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You're listening to Family Talk, the radio broadcasting division of the James Dobson Family Institute. I am that James Dobson, and I'm so pleased that you've joined us today.
Hello, and welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, and Family Talk is the listener-supported broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. Today on the program, you're going to hear the second half of Dr. Tim Clinton's timely and encouraging conversation with Jordan Raynor. They will be continuing their discussion about Jordan's book called Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive. Jordan Raynor is an entrepreneur and the best-selling Christian author of Redeeming Your Time, Called to Create, and Master of One. In addition to being an author, Jordan has twice been selected as a Google Fellow and served in the White House under President George W. Bush. But his proudest accomplishment and most important role, Jordan and his wife have three daughters, and they make their home in Tampa, Florida. Here now is Dr. Tim Clinton and Jordan Raynor as they continue to discuss some of the life-changing principles in Jordan's book called Redeeming Your Time here on Family Talk.
I wanted to start out the broadcast by talking about... Dolores Curran years ago talked about family stressors. She said four of the top 10 family stressors had to deal with a lack of time. One was insufficient couple time, another one insufficient me time. I thought that was interesting. Insufficient family playtime, and then over scheduled family calendars. And it's showing up in our homes. But when you step back, Jordan, and you just look at the landscape of our own personal lives and more, you can see the impact of what this insanity is doing to us. Let's kind of recast what we talked about yesterday, and then I can't wait to jump into our subject for today.
Yeah. So we're talking about these seven timeless time management principles from the life of Christ. Yesterday, we talked about the first two. Start with the Word. If we want to redeem our time for eternal purposes, we got to know what God's Word says, right? Number two, let your yes be yes, straight from Jesus' mouth. We got to make sure that our yes is yes from the smallest to the very biggest commitments that we make. So those are the two principles we
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covered yesterday. Let's see how many we could dig into today. There's a lot here, Tim.
Yeah, and Jordan, it's all anchored out of Ephesians, chapter five, where the apostle Paul challenged us to walk circumspectly and to be wise, not unwise redeeming our time because the days literally are evil, and there are a lot of challenges in front of us. And we are here for a purpose. God placed us here on a mission, and when you get that stuff straight life again just falls kind of into place. And things that you prayed for, that you yearn for in your heart, including that emotional closeness that we want with God and others, it becomes a part of the fabric of our own personal lives. Let's go to what you talked about as this kingdom of noise, because, man, that resonated with me.
C.S. Lewis wrote these words 75 years ago. How much more true are they today? His devil Screwtape said that he was going to make this world a kingdom of noise to thwart the effectiveness of believers, and aside the cliche of all cliches, we are living at the noisiest time in history. And obviously, I'm talking about external noise created by our digital devices and nonstop news services, but primarily, what I'm concerned with is what all of that external noise creates, namely this internal noise that blocks our ability to think and be creative and, most importantly, listen to the voice of God. And so, in this book, Redeeming Your Time, I got 32 practices underneath these seven principles. Nine of those practices are under this third principle of dissenting from the kingdom of noise, because we're terrible at this, and we need a lot of help figuring out how to dissent from the madness.
When I think of kingdom of noise, Jordan, I think of the need for silence, stillness, time for reflection ... lot of pushback against that in our world. I know for myself, Jordan, what I find myself doing is jumping in my truck, and I'll just go for a ride. And I'll ride out through the country. I grew up in central Pennsylvania as a kid, and I love to see farmland. And there's something about experiencing God as I just drive alone. I'm able to listen some music, pray, think while I'm just going out through the hills.
That's the kind of thing you're talking about here. You've got to break away. And you may be busy. You may have a lot coming at you, and everybody's back there saying, "Hey, listen, you're not managing five kids like I am at home and trying to work and bring everything together. And our lives are ..." No, what we are saying is if you don't kind of break away from and manage this kingdom of noise in your life, it's going to stay out of control.
Look at the life of Jesus. Look at the gospel biographies. Jesus was only on this earth for 33 years, but in the three years of his public ministry, the number of times Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John show him holding away in a lonely place ... or sometimes it's translated "solitary place" ... is mind-boggling. Jesus needed silence and solitude to commune with the Father, to think, to be creative. How arrogant of us to not think that's what we need today in order to do the good works God has prepared in advance for us to do.
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I love that quote you had by Mr. Rogers in that one chapter. He said, "Just be quiet and think. It'll make all the difference in the world." And it's so true.
Amen.
There's so much going on, so much wildness in our minds that slowing it down allows us, by the way, and sets the table for us to maybe go a little deeper, think a little more clearly about where we're at, what we're up against, and what we need to be doing, right?
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You nailed it. I'll give one really practical tip on how to do this, one of the nine practices from this chapter. Start really small and just refuse to fill the crevices of your day with noise. What do I mean by crevices? Anytime you got a sliver or time less than 15 minutes, standing in line at Starbucks, running a seven-minute errand in your car, don't press play on another podcast episode, even if it's mine. Don't pull open social media. Literally just sit there and listen to what the Holy Spirit wants to say to you about your life, about your family, and about your work. Just refuse to fill every nook and cranny of your day with new news, new entertainment, and new information.
No, it's interesting to me too, Jordan. In mental health work, there's a common phrase that people repeat now. It's called pay attention to what you're paying attention to. And a lot of people think, "Well, my mind's going a hundred mile an hour." No, no, no. You are paying attention to certain things in your life. Just think about that just for a second. What really have you been paying attention to? See, and what is it that's cluttering what needs to be reflected on? Jordan, in the book, you talk about accepting your unipresence. I thought it was a fascinating title. Tell us what that means.
As Christians, we believe that God is omnipresent, right?
We do.
He's everywhere all the time, but for 33 years, Jesus willingly traded His godly omnipresence, the ability to be in more than one physical place at a time, for the same unipresence that you and I experience today. And throughout the gospels, He displayed this remarkable ability to be fully laser focused on one important person or thing at a time. If we want to redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we got to figure out how to do the same because most of us are never fully present, at least mentally with anything. We're at home physically, but mentally, we're not there because text messages from work are constantly hijacking our focus. When we're at work, we're not fully there because we're constantly distracted by Fox News and CNN, right? We've got to learn how to be fully engaged and unipresent with people and the work God's given us to do.
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I was sitting at a dinner table one evening, talking to a guy that I had really respected. I thought, profound family man showed up at the game, set the example. And I remember asking him, "What should I really pay attention to as a dad?" I said, "I just wanted to hear." We're just over dinner. We were in Charlotte, North Carolina. I can still see the restaurant. I'm a young father, and he said, "Tim, let me tell you a little story about me."
He said, "My son and I had one of those kind of come-to-Jesus conversations. And it was, 'Hey, son. I tried to be at the game, et cetera, and hope that all that mattered to you.'" And he said, "My son looked at me and said, 'Dad, I will give you that. You were at the game.' But he said, 'You know what, Dad? You weren't really at the game. You were always on your phone. You were in another planet. In some sense, I think you were at the game because you felt the responsibility, and that's what you taught. But Dad, you weren't at the game.'" He said, "Tim, it broke my heart to hear that come from my son, but I needed that because," he said, "it's the lesson on presence." Being present, being fully there, being emotionally connected ... Jordan, we miss this so often in this checklist of life.
Yeah, totally, and it's becoming harder than ever now that a lot of us are working from home who weren't working from home two years ago because the devices are always with us. Tim, if it's okay with you, let me give the audience three hyperpractical steps to solving this problem because I've seen literally thousands of people solve this problem in their lives. Here it is, very solvable.
Number one, pick however many times you want to check your messages a day. By messages, I'm talking about email. I'm talking about your cell phone. I'm talking about text messages. Rather than constantly being reactive, proactively say, "From here on out, I'm checking messages at whatever time," 10:00, 12:00, 2:00, 4:00, whatever, right?
Step two, make a list of VIPs who can have access to you at all times, not just those predetermined times. This is critical for making this work. My list of VIPs is my wife, my kids' school, the investors for this venture that I'm chairman of the board of. That's pretty much it. And what you do, you put those people on do not disturb on your favorites list on your phone, or your people list if you're an Android user. Put your phone on do not disturb.
And here's the last step. Number three, you've already decided ahead of time when you're going to check messages. You've built a list of VIPs who can get access to you all the time. Here's the third step. You got to proactively set expectations with your VIPs. You send them a message that says something like this. "Hey, I'm trying to be fully focused at home at night and fully focused at work during the day. Here's how you can help me do that. From here on out, I'm only going to be checking messages at X, Y, and Z times, but you're a VIP. So if you need me more urgently than that, do not email me. Do not text message me. Call me on my cell phone, and if I'm available, I'll respond every single time."
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Tim, in group coaching sessions, I've coached about 2,000 people through those three steps now in this process and surveyed them after the fact. Zero people reported missing anything urgent, and all of them reported doing their work two to three times faster with a lot less anxiety and being fully focused on their family at the end of the day. It's a game changer. It's just one of the 32 practices in this book.
I think we believe that our greatest challenge is what kids call FOMO, that fear of missing out. And so if I'm not up, I'm not part. I'm outside the conversation. I'm not in the know. And Jordan, nothing could be more destructive than that because the very things that should be prioritized, the very things that help give you creativity, that give you fuel and so much more, are the things you're taking away from yourself, even at home or at work, anywhere.
We crave omniscience. That's what FOMO is, and as believers, we got to recognize this. We got to recognize that we are never going to know everything and that this is a lie from the devil himself that we should or can know all the things and know them right away, right? And I think when we recognize this idol in our hearts, it makes it much more likely that we could descend from this kingdom of noise, accept our unipresence, and focus on the work God has given us to do. The real fear of missing out should be missing out on parenting your children well, of teaching them the Lord's commands, of finishing the work the Father is already giving you to do at your office. That's the fear of missing out. It's missing out on the ministry of excellence, of serving your employer and your kids and your spouse with excellence to the glory of God.
You're listening to Family Talk, a division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Dr. Tim Clinton, co-host here, and our special guest, Jordan Raynor, fascinating discussion about Redeeming Your Time, brand new book, 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present ... That's that big word ... and Wildly Productive, fascinating conversation. Jordan, we're fighting the clock a little bit, but we've got a couple of other ... I've got to get these in. Embrace productive rest. It's like the antithesis of what life in this world is all about. It's let's go, go, go, go, go, a hundred mile an hour. Actually, the more you go, go, go, it seems like the more people like you or something. That's the mindset that people have, and so they want to go a hundred mile an hour. They don't want to miss anything. But Jordan, it's counterintuitive, but I'm telling you, it's the most productive, important piece, right?
Jesus modeled a few rhythms of rest in the gospels. He gave His disciples breaks throughout their workday. He slept at night, right? He rested, and He observed the Sabbath. Didn't command it, right? But He observed it himself personally. And what I found and what science has verified ... and I break down lots of science in this chapter ... is that these three rhythms of rest are counterintuitively some of the most productive things we could do towards our goals. But they're also productive for our souls because they remind us that God is God, and we are not. And the world keeps spinning even when I am not at work in the world. So, we probably don't have time to really dig into this, but
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man, I have found these three rhythms of rest, Sabbath, sleep and breaks through my workday, to be some of the most productive things I do.
It's almost like fire. You're going to get so close to the fire. Then you've got to back off. So what you're saying is it's good to work. It's good to get after it.
It's great to work.
It's great to get after it with everything you've got. But remember that if you're in it too long, you're going to become counterproductive.
Yeah, and this is, this is related to the last principle of the book, eliminate all hurry. Jesus was crazy busy in the gospels, right? But He was never so busy that He neglected to rest and moved into that enemy territory of hurry, right? What's the difference? What's the difference between busyness and hurry? Busy is this outward condition of the body. It's when I got a lot of things on my to-do list. Hurry is when I have so much to do that I have no time for rest, and I find myself frantic and anxious and snapping at the other people in my life. Jesus was busy, but he was remarkably unhurried. And if we want to redeem our time in the model of our Redeemer, we got to figure out how to stay on the right side of that divide.
Jordan, one of the most powerful exercises I've had people go through was just to develop a time wheel. Take a look at 24 hours in your day and track every minute. It's shocking when people do that for four or five days because then they really begin to see what's happening, what their patterns are. It's an eye opener, isn't it, just stepping back.
Yeah. One of the most valuable practices I give readers in the book is helping them build what I call a time budget template. All of my friends have budgets for their money. Very few of my friends prior to this book had a budget for their time. This doesn't make any sense. By God's grace, we can all earn more money. None of us can earn more time. How much more intentional should we be about budgeting where those minutes go before God gives us a fresh supply every single morning? So Dr. Tim, yeah, track your time. See where your time's going, and then roll up your sleeves and get proactive about where you want it to go in the future to the glory of God and for the good of others.
Jordan, you make this statement. You can be busy but unhurried, and that resonated with me for a moment because a lot of people are not going to be able to just shut everything down. They are busy. You know that.
Let me go back to the Dallas Willard quote. I love Dallas Willard. You actually put this in your book. "Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day." And Willard wrote these words. "You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." I think everybody needs to stop for a moment and think about what that really means. You need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life because it's
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impacting your relationship with God, and Jordan, it's impacting our relationships with those we hold dear, those we love the most, again, those little noses pressed up against the window pain, waiting for us to come home.
Amen.
What you value really is about how you're going to spend your time, isn't it?
Yeah, that's exactly right. We value the things that we spend time on, and my prayer is that we would spend time on eternal things. That includes our work. That certainly includes the work that we're doing at the office and at home, right? And we got to do it in a life-giving way that eliminates hurry so that we could be productive. We could be busy but in a way that has time to look other human beings in the eye, in a way that allows me to listen to the Holy Spirit as I'm moving from one meeting to the next. Willard said it best. We got to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives.
It's interesting, Jordan, as we wrap up today's broadcast. I want to go back to Dr. Dobson's formula for a moment. Crowded lives lead to fatigue, fatigue, being tired ... Who isn't tired ... leads to insensitivity, irritability. It's easy just to go off on somebody because you're tired. You know that. "I don't want to hear that. I don't have time for that. We're not doing that. Hey, give me a break. I need some room," which leads, by the way, to isolation. In other words, we don't move toward each other. We move away from each other or against each other is what happens. That's a recipe for disaster in the home.
And then the other piece, Jordan, I want you to wrap this up for us. Dr. Dobson told a story about playing tennis and accomplishing a lot of trophies and going back to his high school, and somehow, his trophies wound up in a dumpster. But he made this line. "Life will trash your trophies." Those things that we thought were really significant, that were priorities really weren't priorities at all. What are you giving your heart? What are you giving your life to? How do we step back from all the rat race that we're in, Jordan, get us to a place where we can even begin to say, "Okay, listen, this is a real issue, and I've got to redeem my time"?
Yeah. The key is what we talked about in yesterday's broadcast, realizing that before God asks us to do something, He's called us to be His children, but He hasn't called us to be His children just so that we could be His children and sit back and relax for eternity. He's created us for the good works He prepared to advance for us to do. Those good works are at the office. Those good works are at home.
But as Christians, we do not believe that we are just sitting back, waiting for Jesus's return. In the present, we're called to be faithful. In the present, we're called to be productive. In the present, we're called to be present with those God's called us to be present with. Why? For the advancement of the gospel, for
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the advancement of the kingdom of God. That's why we care about redeeming our time.
God exults faithfulness over productivity. Amen.
He loves rest over speed. How about availability over schedulability? And God loves relationships over responsibility. Jordan, that's really the thrust of the whole book, and I love ... Let me go back to your closing line as we wrap the broadcast. Be like Jesus, purposeful, present, and again, what you said, wildly productive, on behalf of our king.
Amen.
Yep. And then you're going to hear somebody say, "Shoes off, Dad. Stay home. Let's play." And that's what it's all about.
Jordan, what a delight to have you. On behalf of Dr. Dobson, his wife, Shirley, their family, the entire team of Family Talk, we tip the hat to you. What a message for such a time as this. Again, our subject has been Redeeming Your Time:7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive. Our special guest is Jordan Raynor. Jordan, again, they want to find more information about you get a copy of this book. They need to have a copy of this book.
You can get the book wherever books are sold, and we get a lot of free content for you jordanraynor.com related to Redeeming Your Time and then more broadly how the gospel of Jesus Christ influences the work we do in the world as entrepreneurs, as parents, as plumbers, whatever it is you do. How do we do it all to the glory of God? Again, that's at jordanraynor.com.
Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Dr. Tim.
You've been listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, and that was the conclusion of a very practical and hopefully helpful interview featuring Dr. Tim Clinton and Christian author and entrepreneur Jordan Raynor. For the last two days, Dr. Clinton and Jordan Raynor have been discussing time management as displayed by Jesus during His time here on earth. In his book, Redeeming Your Time, Jordan explains that Jesus was the most productive person to ever live and suggests that there is much that we can learn from His short time here on earth. To learn more about Jordan Raynor or his book, Redeeming Your Time, visit drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. That's drjamesdobson.org/familytalk.
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Thanks so much for making Family Talk a part of your day. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, and be sure to visit us on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk Facebook page. Leave us a comment there, or send us a message there as well. And please join us again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, may God continue to richly bless you and your family.
This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.