and I need to do this, and I need to do that. The practical stuff is usually, yeah, maybe it’s a little overwhelming. Maybe you have to make a list, but it’s usually not the hard part. The information is usually stuff that people kind of understand and get.
So then what’s the hard part? What’s the emotional side? Because it’s the imposter syndrome. It’s the fear, it’s the doubt, it’s the what ifs. That tend to hold people back because we tend to have patterns where as long as we’re kind of comfortable where we’re at, even if we don’t like it, even if it’s not perfect, but if the pain isn’t bad enough, we don’t move.
So here’s the interesting thing, by the way, that pain being bad enough can be a situation like mine where I’m suicidal because of finances. That’s an example of the pain. I do not recommend that, okay, that is not the way to do it. You also can find that discomfort by thinking about the destination.
Thinking about the growth, thinking about the positive that you’re moving towards. ’cause what’s interesting is when I’ve seen people who are constantly leaving a job they hate, that’s kind of how you put it, leaving a job you hate. If you’re running away from something, if you’re moving away from something that’s a fear-based reaction, usually.
It’s out of fear, it’s out of a feeling of the negativity. And what’s interesting is a lot of times you bring that negativity with you because you start focusing on the things that are bad as opposed to the things that are good. On the other hand, when you’re doing an exercise like I just shared, and you’re thinking about the visualization of what do I want to create?
You begin to focus on the positives, and what’s interesting is sometimes the very job that you’re in suddenly becomes less oppressive because you begin to see the things that are there that you do love. And yeah, maybe it’s not everything, but it’s some things and it lets you build and stay while you’re getting that certification you need or doing the other things to lay the foundation to actually make a change or make a shift, whether that’s to a new job, whether that’s to a new position, whether that’s launching your own business.
There’s a million different things that you could be doing, but you begin to settle into. Being able to stay with joy, not perfection, but joy while you’re building the foundation to make that transition.
Yeah. I love the way you shared that and how you framed it because wherever you go, there you are.
That’s right.
And, if you are the problem, you just take the problem with you.
Yes, you’re the common denominator, right? So I think that exercise that you mentioned, I’m going to be using that. And even though I’m very sure that. I’m in my element. This is my calling. This is my purpose, but I’m still going to do that because it, not only now that I’m thinking about it, not only will it help people to identify their calling, it will help them to also see the thing that’s stopping them because it’s something that you don’t like.
For me, there’s certain things that I don’t like in what I’m doing. I can now see, okay, I can hire someone
exactly
to help me with those unpleasant parts because I still love it enough to want to do it because this is what I’m supposed to do. But I can hire someone because I’ve identified those things that’s caused me to procrastinate.
’cause I don’t wanna do that.
So yeah, the analogy is, guess what? The laundry still has to get done. And you know what? That load of socks still has to get folded, yeah. We all have the load that we hate. It’s the load of socks and undies and all of that sort of stuff that it’s like, oh, I hate doing this load.
’cause then I have to fold it, you know? And a lot of times those things live in a basket ’cause we don’t even bother folding ’em. But guess what? There are people out there that you could pay them to do that and they would do it for you. Now you have to get in a position where you can afford that. Yeah.
Okay. But. If that’s truly the thing that’s keeping you from living the rest of your call. Okay, good to go do it. Yeah. By the same token, don’t outsource things that do bring you joy and energy. Okay. Unless they’re interfering with you getting things that give you even more joy and energy. Yeah. ’cause I’ve seen people do that.
I’ve seen people hold onto things that they like, which prevent them from growing into the things that they love. Ooh, that was a mistake, because yes, you kept something good, but you’ve abandoned something even better.
And why are you talking about me?
Just like when I preach, I give a sermon and people are like, that sermon was just to me. I’m like, no, I was preaching to me. You just happened to be in the room listening.
So, you mentioned about, making sure you’re building up so you have the money to do the things or to offload the things that don’t bring you as much joy. So let’s go there. Let’s talk about money and stewardship. How does our relationship with money. Either support or block our ability to live our, calling , the relationship, not the money so much.
Right. The relationship with money.
And, I’m glad you brought that up because it is really, honestly our relationship with money that blocks us more than the amount of money. People have a tendency to say, when I make x, my life will be good. Then they make X and their life isn’t great and perfect and they go, oh, well then I must have to make, a little bit more than X, and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more.
And they’re always chasing that magic amount of money that’s gonna solve all their problems. Oh, here’s what’s interesting. I’ve coached with people that make $30,000 a year, and I’ve coached with people that make over a million dollars a year in income. They all had choices. They all had trade-offs. They all had mindset things.
They all had to make decisions. It turns out that the amount of money, yeah, it changes the nature of the decision, but it doesn’t really change the emotion of the decision, if that makes sense. The guilt and the shame and the fear and the anger and the hope and the joy and all of those things happen.
Regardless it’s why so many people get instantaneous wealth, like win a lottery and then end up going bankrupt because they didn’t really have the underlying relationship built. Yes. And so the money just added zeros, it didn’t change them. So how do we identify and what do we do? Well, stewardship is a mindset, stewardship is the idea that I am the manager of what I own, not.
The owner. So in Christian terms, if you look at the biblical meaning of stewardship, despite what it has come to mean, which is we’re starting a building campaign, would you please donate? It’s not what it means, unfortunately, that’s the only time sometimes churches talk about it. But what it means is back in the feudal days, you know, you had the Lord that owned the castle, owned the land, had the surfs, had people that worked there.
But they didn’t want to have to do all the day-to-day management. I mean, that was boring. They wanted to go out hunting and you know, shoot pheasants and do all of that stuff. That was the fun stuff. So they hired somebody. They called him a steward, that was their title, and the steward lived in a really nice house and had really nice clothes and really nice stuff because the Lord wanted them to well taken care of because if they weren’t well taken care of, they might steal from the Lord
so they would make sure that they had a good position and a good house, and a good life, and a good living. At the end of the day, the steward didn’t own any of the stuff. They just managed it on behalf of the Lord. So that has come to mean in Christian circles, you know, the Lord, there is God, and we manage our resources on behalf of God.
But again, for somebody listening out there that’s like, I don’t believe in that stuff. Okay, great. On a practical standpoint, by the way, you are just managing your stuff. You don’t own it. I can prove that to you. Have you ever seen a U-Haul following a hearse? I haven’t. Okay. You don’t take it with you,
nope. At some point the stuff you own, you are leaving it to someone else. Whether that’s your children, whether that’s a charity, I don’t care. It’s going somewhere else. So you just managed it for a period of time. And when you recognize that reality, it changes your mindset with money because it’s no longer about keeping it and holding onto it and hoarding it and getting the next amount and chasing money for joy.
It’s about finding joy regardless. I have contentment, whether I have a lot or whether I have a little, doesn’t matter because I don’t hold onto money with a closed fist. I hold onto it with an open hand. By the way, one of the names for money is currency. Currency, things that are in motion.
If you hold onto currency with a closed fist, it can’t move. It can’t get out. But what’s true too is things can’t get in. And when you hold it with an open hand, yeah, sometimes that means money leaves. But it also means money can flow back into your life, and it’s that movement and that energy that actually creates a different relationship with money where you’re no longer chasing money for happiness and joy.
You found joy and money just shows up or doesn’t. You know it, it’s just a byproduct.
Yeah, it’s funny you said that about the U-Haul because I just recorded another podcast earlier today and we had that same exact conversation about the U-Haul. Nope.
One of my friends has put in his will. That he wants a U-Haul behind his hearse he just wants an empty U-Haul just because of that joke. Just because people say that and he’s like, I just wanna mess with people.
Yeah. So, now they can’t say I’ve never seen it, because
Exactly. I looked at him I’m like, dude, stop that. It’s a great analogy. Leave me alone.
And even if you put something in the U-Haul it’s rots in the, grave.
Anyway,
yeah. There, there was an old joke of a guy that said, I wanna be buried with all of my money. He was worth millions of dollars. And he’s like, I want you to take all of my money outta the bank and put it in the casket with me and bury me with all the money.
And the wife was there at the grave and as they’re carrying the casket, it’s pretty obvious that the casket’s not that heavy. And one of the guy’s friends walked over to the wife and said. Didn’t he say he wanted to be buried with all of his money? And the casket doesn’t seem heavy enough for him to have all of his money.
She’s like, oh, no, no. Yeah, I wrote him a check.
And that is a perfect segue for a quick pause. Hey friends, if you are enjoying today’s episode, the best way to support the show is to share it and leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform. And you know it. We love the number five, and if you are watching on YouTube, don’t forget to subscribe.
We’d love you to be part of our family. So in your book. Inspired living. You introduced a four-part framework, built around time, talent, and treasures. Can you walk us through that framework and how it helps people assemble the puzzle of their calling?
Yeah, so what’s interesting and in the book thank you for asking about inspired living.
I tried to lay out frameworks throughout, not processes, but frameworks and just to clarify, ’cause for some people they may not know the difference. What’s interesting is a process works as long as you start at the same point and you have the same endpoint desired. Well, I tried to use frameworks because frameworks work regardless of where you are in the journey they work.
When you’re at the beginning, they work when you’re at the end. They work regardless of what your particular chosen destination is, so they just apply to the world. They’re ways of thinking as opposed to ways of doing. So the framework that you’re talking about is this outline that I call Invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world.
So lemme walk you through that. I start with invest in yourself because the truth is most of us don’t actually, spend time and energy on ourselves. The reason why is a lot of times we think about ourself as being selfish. If I focus on myself, I’m being selfish. But what I actually would argue is the kind of focus I’m talking about isn’t selfish.
It’s selfless. It’s not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less. Pastor Rick Warren used that as a quote in his book, the Purpose Driven Life, because. It’s this idea of finding true humility and true contentment. So to do that, you actually have to do some work on you.
’cause it turns out us as people, we don’t naturally do this. We don’t naturally think that way. We tend to think of ourselves first. Right? What’s in it for me? And these sorts of things. And the problem is that we move our attention. From what is our real provider and our real security, and we start focusing on things like money and other things in a greedy, hoardy way.
It changes our mindset and our attitude and our relationship. So we actually have to do that hard work of unpacking what are our actual values, what is important to us, all of those things that oftentimes we never spend any time on. So let’s assume for a minute you’ve done some of that work and you’ve done some of that unpacking.
And by the way, it’s usually best to do this with somebody else’s help, whether that’s a therapist, whether that’s a coach, there’s all sorts of people out there that help with that. But because again, we’re often blind to things that others see clearly that we can’t, and so having someone to help you reflect and revise and repeat can help with that.
So once you’ve done that for a while, what’s interesting is almost naturally. Most people, when they begin to do that, what ends up happening is they actually begin to invest in others almost just by default, because all of a sudden the stuff that you know is core to who you are, it’s like you wanna pour that out, you wanna help other people, you wanna share it with others.
And out of that sharing, what ends up happening is you get feedback, you get reflection, you get energy that comes back to you, and that energy lets you refine. What you understand about yourself. So it’s a positive feedback loop because as you invest in others, it comes back to you. As you develop you, it goes back to others and it begins to feed back on itself.
And natural byproduct of that is influence. Because what happens is all of a sudden you start getting the reputation of the person that helps people with this thing. You’re the person to talk about, when I need help with this man, send them to you and. Actually that’s called influence, right?
That’s generally the ability to begin to help other people in the journey. That’s what influence is. By the way. It’s not manipulation. ’cause some people start getting, almost feel guilty when they begin to develop influence. But there is a difference between influence, which is a positive, and manipulation, which is a negative.
Manipulation, is when I use my authority, my power, my gifting, whatever it is to get you to do something because it’s good for me. It’s me focused influence is when I use those same things to help you do something because it’s good for you. Now, it may also be good for me. It’s not that I have to lose and you have to win.
Okay? So for instance, with coaching, that’s one of my giftings. People pay me money for that. There’s nothing wrong with that because they’re getting more value than I am, honestly. They’re getting more benefit than I am. And it’s a, them focus regardless. I really don’t go into a coaching relationship because I get paid.
I go into a coaching relationship to help them.
Yeah.
And as long as that’s my focus, that’s influence. And then what’s happens is now I’ve invested in myself, I’ve invested in others, I’ve developed influence, and that means I have an impact. Because all of a sudden I get to see people’s lives change. I get to see people’s relationships change.
I get to talk to that man that was in that spot where I was and go, I know how you feel, but you don’t have to stay there. Here’s the way out. And when that happens. That’s the big joy feedback. Oh, I’m on the right path. I’ve got the right calling. I’m beginning to live this out. That lets us know we’re moving the right direction.
Now again, I focus on the journey, not the destination. I don’t think I’ve arrived at my calling yet. I think I’ve just uncovered another level of it. There’s probably other levels out there that I just haven’t found yet,
you know? Yeah. I would agree with that. We’re all growing, the ING, what is that called?
The infinitive verb, whatever it’s called. We’re growing, we’re learning. It’s a continuous process. And when it should be, when it, yeah. Yes. When it’s no longer a continuous process, we think we’ve arrived. I don’t know that anybody has arrived on this earth, but some of us think we have. Some of us think we have
and guess
what
Those are the people that you can sense it too, right? You start talking to somebody like that. And we get that icky feeling. It’s like, Ooh, I need to go take a shower after talking to you. That wasn’t fun at all ugh. But when somebody who’s authentic and really cares about people, you feel that too.
Yes.
And guess what? Again, I’ve worked with people of all sorts of income levels, all sorts of things. It’s really cool to sit down with somebody that you realize, oh my lord, this person’s worth millions of dollars. You know what? The good ones are still the good ones and the bad ones are still the bad ones.
Still the bad ones. Still the bad ones.
Yeah. I’ve met holy people with no money and I’ve met, real jerks with no money and I’ve met holy people with lots of money and I’ve met real jerks with lots of money, because it turns out the character is the character. All the money does is magnify it.
It unmasks it. It magnifies it.
It puts a magnified glass on it and says, this is who I really am.
Yes, yes, yes. There’s a distinction that you make that I find really powerful. You focus on getting not more done, but the right things done. Let’s talk about that a little bit, because in this world, we’re obsessed with productivity hacks and how can you make an hour into two?
How can you do all the things? What are some ways that we can get the right things done rather than more done? We’re tired.
Yeah. And some of it is simply learning to say no. And what I mean by that is most of us say yes, way too easy. And we fill up our day with stuff that really isn’t that important.
Okay, so let’s back up a minute. Couple of frameworks again, big fan of frameworks ’cause they work no matter where you are. The first one is the Eisenhower Matrix. Most people have heard of this, they just don’t know. It’s called the Eisenhower Matrix. Real simple. Imagine an xy old fashioned coordinate grid with a Y axis that goes up and down an X AIS that goes left and right.
On the Y axis, put important at the top and not important at the bottom on the x axis, put urgent on the right and not urgent on the left. So if you notice, you end up with kind of four squares, right? One of those squares is important and urgent. One of those squares is important and not urgent.
One of those squares is urgent and not important, and one of those squares is not urgent and not important. Okay. Everything you do fits into one of those four squares, because think about it for a minute. Most of us, by the way, don’t have a problem with urgent and important stuff. We get that stuff done, okay?
This is the stuff that it is truly an emergency. You have a deadline, it has to be done by this day, or it’s a real emergency, my house is on fire. I need to do something about this. That kind of thing. That’s an important thing that is also urgent. Most of us deal pretty well with that stuff.
Honestly, having worked with lots of people around managing themselves and looking at their productivity and their time, most of us really don’t have that big of a problem with things that are not urgent and not important. These are the things that we do for recreation. These are the things, just watching Netflix or going for those sorts of things.
They’re not really serving us in any sort of important way. They’re not really urgent. They could happen at any time. But there are things that we need to do sometimes to recharge or to relax or whatever. Most of us don’t actually waste a lot of time in that category, despite popular belief. By the way, most people think that that’s where they waste their time.
So if that’s not true, we’ve gotta look at the other two things. So one of those categories is urgent stuff. That’s not really important. That’s that email that just popped up while you were listening. That’s the phone call that rings. That’s the stuff that interrupts and distracts you that while you’re doing stuff that might be more important.
It’s the stuff that pulls you away. And believe it or not, that category, that box is the single biggest waste of time for most people. It’s where they spend most of their time and get the least back in terms of benefit. And where they’re stealing that time from. Is the other box important but not urgent?
This is stuff like doing that exercise I shared earlier. See, it’s not urgent. You could do it today. You could do it tomorrow. You can do it in 10 years. Doesn’t matter. You can never do it at all. There’s no urgency to it. But it is important to start unpacking your mindset and your beliefs, your relationships, all of that.
When you’re comfortable in a good job and you make good money and you don’t have too much debt, but you have some, and you know nothing really hurts too bad, then doing something about your money. It’s important, but it’s not urgent. Yeah. When your time is just operating on default, it’s important.
It’s not urgent. And so we ignore that block. We spend all our time on the urgent stuff that’s screaming for attention really doesn’t matter and it steals a real, true, authentic use of your time because you end up filling your calendar and filling your time with busy work instead of real work.
So here’s a small hack again, big believer in language, right? You are no longer allowed to say, I don’t have time for that.
Yeah.
Instead, change it to, that’s not a priority for me right now. Because here’s what’s funny. If you change your language like that, you’ll make different decisions and the people around you will react differently.
Imagine for a minute, you’re sitting there at work, it’s late in the evening, you’re getting on, towards the end of the day, you’re typing away, you’re doing your work, and your coworker comes by and they go, Hey, isn’t your daughter’s soccer game tonight? Don’t you need to head out for your daughter’s soccer game?
And if you say, I’m really busy with this work. I’m really busy, I really just can’t make it tonight, your coworker’s gonna look at you and go, oh, too bad, so sad. Pat you on the back sympathize. Say, yeah, I’m busy too. I get it right, because busy has become a badge of honor.
Yes
imagine for a minute that you looked at the coworker and you say, you know what? It’s really just not a priority for me to make it to my daughter’s soccer game. That feels icky. You know what I mean? And what’s more, your coworkers probably gonna smack you upside the head and go, whatcha talking about shut down the computer, go to your soccer game. You can answer that email later. It’s not that important. Put the email off. Now, there may be a situation, maybe you’re a surgeon and you’re in the middle of open heart surgery. Okay, great. This your daughter’s soccer game. I get it. That’s truly that important. But if it’s answering an email that you can answer in two hours after the game is over.
Dude, go to the soccer game, come back to the email later. But we don’t look at it that way because we don’t think of it as if we have a choice. We think of it as inevitable. And the truth is you always have the power of choice. That’s what saying priority helps you do. It helps you realize I could choose something different.
I could do something different. And then you’ll begin to make different choices.
Yeah. You’ve shared two powerful frameworks with us so far I’ve used that one before and I think I need to go back to doing it again. One of the things I’ve done is I turn off all notifications.
Yep.
No notifications.
I determine when I check email, not the ding. In fact, I’ve removed just about all apps from my phone.
Mm-hmm.
Because I don’t want to be, let me go look at what Facebook is doing. Facebook. And you see that
little red number and you’re like, oh, something’s important.
Yeah. I removed Facebook.
The only thing I still have that I’m debating is LinkedIn. So Yeah, because I know my personality and I know that. I’m the kind of person who’s, ooh, let me see what that is. ’cause I’m nosy and sometimes you end up.
30 minutes later scrolling or doing something or looking at you, you didn’t even realize it and you’ve forgotten that this other thing is due whenever. So, for those who are listening, I would really encourage you to, use these, hacks that Scott’s shared because they’ve helped me.
Yeah.
We’re gonna be sharing his website. And contact information later so that you can contact him if you wanna work with him or if you want to know more about any of what we’re talking about. I strongly encourage you to do that because again, the focus of this podcast is looking at our time our talent our money and making sure the life.
That we’re building is fit for what it is that our purpose is. Because a lot of times we build a life that’s like a stream we just go along with the flow and before you know it,
yeah. You end up in a place that’s not your plan. Mm-hmm. Because you haven’t been strategic and intentional. Or
somebody else’s plan. Yeah. A lot of times we end up living the life that somebody else wanted for us.
Yeah. And again, that not because they’re mean, they may have had the best of intentions for you.
Yeah. Yeah.
But if it’s not your life, it’s not the right one.
Yeah. So, let’s continue to talk a little bit about tools because you emphasize mindset and behavior change over tools, and I’m with you on that strongly. Because it’s not the tools. But anyway, what is the iterative process you teach people to help them continually align their time, their talents and treasures as life evolves.
Yeah. So, and again. Another framework because that’s, yeah, people haven’t figured out by now, this is how I see the world as frameworks and systems and processes. But what’s interesting is what happens to most of us is we sit down, we make a plan, right? We, and then we go execute on the plan. Well, those are the first two steps of this iterative process.
But for most people, that’s where they stop. They make a plan, they execute on the plan. That’s not done yet. Because the next step is to actually stop and review and reflect on what happened, what went right, what went wrong, what could have gone better, what did I learn from this? All of these sorts of questions, and I can give you a list of questions to ask, but those sorts of things where you were reflecting on, did the plan work, did the plan not work?
How could I make it better? Those sorts of things. So now I’ve planned, I’ve executed, and then I’ve reviewed and reflected. Then you need to revise, which means make changes to what you are doing, and then repeat. Do it again. Make a new plan with the new information. Execute, reflect, revise, repeat. By the way, time, money.
Doesn’t matter. And what’s interesting too is it changes your mindset. So now all of a sudden, all I’m getting is data it’s experiments. Okay? I’m a science teacher. Think of it like experiments. It’s just fun and I’m just getting information. It’s not about does it work? Does it not work?
It’s what did I learn? What can I do different next time? What’s cool is you have failure and you don’t look at it as failure. You just look at it as data and you reprise and repeat. But what’s also cool, and actually even more important is when you have success, you don’t stop and go, oh, I made it. You go, huh, great.
What did I learn from that? What else can I do? Because sometimes we have success and it traps us.
Yeah,
we end up living out something that’s really not our life because we’ve got, the curse of success, and there’s something better out there, but we never uncover it because we’re too scared to, and so this lets us look at it as, huh, okay, that was cool.
This part of it I really loved. What can I do to keep that? But maybe get rid of this part that it’s not in alignment, or change it or revise it. And you constantly are evolving and changing. But you’re doing it in an intentional, positive way, not just randomly based on what happens and comes to you.
Yeah.
You said that beautifully because data is there at our disposal, but a lot of us don’t use it. And so if we can take that data. Instead of going on the same trajectory, keep going. This is a plan. I’m supposed to be building a hundred million dollar business and I’m gonna keep going instead of saying, okay, this is where I am.
It’s been five years and this is where I am. Am I really on track? What do I need to change? Or it’s
even what I want. Yeah.
So, take that data and revise and possibly make a new plan, with the new information that you have. So, thank you so much for stating that.
Too, when you revise and reflect to do it without guilt. Yes. And money, especially for a lot of us, money is real guilt inducing time is real guilt inducing. We look at our money, oh, I was so stupid and why did I do that? And a lot of times what’s interesting is if you’re honest with yourself, you’re judging your past self’s decisions.
Based on information that your future self learned.
Yes, yes.
In other words, your past self didn’t know this was a bad decision. Yeah. But now your future self does, and then your future self gets mad at your past self. Yeah. It’s like, no, you just learn something. You learn that doesn’t work, so don’t do it again.
It’s like the kid touching the hot stove, right? The kid touches the hot stove. You go, the stove’s hot. Don’t touch the stove. They touch the stove. They probably don’t touch it too many more times. At least not intentionally.
Yeah. That is so key that we not use our current knowledge to judge past mistakes because we made the best decisions that we could with the best information we had at the time. And that’s why this younger generation need to be careful about beating upon parents. ’cause parents didn’t know a lot of stuff that we know now. And now it’s a world that’s uncovered. So give us some grace. Okay.
Now, by the same token, just to flip the script, ’cause that’s what I do, the parents also have a responsibility to revise and repeat and learn. Yes. And grow. So it goes both ways. Um, yeah.
You know that grace has to go both directions too, because you’re right. There’s things that we know today that. We didn’t know 50 years ago. And there’s language and labels and other things in a positive way. I’m not talking about negative labeling that we didn’t understand and didn’t know.
But that’s the cool thing is when you look at it as just, Hey, this is just new information that now I can take in and use and be intentional. It doesn’t mean you just trust everything that comes into your circle, and it doesn’t mean that you reject everything that comes into your circle.
Either one of those is dogmatic instead it’s let me look at where I’m at and judge how it’s helping and how it’s growing me.
Yes. So someone is listening right now and they’re saying, I’m liking what I’m hearing, and they feel inspired to make a change. They’re unsure where to start.
What’s one small step that they can take this week? Just one step to move closer to living their calling.
I think the most important step that you could take at any point is asking yourself that question, what do I wanna be when I grow up? And by the way, I don’t care if you’re eight or 88. You can still ask yourself this question, what do I want this next phase of my life to look like?
What impact do I want to have? What influence do I want to have? What? What do I want to live out? That exercise I shared way back in the beginning about the airport, you know that five year future exercise, that’s an example of one of these ways of visualizing. What do I wanna be when I grow up?
What do I want my life to look like? It’s stopping and taking some time to breathe and to reflect. Because here’s the thing, once you’ve done that, now it is asking yourself exactly the question you just asked me, which is, what’s the small, tiny little step that I can take? And what’s interesting is it’ll be different for everybody ’cause you’ll all have a different picture of what you want, but all of you will find something, maybe it’s.
Actually taking that next step and going to your boss and talking to him about a new opportunity. Maybe it’s getting out of a toxic relationship, and saying no to that person. Maybe it’s canceling that meeting that you’ve had on your calendar for, you know, three years. That really doesn’t serve you anymore.
I don’t know exactly what action it would be ’cause it depends on who they are and where they’re at. But what I can assure you is if you stop and take that time to reflect about where you are and where you really want to be, that action will become obvious.
Yeah. Yeah. You shared a lot of wisdom with us today.
You’ve given us a lot. What are you working on that listeners can support or learn from you if they want to go deeper?
Absolutely. So I’ve still got my book out Inspired Living. So I’m obviously out promoting that. I’m working on a second book.
It’s probably about a year from coming out, which is about keeping. The both end, keeping the mindset of two things at one time and how that can benefit us and grow us. I’ve been working on that for a little while. I’ve got my own podcast Inspired Stewardship and of course my coaching business.
All of that is out there and things that folks can do. I actually put together a landing page for your listeners. I think you’ll put that site up, in show notes and put it up on the screen. So if you go to inspired stewardship.com/ Sev, it’s got some free resources, just put in your email. They’ll come to you about time, talent, and treasures.
There’s a place you could jump on a call with me. My book’s there, podcast, all of that stuff is there. And you can find any of that. It’s all for free. No pressure if you haven’t figured it out yet. I’m a pretty low pressure guy. And you’ll find out that over at inspirestewardship.com slash Sev.
Yes. And I will have that in the show notes also. Thank you so very much for agreeing to come on the Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast. I am full from all the information, all the knowledge that you’ve shared. So thanks again, Scott. And as you were listening to today’s conversation, this was a reminder that living your calling isn’t about doing more. It’s about choosing what truly matters and aligning our time, our talents, and money accordingly.
So if something from this episode resonated, take a moment this week to reflect on one small shift that you can make that brings you closer to the life that you want to live. And Scott has shared a number of frameworks that you can use to get there. So until next time, this is Dr. Sev saying Please take care of yourself and your money.
