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SPEAKER_01On today's episode, we're joined by Elizabeth Grace Saunders. Elizabeth is an internationally recognized expert on effective time management. She's the founder of Real Life E Time Coaching and Speaking, where they partner with individuals on the journey from feeling guilty, overwhelmed, and frustrated to feeling peaceful, confident, and accomplished through one-on-one coaching. The Divine Time Management division of Real Life E encourages Christians to join in the journey of aligning themselves with God's heart through her book and group coaching. And the title of that new book is Divine Time Management: The Joy of Trusting God's Loving Plans for You. Elizabeth, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_01So, how'd you become so passionate about this concept of divine time management?
SPEAKER_02Well, it happened a couple of years ago. So I had been in the field of traditional time management for many years. So I started my time management coaching business in 2009. And in the summer of 2015, a couple of things happened. So one was that I started to lose some of my initial fire for traditional time management coaching. So I had been doing that for six and a half years and was starting to feel a little bit like I was going on auto-repeat with my work. And then the second thing that happened is I was at church and I felt God tell me you need to start to give me the glory in your business. And I was like, uh, uh-oh, what does that mean? Like, I've been a Christian my whole life. I'm not ashamed about that, but I hadn't really been open about it in my work. And so those two things came together: this yearning for something more, and feeling like I needed to follow the Lord's calling to be more open about my faith. And what it came together in is me discovering this idea of divine time management, probably more accurately, God downloading it to me. And that resulted in a group coaching program as well as the book that we're going to talk about. And also in me just in general, opening up to my audience about my faith, who I am, what I was doing, and being vulnerable about my faith part of my life in my work.
SPEAKER_01And you've got a type A get it done type of uh personality, uh, from what I understand. And and so, and you alluded before to the fact that some of the conventional teaching out there just wasn't really getting it done for you, as far as what you really sensed as being the right model for time management. So uh what was insufficient or what is insufficient about what is being taught largely out there today as being the go-to time management system?
SPEAKER_02Great question. And yeah, I have to confess, and I do in my book, I was doing a lot of this wrong for many years. So just it's I'm not blaming everyone else and saying, oh, it was just them, it was me too. And basically, it was worldly thinking. I mean, one of the fundamental issues with traditional view of time management is it's trust in self at the center of your life. So this idea that we know what goals are best, we know what plans are best, we know how to get done things done better than anyone else, and we're going to make it happen. Whereas with our lives as Christians, we are really called to put trust in God at the center of our lives, like Proverbs 3, 5, trust in the Lord with all your heart, mean not on your own understanding. And so that was one of the like probably most core and fundamental things that I think is wrong with a lot of traditional time management, and that I wanted to highlight as something different in divine time management. And that's why it's the whole first section of our book, because of my book, excuse me. Because if we have this wrong and we are trusting and putting our security in our systems, our plans, our ability to be self-disciplined, we're completely missing the point of how we're supposed to live our lives.
SPEAKER_01So, what does the Bible say about time management?
SPEAKER_02Well, I believe that the Bible teaches us, like I just said, to number one trust in the Lord. And so there are so many verses about trusting in God, waiting on God, being at peace in God. I love the verse about in repentance and rest you will be saved, and quietness and trust is your strength. So I believe first and foremost, the Bible is telling us that our time is the Lord's and we need to wait on him. Secondly, I believe that we need to live lives of right order, and that does include diligence. So in Proverbs, there are a lot of verses about, you know, not being a sluggard or not being foolish. And um, of course, we find other verses in the Bible about making sure that we're contributing and are doing our part in the communities that we're in. And so there's this tension that we have as Christians that with our time, number one, it's the Lord's, and that waiting on him, resting on him, trusting in him is the number one priority with our time. And then secondly, that we're called to be good stewards of what we have, to not be lazy, to not be sluggards, to not expect everyone to always take care of us. And so we do have an element of personal responsibility in terms of how we are managing our time.
SPEAKER_01And it's such a difficult uh continuum to uh to figure out because you know, on one hand, like you like you were saying, um, there there is there is that element of personal responsibility, but on one extreme you have presumption, which if it's to be, it's up to me. And then the the there's fatalism on the other extreme, and people have a lot of theological uh arguments in favor of that, which is basically, you know, when you say wait on the Lord, it's basically I'm not gonna do anything, and I'm just gonna kind of be uh slaughterful and and and kind of put a spiritual label on it. I mean, do you find that as you're teaching this to Christians that people tend to be in either of those two camps?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, it's very that's very, very common. And I think one of the core issues is knowing yourself. So my first two books were very traditional time management books, and they're very much for type B people, helping them to become more type A. So take more personal responsibility, um, be more self-disciplined, be intentional with their time. And my third book, Divine Time Management, is really meant to help type A people to chill out. And so the healthiest place in life for in almost all instances is at the center. So if you know yourself and you know your tendency is to not take responsibility and to play the victim and to not get worked on and not do what you can, you probably need to focus a little more on my first two books and think about how to be proactive. But on the opposite end, if you're someone that just really has a tendency to push too hard and to over-respond and to become afraid and to really look to yourself constantly as the only source of what needs to get done, then you're someone that definitely needs to emphasize more the trusting in God, the resting in God, and believing that He loves you, He's with you, and He's working on your behalf.
SPEAKER_01I mean, you almost need a different time management approach for each personality type, right? I mean, it sounds like some for some Christians, this approach of divine time management would come easier, but I like how you pointed out that you're really writing this for the type A getter done, getting things done type of uh type of a personality type. Uh, but then somebody that's more, if you're looking at the disc personality, says maybe somebody's got like an S personality type. This is, I mean, they they they could have written this book, you know, like about waiting on God and and all of that. Um, I mean, it's like what how do you how do you speak to like, for example, somebody who's got a very analytical C type personality as it relates to divine time management?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so in regards to that, um, you know, there's a huge spectrum within where people are at and their relationship to faith. Um and someone with a more analytical brain, it really depends on where they are with their faith walk. So if they have a very personal relationship with God, and they can see in the Bible that there are instances where God either had people not do something or where he had them do something a bit peculiar, like instead of fighting the battle, walking around this wall until it fell, then they can say, Oh, okay, there could be some validity to not necessarily always taking action and to doing something that God is asking me to do that might not not look in the norm. Um, and once they have that perception of, okay, that could be within the realm of how God could work and what he could do, then they need to figure out how that applies to them. And in terms of what that looks like for type C personalities or really anyone, is that our spiritual disciplines are critical to us really being aligned with what the Lord has for us. So for some people, that looks like spending a lot of time reading the Bible. I read the Bible every morning, but maybe I don't read as many passages as someone else, but God can speak to you through that. Um, for other people, it looks like more time in prayer, more time in worship, more time journaling. Um, no matter what your personality type, we need to be looking to study God's word and we need to be looking to hear God's voice and then trusting that he will lead us and he will guide us. And as we're doing what he says, no more and no less, that will end up in a good place.
SPEAKER_01So let's say that I am a a D type personality, which I am, uh, and probably many of our listeners are. What is a divine time management tactic? And you may um kind of bristle at at the idea, uh I don't know how much it kind of uh contradicts some of the the approach, looking for a a a tactic, you know, something very practical. What can I actually do today that I can start applying that you would consider to be divine time management?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I I don't think that's that's a problem to frame it that way. I mean, number one, it goes back to what I just said. If you're not taking time to pray every day, that's like absolutely critical. Because if you are trying to live your life without God, without seeking him, and they're just expecting him to bless your plans, you have the complete wrong order. Like he's the ul ul ultimate D here, not not us, and we need to know what he wants us to do. And then a second tactic that I would recommend if you're someone who's like very focused on getting things done, having things your way, is the next time something comes up that's unexpected, and your first reaction is to respond very quickly and want to try to make it right and get things done and force what you think should happen in this situation. Instead of doing that, I want you to stop and do nothing. At least for maybe 30 minutes or an hour, just stop, don't do anything, take time to step away from it, pray about it, think about it, and then see what seems right after you've taken a step away. And sometimes that will look like responding in a certain way, other times it will look like doing nothing and just saying, you know what? Nope, I think God has a bigger plan that he's doing here, and I'm just going to trust it's going to work out without me taking charge here.
SPEAKER_01And is taking a Sabbath day of rest, is that a is that a part of what you teach as well?
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. I include that in my book, and really Sabbath is an act of faith and trust in the Lord. And so by taking a Sabbath day of rest, there's a I mean a couple major components. Number one, we're specifically told in the Bible that it is one of the Ten Commandments. So I mean, that's right up there with not murdering, not committing an adultery. So it's it's a big deal. It's not really an quote unquote optional, doesn't matter activity. And then secondly, we're told in the Bible that there are blessings and curses related to keeping God's commandments, including the Sabbath. So if we keep the Sabbath, we get to take part of not only the rest that God offers to us in terms of having downtime, having perspective, realizing all the things we thought were so important probably aren't that important, or we at least don't need to stress about them that much. And then at the same time, we unleash the blessings that God can give us because we are honoring him and doing what he says. So then he's allowed to bless us versus if there's situations where we dishonor him where we break what he says to do, there's curses attached to those. And I I just prefer not to have those enter into my life.
SPEAKER_01Right. And are there some div some time management tools that you use and recommend to others? And and if so, how do these tools fit with divine time management?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so in terms of tools, I'll say some of the basic things that are really, really helpful to my time management coaching clients. Um that I still think is important when you're doing divine time management, you just switch your perspective a bit. So it's very basic, but super important. A lot of my um coaching clients find just the regular habits of doing weekly planning, so being intentional about your time, how it fits together, what you want to accomplish, and then daily planning within that to be exceptionally helpful. And so if you're someone that doesn't tend to look over your week in advance and see how things fit together or to define your goals, I still would recommend that. The difference with divine time management is that number one, we're prayerful about it. So as we're making our plans, we're asking God, well, what do you think is most important this week? Is there something that you want me to focus on? Is there something you don't want me to focus on? How can I be aligned with your will and what you're trying to accomplish? So that's that's number one in terms of when we're doing our planning. And then the second part is just being willing to be a little more flexible. And again, this comes down to a personality trait. So if you're someone that is just distracted by anything at any time and is totally flexible in any way and not sticking to your agenda, then you might want to cover your ears a little bit. But if you're more type A and you're like, this is my daily plan and this is what I'm gonna do and this is what I want to accomplish, but yet God is nudging you to have this conversation with a friend or be open to, you know, going on a walk because the day is beautiful and it would delight your soul and allow you to connect with God, being open to that and not getting uptight or anxious about the fact that things aren't fitting into your day exactly like you thought they would.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, one way you can do that is to work from home with uh toddlers. I found is uh I literally just right before I got on this on this call, I was playing uh the Toy Story PlayStation game with my with my four-year-old. Um and on and you know, just being a available for those things and not getting uptight. I mean, it was just it was fun as you can imagine, but I'm definitely the type where I need to just go in the go in the office, close the door, and just not come out until I get everything done that I wanted to get done, and like you're saying, just being being open. But it's not to say that God wasn't methodical, and you know, you when you look at creation, it's incredibly methodical. Al there was one primary objective for each day of the week that God had, and he certainly uh he certainly fulfilled it. I mean, I think there's a lot that we can learn from that as well, right?
SPEAKER_02Oh, absolutely. And I think what it really comes down to is a couple of things. One is God absolutely is a God of order. So there's right order, you know, in terms of how he put the weeks together, in terms of how he put together the body of Christ. So we don't want to just abandon, say, oh, there's no order. It's we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, doesn't matter because there's there's life, there's goodness that comes out of right order. But it really is about once again, where are we putting our safety? Where are we putting our security? Very similar to if we looked at finances, it's good to save, it's good to invest. None of those are bad or wrong things. But if we're saying, oh, well, I'm gonna be safe, I'm protected, I don't need God because I save or because I invest or whatever that looks like, that's an issue. Instead of saying, I do these things that are responsible, but then I trust the Lord as the one who's taking care of me. And the same way with our time, we want to have right order, we want to set appropriate boundaries, we want to be intentional, but also ultimately see, you know, my security, my safety, my trust is in what God is doing.
SPEAKER_01I want to go back, uh, and this is a question that I think a lot of people have. When you talk about, okay, I'm gonna plan out my week, but then I need to be in tune because the Lord may want me to go in a different direction. Um can you give us an example of maybe a time when that happened with you or with one of your clients where I mean you like this was your if if you were just kind of going along with the the conventional approach to time management, that it would just make all the sense in the world to focus on this. It's you know one of your top three priorities or whatever, but then all of a sudden you get this curveball. Um, you know, how does that what is that what does that look like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, good question. So um probably where this is most likely to happen in my life is that I have some really good friends, and one of them is on a different time zone than I am, and she also has twin boys, so that she adopted. So um those are that's a huge shift in her life in terms of how available she is between, you know, her, her husband, her boys, all of that. And so I typically don't do personal items during my normal w workday, which is about nine to six Monday through Friday. But because of her schedule and we've been very long-term friends, I choose when I can to flex so that I'm able to talk to her when she's available. And so for example I can give you kind of a couple of different examples of this. So there was one week a few weeks ago where I didn't know that she would call, but she did. I had some work to do during the day, but it it didn't need to happen at specific times, so it wasn't like calls that needed to happen at precise times. And I chose in that instance, even though it was not on the agenda at all, to talk to her and take that time. I think it was probably about an hour, hour and a half out of my middle. Of my day to just adjust and say, you know what? I really care about this person. I don't get that much time to talk to her. I'm going to take this call. I was so glad that I did. And I just trusted the other things I was intending to do would get done at some other time.
SPEAKER_01So there was a sense in which you were hearing from God, and God was saying, Okay, I know this is your plan, but so is it typically like a circumstance that gets thrown at you, or are you just kind of are there times where like you're in your prayer time and and God says, I want you to do this? And it just kind of seems like a little bit unconventional. I guess what I'm the question I'm getting at is how do you know when you're walking in divine time management versus I know what my priorities are, I'm gonna lay out my week according to or lay out my day according to that. And yeah, like unexpected things come up, that comes up for anyone, no matter what system you're working in. Uh but but what makes the difference for somebody that's in divine time management?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a great question. I'm trying to get granular here. So um I know for me, speaking from my personal experience in terms of the difference, um in the past, when I wasn't doing a more divine time management approach, I probably just wouldn't pick up the call at all. Like my default response would be like, this is my plan, I'm sick into it. Sorry. Like, you know, so um, so not everyone is like that, but that was kind of where I was at um for a long time. It was like, nope, like I'll take care of this after six. Does that mean that sometimes I don't have to still do that because I really do have a very serious deadline or I'm in coaching calls all day? Yeah, that does happen. There are times I can't, I really can't flex, but um, before my MO was even if I could flex, I like didn't give myself permission to, I didn't even consider it as an option. So that's I think one big difference. And then the second thing I would say is how peaceful are you about it? So in the past, if like let's say something unexpected came up and I you know flexed, I would sometimes feel super angsty, like, oh my gosh, you were supposed to get all these things done today and you did this other thing, and then if they didn't get done, like were you not productive enough? Is something bad gonna happen? It was like all this like emotional turmoil versus no, it's okay. Like I am living a life aligned with my values, I totally trust God that everything's going to work out, and I just don't need to worry about it. Like it's going to be fine. And it's just that sense of it's not necessarily huge difference difference externally, but it's that internal sense of peace and confidence of God's got this, it's going to be okay. I don't need to stress, I don't need to strain. May I do I mean we need to think about how it might fit in some other way? Sure. But there's not the negative emotional component attached to it because our trust is even though things quote unquote didn't go how we thought they should, that doesn't mean that things didn't go perfectly exactly as God thought they should.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what I hear you saying is divine time management is not about necessarily that you're gonna you're gonna sit in your in your prayer closet and you're gonna get these like audible directives about what to do at 845. Not that you wouldn't, you couldn't get those. I mean it's it's happened, you know, it's happens today, it happens in the Bible, certainly. Yeah. But but that it's more about the the peace and the the calmness of resting in God and just knowing that He's the one that holds time in His hands, and and that we can we can be at peace about that because whatever you know needs to get done uh will get done as we're faithful stewards with with what we can um what we what we can control, um, but just recognizing that ultimately it's God who is in control.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And I would say it's not that I never hear from God more specifically, um, particularly how he tends to speak to me, is to like put someone on my mind and like to pray for or to reach out to. And then I've had many instances where I reach out to them, I'm like, hey, how are you? Are you okay? And maybe I haven't talked to them for months, and it turns out that was a really significant day for them, you know, for one reason or the other, they're going through a hard time. So, um, so I do have instances like that that do happen occasionally. Typically, it's just God puts someone on my heart. But yes, in general, divine time management is exactly what you described. It's that experience of peace in the unexpected that God is in control, even when we're not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because there are plenty of those opportunities for testing and for us to know whether or not we're in divine time management or just sort of in, as you said, where it if it's to be, it's up to me. It just kind of revolves around, and it's really kind of a secular humanist approach to business and to uh and to life in general, is that I'm the captain of my own fate, the master of my own destiny, and I'm I've just gotta kind of just gotta get it done. So Divine Timemanagement.com is is that the best place for people to go to learn more about you and the book?
SPEAKER_02Well, divine timeagement.com is all about group coaching, so that's a great place to go for that. Divine Time Book talks about um the book, like it sounds snappy name there. Um, and then we actually put together a page just for your listeners, and that is at reallifee.com backslash ccb. So again, it would be real life e, so another e at the end.com backslash ccb. That has info about my book, group coaching, as well as um a special free giveaway video training on how to reconnect with God and experience less stress in five minutes or less.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Elizabeth, thank you so much for being so generous with your time today. And I think this is uh a phenomenal approach, and I love the I love just the term divine time management. It's just a great way to frame it, and certainly there's it's just packed with uh practical and profound insight, and may God continue to bless everything you're putting your mind to.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on the show.
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