“But let your yes be your yes and your no, no. For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” – Matthew 5:37, Jesus speaking

Let’s end this series on “Redeeming Your Time,” based on Jordan Raynor’s book of the same name with a recap of what we learned and some tips on how to make this discipline a part of our day-to-day lives.

Remember the reason we want to redeem our time is so that our yes will always be our yes. There are seven steps to the process.

1. Start with the Word (The Bible): If we are believers, it just makes sense to start our days with the creator of time. Don’t forget Raynor’s Productivity Prayer which you can find on his website and in the book.

2. The System: This is absolutely the hardest part of the process. It is deep. Check out my previous articles and chapter 2 of the book. Here is a brief synopsis of what the practices in this step are.

– Commit to a single commitment tracking system. I chose Microsoft ToDo because I’m a PC guy. Raynor uses Omnifocus as an Apple guy. You can use excel or a notebook but Raynor makes a great case for committing to a digital CTS and I 100% agree.

– Collect all your open loops. Get everything (every single thing that might contain a needed action) into your CTS.

– Process the inbox of your CTS by deciding what to do with each item. Is there an action associated with it? Should it be stored for later reference?

– Rinse and repeat. Get your inbox to zero and every action item to a prioritized list in your CTS every day. Commit to a weekly deeper dive into all your tasks so you can re-prioritize and renegotiate any deadlines you cannot meet at least one time per week.

3. Dissent from the Kingdom of Noise: To me, this is a fun one. This is where we create silence in our lives by stopping all of the incoming information. This silence is where we can hear from God and process our tasks, goals and dreams. We create silence by taking in less content. Things like social media, news and unnecessary reading. We need far less info than we take in.

4. Prioritize Your Yeses: As a lover of strategic planning, I love this step. This one allows us to begin with the end in my mind and (bonus) prioritize what we commit to in life.

Raynor used a great five-story building analogy. The five stories are Purpose (why you exist); Callings (what you are called to do on this earth); Big Hairy Audacious Goals for each of your callings; OKRs to track and accomplish those big goals; and Projects and Action Items (these are in your CTS).

The last “floor” is the basement. This is where we stick all the stuff we’d love to do, but cannot make the time for if we are going to accomplish our BHAGs that align with our purpose.

5. Accept Your Unipresence: In step three we eliminated a lot of the unnecessary information that we all take in. In step five, we are changing when we allow information to come in. We turn off all the notifications and buzzers. We put our phones on do not disturb.

We do this for just long enough to do the “deep work” that is required to accomplish big goals. In between deep work sessions, we let those interruptions in and respond to them, then we go back to deep work. 

We also leave some time for “the shallows” where our doors are open and we take on little favors that we can fit into the time we allocated to the shallows. I promise once you try deep work, you will never go back.

6. Rest: We each need to find our optimal number of hours of sleep each night and work like dogs to make it happen. Chapter 6 does an excellent job of telling you why everything in your life will go better when you get enough sleep and gives some great ideas on how to get that rest.

We also schedule and take breaks throughout the day. Again, the quantity and quality of our output will improve with breaks. And work to take whatever form of Sabbath is a blessing to you and your family. A day of rest makes the whole circle of life better.

7. Eliminate All Hurry: The goal here is to be productive in the things that matter, rarely in a hurry and always present in the moment with whatever we are doing. Doesn’t that sound great? We do that by building a time budget and adjusting it as we go through our days.

We protect our time budget with a unique approach to no. The unique approach to no is worth the price of the book if you are a people pleaser.

That’s it. Seven simple but not easy steps to make sure our yes will always be our yes. Now, what are the most likely ways to goof this up?

Most Common Ways to Goof This Up

Not going through the full seven-step process. All the steps and processes inside each step build on themselves and none of them work as well if you didn’t make a plan for each step.

Not maintaining your CTS. Once you’ve gone through the seven steps and created your system, maintaining it is a challenge. We must create the time to maintain our system daily and for a weekly review to recalibrate.

I hope this recap helps your yes always be your yes. I pray that you will have great success in knowing the life God has called you to, setting up the system to make it happen and doing the work! Be blessed.

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Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders build great organizations and better lives for themselves and the people they lead.

Curt and the team at FHRS help leaders build great companies through Virtual CFO, strategy, tax and accounting services.

Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA and is a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and five children.