Many of us are busy multitasking between work life and personal life. Maybe we're raising a family, or maybe even planning a vacation can be exhausting. We find ourselves busy and our calendars are full. But are we busy, or is there a misuse of our time? That's what we're going to look at today on the Resilient Faith Online Show, episode number 14. Don't be busy, be intentional. Welcome. I'm Marissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm a digital strategist and certified copywriter, but more importantly, a woman of faith. In this podcast, you'll find a biblical perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we later faith shape and work to create positive change online. To connect with your private Facebook group of faith-based online entrepreneurs, go to MarissaShepherd.com forward slash faith. Yes, we do have a community, the Resilient Faith Online community, which is the faith-based entrepreneurs on Facebook. And thank you to those who have joined. I really appreciate how the group is starting to grow. And I appreciate those people that have been emailing me, telling me they enjoyed the podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, I would love it if you would give it a rate and review. That would really help me reach more people with the podcast. Today we're going to talk about don't be busy, be intentional. I'm Marissa. So glad to be here today. I am an online marketing coach and I'm also a certified copywriter. But I come with these different little tips on the podcast to give you more of a holistic look at business, some of the internal challenges that we face from day to day. And one of the things that I'm going to talk about today is being busy. And what brought about this topic, right? Well, because I've said this numerous times. I have said, I am too busy. I am so busy. Oh my gosh, am I busy? And I've used that word so much that the other day when I was journaling, I looked at my journal and I thought, why do I keep using that word? There's just something about that word that is not what God says for me to do. And so I started looking into the word busy and I started thinking, what is it what I'm really trying to do? As I'm really trying to fill up my calendar and just be busy? Or am I more intentional about trying to achieve certain things, whether it's building relationships with my family, with my granddaughter, whether it's achieving some type of business goal, whatever it might be, and whatever it might be for you, maybe that's different for you. Maybe you're trying to get healthy. But rather than say busy, I decided to look into the word intentional. And it inspired this little quote that I put on Instagram and it got a little bit of traction, and people were liking this particular quote. My daughter even said, I'm going to use that at work. So I decided to create the podcast and kind of talk a little bit more about this. In today's culture, most people don't want to really claim to be busy. They want to be more present, they want to have more quality time with relatives and their kids. They want to cultivate a meaningful life, and yet we're still a busy culture. And I have my own theories on this. I think the computer world uh changed everything. Uh, I remember the pre-computer world, so I can kind of speak into this that before the computers, you know, things were a little slower only because it was slower. The computers with all our devices, now people can connect with you by email, by direct messaging. Uh, they can text you. There's so many ways that people connect. And when you're on different communities and different apps, oh my gosh, the messages come from everywhere. Even my 85-year-old mom text messages me and leaves me voicemail messages. So people can reach us from all different devices and different ways of communication. And that means even our work, oftentimes people can get a hold of us much easier. And it's it seems like we become more busy, not just with compliance work, but overall the demands seem higher. And I think technology has made us a little bit more vulnerable in that respect. But again, the thought uh that came across my mind when I was looking at this is am I misusing my time? Is it something in me, is it a mindset thing in me that I need to change? And the more I looked into this last week, I thought, I don't want to say that I'm busy anymore. I'd rather say that I'm intentional about working in a particular thing or that I'm involved in something rather than I'm busy. And maybe this thing that I'm involved in has a deadline, but it's something that I've chosen to do. It's not like my life is out of control. So I started unpacking this and I thought I'd bring you a few tips on how you can be more intentional, and perhaps that would help you change the word busy to intentional. So I have some practical ways that you can actually apply this that I'm going to share in just a moment. But one of the things I wanted to highlight is the fact that time is so precious. We can't get it back. We can't get it back. And so the time that we have each day needs to be spent well. And I read a book one time that talked about managing energy as opposed to managing your calendar. And I love that because we only have so much time in a day. Once that day is spent, it's spent, and we only have so much energy in a day. Once that energy is spent, we need to rest and sleep and recharge for the next day. So I love the idea of really managing our choices and managing our energy day to day. And that helps me kind of wrap my brain as far as what I need to do each day. The thing that I realize when I say that I'm busy, and this is just from feedback from my granddaughter, just from things I've noticed, is that when I say I'm busy, I'm really focused on myself. And it creates almost a barrier, yet it's an accepted term. It's a very, very accepted term in our culture. When we say we're busy, it often implies there's some importance. People know that there's a margin there. You can't penetrate that, right? You can't penetrate this barrier because I'm busy right now. So it implies importance. It almost sometimes beckons admiration or recognition, like this person must be so important that they're busy all the time, right? And oftentimes, busy uh is a way to to justify one's absence, is just saying, Well, I'm busy. I have nothing that I can say about this. I'm busy, and so therefore, this justifies my absence. And so when I was looking at this and I was thinking this word busy, and it leaves no room for anything else or anyone else, I thought that's not the way God is. God is not that way. God is not too busy for us. He even says the opposite, that he is there with us always, that he never leaves us nor forsake us. He is accessible, he is there all the time. And so the more I looked at this, I realized that we see a lot of this in the Bible, like in Matthew 11, 28, it talks about the rest for those who are weary and burdened. And the answer is to come to him, to come to God. And in Psalms 46, 10, it says to be still. It doesn't say to be busy, it says to be still. And again, it revolves around God, to know him, be still and know him. And then in Proverbs 3, 5 through 6, it says to trust, and trust is all about accepting him. So, you know, I realize that we can be involved in what we do, but we don't have to let it get to a point where it's out of control. And we can manage our energy day to day based on what we need to do and be able to work in a way that we don't have to lean on that word busy, but it's more the intention of completing something that we set as importance, as a priority. So when we say intentional, by definition, intentional means to do on purpose or deliberate. It's a deliberate action. So I can choose my intention, I can choose to be on purpose, I can choose a deliberate action. Intention requires thought and it requires reflection so that we can make better choices. If I have no margin, I'm not busy, I've made wrong decisions. And so I started looking at everything and and I applied some steps for myself. And these are some of the practical applications that I want to share with you that might help you if you feel like you're getting too busy. You can be intentional about what you want to do, you can be involved in different things, but you're going to set those boundaries. You're going to work in a way that you're going to leverage your energy from day to day so you can be efficient and so you don't burn out and so you don't neglect other people and other things. So here's the application that I applied for myself, and I'm going to share it with you. Number one is to practice gratitude. And again, this goes back to my journaling. I I love to journal, and I've said that before. I think it's so helpful. But to practice gratitude. And in that gratitude, you begin to be thankful for the people that have impacted your life. You begin to be thankful for the things that transpired that were a success. And maybe you didn't have a whole lot to do with it. Maybe it was God's grace. Maybe it was a friend or an open door, an opportunity that came up that you really had no control over, but it was a blessing to you. And begin to see through gratitude all the things that transpired that are good that oftentimes you had nothing to do with, and begin to be grateful for the good results that happen and realize that future good results will happen again. The second thing, besides practicing the gratitude, which I think should be number one, is to schedule your personal priorities first. So if you look at things from a week-to-week perspective, I always like to look at things in quarters first and then break them down by month, and then you break them down by week. When you look at everything that needs to be done, schedule your personal priorities first. Now, at the time of this recording, it's getting close to back to school. I have scheduled in my calendar my granddaughter's back to school orientation. Those important things get scheduled first and get on my calendar. All those places where I need to show up, I want to show up, those personal priorities get on the calendar first. And I look at things from week to week, but if I know something's coming up next month, I'll block it off. And then I make sure that I give myself enough time for reflection, for exercise, and all those other things that are personal priorities as well. Number two is then you choose your business objectives, not necessarily goals, because goals are bigger, but you might have certain objectives that you want to accomplish that particular week. What is the next three things that you need to do in the coming week that are needle-moving activities, the things that will help move your business forward, and then keep it to those things and don't go beyond it, right? Look at those important things that you need to do and then narrow it down to three things and give yourself enough space, enough room for your other appointments and things that you have to do. In my case, I have coaching and other things that I do. So I look at the business objectives of the three things that must be done, and then I can calendar that in. And then I look at the week. So number four, the next one is plan your week. Then I look at the appointments and I look at the other things that have to happen and I schedule out things. If there's a proposal I need to write, I figure out, you know, when I'm gonna do that, I plan my week out, if there's something that I'm learning, a book that I'm reading, a course that I've taken, I plan that out where I'm gonna fit that in. And so if I if I put in my personal priorities first, they're protected. If I narrow down my business objectives, they're locked in. If I plan my week, then I'm able to use all the nicks and crannies around those other two important things and plan my week accordingly. And then the last one is to cultivate winning habits. It's really important to see, okay, in order to accomplish these things in a way that's not gonna burn me out, that I'm not gonna lean on the word busy, what do I need to do? And that could be as simple as maybe going to bed early, maybe going to bed a half an hour or an hour earlier than usual. Small changes seem to work best so that you can cultivate the habits and maybe start 30 minutes. I'm gonna go to bed 30 minutes earlier than I usually do. And maybe you can get up 30 minutes earlier to take care of some things. So you start cultivating some habits. Like what else can I do that's going to help me work at my best and leverage my energy each day? So, does that mean do I need to try to fit in a 15-minute walk? Do I need to maybe stretch or maybe um do a little bit of exercise at home for 10 minutes? Or break it down to three different times morning, noon, and evening, where I'm gonna take 10 minutes and I'm gonna do some exercises or some yoga moves or whatever it might be. Those small little adjustments that you can put in that become habits. Maybe it's reading a book. You want to read a book this coming week, and you're gonna break it down to how many chapters you need to read each night. So you can develop these habits, and those are gonna help sustain you for the other goals that preceded this, the the be able to schedule your personal priorities and spend that time with your family and working on your business, those objectives that you're trying to work on, and then planning out your week and all the other things that you need to do. Those habits will help carry you as well. I think it's really important not to necessarily lean on the word busy because it just seems like this one umbrella for everything. For me, when I started breaking it down and not calling it busy and calling it intentional, it helped me to have more awareness of where my time was going, where my energy was being spent. Because busy is so vast that everything kind of goes in there in that bucket of busy. But when you break it down, it really helped me in the last week fine-tune some things that I had already had in place as far as personal development for myself, but it helped me be more aware just by simply asking, okay, why are you busy? Okay, if you are busy and you're up against the deadline, why did that happen? Did you overbook yourself? Did you make poor decisions? What happened? And it helps me to be more aware. I know that for everyone it's a little different. And I know that sometimes when we are intentional and we are involved in something in a project, it might take a little bit more energy than other times. There may be weeks when we have to focus on something to knock something out, but that should be more the exception and not the rule. What I'm talking about is your your default. What is your default? And there are those times, those exceptions that maybe you are a little bit more involved and a little bit more intentional about completing a certain project. And it's going to take a little bit more energy, but it's your choice. It's not like this thing that grew out of control, and all of a sudden you have no time to yourself. You've already carved out the time that you want to spend on this particular project where you're going to be intentional, where you're going to be very involved in this and you're going to complete this by a certain amount of time. And that that's okay. I'm not saying that you can't do that. I'm saying that would be more the exception than the rule. So, in closing, I just want to challenge you to maybe not lean on the word busy. And I know for myself, I've decided to distance myself from the word busy. Instead, I prefer to say that I am intentional. I am making a conscious choice of the things I'm picking up and doing and scheduling. I'm involved in my work, but I'm not disengaged from people. We can create boundaries based on our values and our beliefs. And when you're intentional, you're choosing how you'll use your energy, skills, and time. So I hope that helps you. I think it's really important because it's so easy for us to burn out. And I just hope that you'll just be more aware of the word busy and see if you can make some choices that'll help you have more margin in your life. So until next time, take care, God bless, and we'll talk soon. If you found this podcast helpful, then subscribe from wherever you're listening today so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. So keep them coming and share this with a friend. For more free content, go to marissahrick.com and remember keep cultivating resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.