The Tech Leader's Toolbox
The Tech Leader's Toolbox
The Best Priority Management Tool You Have
TIME MANAGEMENT DOESN'T WORK! Instead, we manage priorities. Even that can be a challenge as we get more and more demands on our time because we are achievers. How do you deal with that? Learn about the highly effective tool you already have in your possession with Paul Simkins, Trainer and Coach.
Plus, Paul shares a recipe for Apple-PB Bread Pudding. You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing TLToolbox@BoldlyLead.com.
You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.
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Paul Simkins :Hello, and welcome to The Tech Leader's Toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds tomorrow, and you are definitely a leader, because leadership is all about influence. And the good leaders know they need to increase their positive influence with those around them. The great leaders know they do that through growth, and you grow by a commitment to become better each and every day. This is Episode 35 of the podcast. And there is one thing that will help you manage your priorities better than any app or anything else out there. This tool is a simple tool, but it's not always easy to use. Let's talk about this tool and how you use it. Are you ready? Let's go. In the last episode of the podcast, Episode 34, we talked about how we should stop trying to manage time. After all, we all only have 24 hours in a day. So instead of managing time, what you worry about is managing priorities, because it's the priorities that are going to help you achieve a lot more. So when you manage to your priorities, then you are going to naturally accomplish more. And you're going to feel more satisfied when you accomplish more, because you will have accomplished the things that are important to you. And remember, we talked about the three R's in that that was shared by originally by my mentor, john Maxwell, what is required of me, what provides the greatest return, and what provides me the greatest reward. And so when you think about managing your priorities with the three R's, things go a little bit better. Well, the challenge with that, though, is that when we do what we know, then we become known as a person of action. And the one who gets things done, that increases the demand on our time. And it challenges our priorities. So we end up fighting kind of an uphill battle in a way because when we work to our priorities, and we manage our priorities, we accomplish a lot more we become that go getter, the person who gets things done, and that increases the demand on our time. So how do we battle that? Well, there's one simple tool, the secret to keeping our priorities in line. In fact, it seems actually like many people aren't aware of this secret and not even sure of its existence. And it's both simple and hard. But if you apply it constructively, you're going to be amazed at how much time it will free up. Do you want to know what the secret is? The key to handling your time was skill and clarity. And here it is. Listen up, come closer. The secret is to say no. It's that simple? No. When someone says you're such a go getter, can I convince you to take on another project for our Church Committee? No. You don't owe an explanation to anyone. Don't give one. They're not entitled to it. No is your no Your time is your time your priorities are your priorities. You own them, nobody else does. Now you can be more tactful than just a blunt no and walking away from them and still get the same result. One of my favorite techniques that I learned off of Bob Berg now Bob Berg is the one who wrote the go giver series and the book endless referrals. And this is how he handles saying no to people when someone asked him to take something on and it doesn't match in with his priorities and he doesn't want to do it. He will say something along the lines of this. And and again, I've employed this technique and it works great. I appreciate you thinking about me. At this time, I'm going to have to decline. That simple. You show appreciation for being thought about you say no again. You don't owe an explanation. Now some people will push for an explanation. And they may say, Well, why? Again, your choice if you want to give them one. If you want to be tactful, you can say something along the lines of simply, it does not match up with the priorities and time restraints I have right now. Or I don't think I can add the best value through this. So the more tactful you are about it. You don't the evil person for saying no, you're not selfish. In fact, you're actually being quite considerate and caring when you do this. Because you're wanting to save yourself for the things where you can really add value by choosing the places you serve, and when you serve. In fact, the Mayo Clinic report even suggests learning to say no is healthy, allowing you to be at your best for others. The key is that you are naturally not going to say no to everything. Right? You are, however going to say no, when the activity is not the best use of your time, your talents, or your abilities, you'll say yes, when the opportunities to serve, allow you to provide maximum value. As my mentor john Maxwell says, You must learn to say no to the good. So you can say yes to the best. And I give you an example of this. years ago, I was asked by my church to serve as the church treasurer. Now, this is a high profile role, of course, because you're managing all of the money of the church, right, and the checks, paying the bills, balancing everything and all that. And I was lowered by the promise that such a position would bring me to the forefront of the lay leadership within the church. Back when I was much, much younger, those kinds of things were attractive to me. Now, I will likely never be known as any kind of financial wizard. At home, my wife Sherry balances the checkbooks and handles the accounts, she's good at that. I am not. And I don't really want to be good at that. Despite all of that, I said yes. And it's probably one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. Because of my lack of skill, my lack of desire for the work, my lack of affinity for it, it ended up taking way too long to complete any of the responsibilities of the role. Balancing accounts became an all nighter. And this was not made easier by my general distaste for doing any of it anyway, my motivation wane, the job suffered. And eventually I left that role by mutual agreement. I said yes, to the wrong thing. It was not the best use of my skills and abilities, and did not allow me to provide maximum value to the church. So we all suffered as a result. And we make those choices on a daily basis where we can add the best value. Now the good news is if you're worried about how that fared for me, I did eventually become prominent in the lay leadership of that church. Because I did lend myself to doing things that required my specific skill sets, and added value to the church and to the congregation as a whole. So again, when you focus on those things, when you focus on where you add the greatest value, then that's where you're going to have your greatest impact and influence. So before you get into that, no, here's some things you may want to consider. Before you determine whether you're going to say yes or no. First of all recognize and I recognize as well, you're not always going to get that option. Sometimes you get what we call voluntold. And that can especially happen in the workplace, where the boss has gotten mind that this needs to be done. They don't want to do it. And they've decided that in their mind, for whatever reason, you're the best person to do it, and nothing's going to shake them from that. And ultimately, while you can try to get out of that, when it comes down to it if you've been voluntold and their mind is set on that and you may end up having to not have that option of saying yes or no Or at least, the consequences of saying yes or no become greater. Other things to think about where you do have more control? What is the impact on others? And by that what I mean is when you think about whether or not to accept this role, what's the impact if you do this job? What's the how you're going to add value? Is it going to be adding great value to other people? And also along the same lines? Are you perhaps keeping somebody else from doing that same opportunity, who perhaps could do it just as well, maybe even better than you? Another thing to think about is, can I add significant value by saying yes, that again, if I take it on, am I going to add significant value to all concerned with this? Is it going to be a win win? Are there others who would be a better choice? And we talked about this when we talked about managing priorities as well, what we call the 8020 rule. If somebody else can do something at least 80% as well as you can, it may be better if they do it, so that you can concentrate on things where you add greater value. Another consideration, do I have the bandwidth to do it? Well, it may be in your skill sets, they're in your wheelhouse. As we say, it may be something you enjoy doing all of those things. But along with all your other priorities, and all the other irons you have in the fire right now? Do you have the capacity to do it? Well, at this moment, if it's something you really desire to do, is there something you're willing to give up? You another one of those important laws we have to remember is what we call the law of sacrifice. There is almost always something you have to give up to get something else. And so if this falls in your, in your, if this particular task, or opportunity falls within the things you like to do, and you do real well, and you can add a great value to it. But you don't have the bandwidth to do it, then you have to take a look and say what am I willing to give up? In order to do this? And if the answer is nothing, there's nothing else I'm willing to give up in order to do this. Well, that kind of answers your question right there. And then finally, what are the consequences of saying yes? What are the consequences of saying no. We always have to weigh those. So when we consider those things in advance, that's going to help us make better decisions, examining our priorities. And then when it's just not right, we employ the secret. We say no. Expect the best out of yourself, and refuse to be placed where you can't give it. Do yourself and others a big favor and employ the strongest time management tool you have your ability to make a choice. Say no to the good. So you can say yes, to the best. We'll be back in a moment.
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Paul Simkins :All right this week on our recipe portion of the show again those of you who have listened to other episodes of the podcast, know that I am a huge fan of outdoor cooking. I love every kind of outdoor cooking you can do. I've got a smoker I've got a grill I've got and I use those a lot. I've got Dutch ovens galore. And I love cooking over open fire whenever I can. So any kind of outdoor cooking, I'm going to try it and I've created a Facebook group where I have a bunch of friends who feel the same way we all get together and the Facebook group. The Facebook group is called Smoke and Ash and on this Smoke and Ash Facebook group. We are all out there. We share our cooking techniques. We share recipes, we share The latest gear that we've acquired and a lot of times going into the weekends, everybody shares what their plans are for what they're cooking over the weekend. So you're welcome to come out and join us out there and learn all kinds of great recipes. That's the Smoke and Ash Facebook group. And I always like on the show here to share an outdoor cooking recipe with everyone, most of the ones I share that are pretty easy to apply pretty easy to do. And if you're not a big fan of outdoor cooking, you can probably still do most of these indoors using an oven. So the one I want to share today, this is a kind of a unique recipe. I came up with this because I'm involved in scouting program Scouts BSA as an adult leader, and this is one of those recipes that I found that kids seem tend to like, and but adults like it too. And that's how it's worked out. And what this is, is this recipe is Apple Peanut Butter Bread Pudding, or I just call it Apple PB bread pudding. Now this is a high fat dish. So if you're on a diet, you don't want to do this one. And the recipe is I'm going to give it to you serves about six people with good healthy portions by the way. So here's how you make this. Again, if you're doing this outdoors, you're going to do this in a Dutch oven. If you're doing it indoors, you can use a enameled Dutch oven, or you can use a nice glass, large glass baking dish and that'll work as well. What you need for this recipe is you need about one and a half tablespoons of butter, which you're going to divide in half. You need two granny smith apples. The Granny Smith ones are the ones the green kind of tart, and you're going to peel them you're going to cut out the core and you're going to chop them up fine. You want about a half a cup of raisins and you want about a half a cup of creamy peanut butter spread with honey. You want about five cups of cube day old French bread. That's an old standby for bread pudding at that day old French bread. So about five cups of cubed daled French bread, a cup of beaten eggs, which amounts to about four eggs or so you want a cup of half and half and a half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Now I tend to add more to like that I'm tend to be more like a teaspoon of ground cinnamon at a minimum. And then you want about two tablespoons of firmly packed brown sugar. So the first thing you need to do if you're cooking this outdoors using a Dutch oven, you're going to get your coals going. You're going to take your Dutch oven and either going to grease it with a little bit of the butter. Or if you like to use a liner, you're going to line it and then spray it with nonstick coating. And then in a nonstick skillet over heat, you're going to heat the remaining butter and cook the apples about 10 minutes or until they start turning golden brown. And then you're going to stir in the peanut butter and the raisins until the peanut butter melts and it's all mixed together. Take that off the heat, stirring all your bread crumb or your cubed bread until they're all covered completely and set it aside for a couple of minutes. In a bowl. large bowl, you're going to whisk together your eggs, your half and half your cinnamon and your brown sugar. And then you're going to toss that bread mixture with the egg mixture. And then pour it all into that prepared Dutch oven. And then you're going to cover the Dutch oven and you're going to bake it. Now you want to bake it in about 350 degrees for about 35 to 45 minutes. So again, if you're doing this outside with the Dutch oven using coals means you're going to put about 16 coals on top six to eight coals underneath the Dutch oven. And make sure you have some extra coals ready to go in case some burnout too quick. Now if you're going to do this inside again, you just set your you set your oven to 350 and cover the baking dish with aluminum foil. Stick it in the oven for 35 to 45 minutes. And finally when you're done, take the Dutch oven off the coals. Remove the cover, let it cool for a couple of minutes. And then you're either going to sprinkle it with confectioner's sugar or what makes us really really good if you took a little chocolate sauce and drizzle it over top and then a little pure maple syrup and drizzled it over top. And it's really really good. Again, this is Apple PB bread pudding. And if you'd like the recipe to that, all you have to do is send me an email at tltoolbox@boldlylead.com. Or if you simply go on out to that Smoke and Ash Facebook group, I post all the recipes out there. So again, that's Apple PB Bread Pudding, the high fat addition. So this week, we talked about the best priority management tool you have is your ability to make a choice, and to say, No, practice that and practice doing that tactfully. So that again, you're not offensive, but you're making it clear that you're in charge of where you can best add value to others. Don't forget if you're listening to this on a podcast app, to give us five star rating, and to leave us a review so that others can discover us and subscribe so that you will find out when new episodes come out every single week. Well, that's it for this week. Until next time, go out and be the leader. You were meant to be Transcribed by https://otter.ai