0:00:00 - 0:00:21 So I got a comment on youtube about time from a gentleman who says he works 70 hours a week. I don't know anything about the guy except he makes comments from time to time. So thanks for being here. But as I pondered on that, I got some information, uh called up to mind and I want to share that. And 0:00:21 - 0:00:48 so we're gonna touch on several things in this video. We're gonna touch on the idea of big things versus little things and um the meaning to God, um We'll touch on the widow's might and we will um hit on some very important things that we're just gonna touch on briefly about the importance of each day 0:00:48 - 0:01:11 , each moment in each day. And so at the outset, I just want to um, say that I, I've got a server running and usually I turn it off for these videos, but I am kind of in a hurry this morning. Um in terms of being anxious to get on with my writing for the day. So let me know if it's bothersome and if 0:01:11 - 0:01:33 it matters, I'll turn it off in the future. So for Mark 12, we read. Um and this is the Lord speaking, he said unto them in his doctrine, beware of the scribes which love to go in long clothing and love salutations in the marketplaces. It's not super obvious with that long clothing, but that's a reference 0:01:32 - 0:01:56 to the the edge of the garments that they wore because that border had special significance. And then they, there was a blue portion of it and it has doctrinal significance. So they started to make that part longer. And um there Isaiah spoke about how the Lord's train filled the temple that wasn't like 0:01:56 - 0:02:18 Thomas, the tank engine train. Uh It was trained like a bridal train, the the flowing robes. It's, it's very significant. Uh We'll talk about that some other time. Anyway, these guys made it longer to try to seem more important in the chief seats in the synagogues, in the uppermost rooms at feasts which 0:02:18 - 0:02:40 devour widows houses and for pretense make long prayers thee shall receive greater damnation. So this, this was sort of a direct jab to the face on the Pharisees because they were focusing on all the wrong parts of the gospel. They were doing what they were doing with the motive of seeming more important 0:02:40 - 0:03:04 than they were. And and that's not good. The point of the gospel. As Jesus said, you, you become great as your, your willingness and ability to serve increases, you become great by becoming the least. And Jesus sat over against the treasury and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury and many 0:03:03 - 0:03:24 that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow and she threw in two mites which make a farthing. And he called unto him, his disciples and said unto them verily, I say unto you that this poor widow hath cast more in than all they excuse me, which have cast into the treasury for all 0:03:24 - 0:03:46 they did cast in of their abundance. But she of her want did cast in all that she had even all her living. So as I was reading this gentleman's comment, so what was it about? It was a reflection on the video I made uh about a lot of things including the Sabbath. And I said, the Sabbath is a reflection 0:03:46 - 0:04:05 of how you would use your time if the Lord freed you from toil. And this, this uh person said, well, I work 70 hours a week and I can't even imagine what that would be like paraphrasing. And I thought of all these ideas related to productivity that I might share that I think are insanely valuable. So 0:04:05 - 0:04:28 my hypothesis to be upfront about it is that there, I'm sorry, I'm not sure why my voice isn't in very good shape this morning. I certainly have the hypothesis that I am aware of things that would make it so that this guy could get more done in less time. And, and that's even acknowledging, I know nothing 0:04:27 - 0:04:51 about him and what he does, he mentioned he has a school or he works at a school. I know a thing or two about that. But, but transcending the specifics, it doesn't matter. I, the Lord has taught me many things about um productivity. And when I say the Lord has taught me, uh I'm prompted to tell you explicitly 0:04:50 - 0:05:17 that when I say that, don't, don't presume people mean a certain thing. When they say a certain thing, open your mind to alternatives to, to more expansive ways of thinking, um the the Lord is in control of our understanding. Everything that's true or beautiful or useful or good or grows or makes you 0:05:17 - 0:05:44 stronger, makes you better, increases your love, increases your joy, all of that comes from and is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is so good and so great that he doesn't force us to recognize um his, his, I was gonna say imprint, that's not a strong enough way of saying it that all of these things 0:05:44 - 0:06:06 are absolutely from him and absolutely lead towards him and absolutely are only fulfilled in him. So he's not some company that stamps his brand on every single thing in a way that's in your face. And it is like the most prominent part of what you experience, but it all does come from him. And uh so 0:06:06 - 0:06:29 when I say the Lord tea taught, taught me this or the Lord teaches me this. It's just acknowledging the fact that everything comes from him. That doesn't mean that it happened in some theophany or whatever. Right. So, if a kid gets too close to a wood stove and burns him or herself, um, that's a lesson 0:06:28 - 0:06:47 that came from the Lord because he made the laws that govern how that wood stove works. He gave the understanding to the person that invented the wood stove. He gave the mus muscular force to the person that chopped the wood and he made the metal that the stoves made out of. Right? So everything comes 0:06:47 - 0:07:11 from him. And so acknowledging that is the safest way to just sort of blur this all together anyway. So back to the point here. So as I thought about all this and I thought about it's like the matrix to reference a movie that some of you are, are too holy to watch. Um When, when Neo says I need guns 0:07:11 - 0:07:31 and the shelves of guns just roll into the thing like blurred out because there's so many of them. And then he finds himself in the middle of this huge library of guns, this repository of guns. That's what happened with the productivity notes. So, uh I thought with more of my mind than God's mind, I 0:07:31 - 0:07:53 thought, well, what can I choose from this to help here? And then, um, the Lord squashed all that and he said, no, um teach about the widow's might and I was like, huh? And then he showed me all this. So this is what we're gonna do. It'll be applicable to many people though. Not just folks who work 70 0:07:53 - 0:08:15 hours a week. Uh, there, there are larger principles here. So in order to tease this apart a little bit, we need to understand just a bit about the culture and the time and in that time a Daenerys wa or Danaus was a day's wage. It was a coin that uh conveniently was the the wage of a laborer. So the 0:08:15 - 0:08:44 most common worker selling their time for money doing uh manual work, that's what they would get for working an entire day. Um This is important in scriptures to understand in scriptures like uh in revelation when it talks about the um the, the black seal that's open and um hyperinflation occurs and 0:08:44 - 0:00:00 it takes a day's wage um to buy bread for a day. And if you do the math, that means there's nothing left over. You just have barely what you need to, to literally survive. No luxury, no surplus, no roof over your head, just bread. So um and not the good kind either. It's Barley uh day's wages for a, 0:00:00 - 0:09:37 a loaf of, of Barley. So that's not great. Um And then a mite, what's a mite? A mite is 1 64th of a denarius. So that's a, a very small quantity of money. The widow had two of these. So doing just a little math. Uh, two mites is 1 32nd of a day's wages. So, that's all well and good. And people have talked 0:09:37 - 0:10:00 about this ad nauseam. So, what am I going to add to the picture? Well, maybe nothing. But let's give it a shot. Let's talk about time. If you sleep eight hours that leaves you with 16 hours a day. So, if you divide that by 32 you get 30 minutes unless I made a math mistake, which is totally possible 0:09:59 - 0:10:26 . So 30 minutes now, 30 minutes is a funny quantity of time in my mind because on the one hand, it's really not a lot of time. But when I think of two mites in the way, we've described it here, it's, it's value because it's, it's not a, uh it's a quantity, but you understand it qualitatively in, in terms 0:10:25 - 0:10:45 of the, the measure of the slice of a day's labor that it is. It's 1 64th. That is not a lot. You could go through the work day if you had to dig a hole with a posthole digger. Like my two oldest sons have to, for the project they're working on. Um, one of my sons went out and he spent probably 30 seconds 0:10:44 - 0:11:03 doing this and then he came inside and he's like, that's a terrible tool. I hate this. It just, it gets out the tiniest bit of dirt. And I said, you know, nothing about that yet. My friend, you have a lot more to do before. You, you really know the pain of a posthole digger. Um, I, I have an old one 0:11:03 - 0:11:25 that I got from somebody, uh, very much used. But, um, if all the holes I ever dug where the posthole digger were dug with that tool, it, it would sort of match the wear on it. So, what I'm saying is I've, I've put in my post hole time for sure. Um It, but it is a brutal job, especially in rocky soil 0:11:25 - 0:11:49 . But notwithstanding the horror of post hole digging 1 64th, if you chopped up the whole workday into 64 chunks, you could kind of count out the passage of time with this. Now we're, we're doing this for 16 hours, eight hours is half of that. Um And, and that's, I mean, 15 minutes you could, if you 0:11:48 - 0:12:16 had a, a, a chime that, that sounded every 15 minutes, you could punctuate the day that way. And, and that wouldn't be a ridiculous breadth of time to go through between chimes. Um So in fact, I had, uh so the, the person who is the president of my mission, he was uh some kind of corporate accountant 0:12:15 - 0:12:42 , but he billed every 15 minutes. And I remember uh hearing about that because he used it for some sort of, some sort of teaching at some point. And I, well, actually I think it was related to making the most of your time and thinking in smaller um, smaller denominations of time and he billed every 15 0:12:41 - 0:13:06 minutes. And that got me thinking, I, to that point in my life, I had, had many jobs, but I never thought about time in such short quantities and it made me realize that I was wasting a whole lot of time when I didn't think I was wasting any anyway. Um So when we talk about the widow's mites and in terms 0:13:05 - 0:13:27 of time, two mites is in, in this equivalence, 30 minutes. And what I wanna say here is, is that on the one hand, 30 minutes seems like a, a little bit of time. And on the other hand, it seems like a lot of time when I think about two mis monetarily, it seems like a lot less money than I think 30 minutes 0:13:26 - 0:13:50 is on time because you can do a lot in 30 minutes. So, um, when I'm doing my morning thing and I, I do look at the clock because I'll, I'll lose track of time. If I have 30 minutes left, I can still do some serious damage on these books. And that's a good thing. Um, but, but again, I, I mentioned I've 0:13:50 - 0:14:12 had a lot of jobs, um, and it doesn't matter being a janitor, a roofer, uh, working in an insurance company, whatever the case might be as a professor, you can do a lot in 30 minutes. Heck, most classes are 50 minutes as a professor. So 30 minutes is a lot of time. Notwithstanding, I apologize. I don't 0:14:12 - 0:14:38 know why I'm congested. Notwithstanding. 30 minutes is also a lot of time to carve out. Right. Swings both ways. So, so now I'm going to flip this around a little bit. I'm making the point here because Jesus obviously cared about the two minds of this widow. Why? Because it was all she had to give. Now 0:14:38 - 0:15:00 the rich people, people that have nothing to do all day or who, who have very little to do all day. And if you have a lot to do all day, you realize that the people who have very little to do all day don't necessarily feel that way. But it's true still, they think that they have all these things to do 0:14:59 - 0:15:27 but they don't. My, uh, my mom is disabled and, um, she worked, uh, she worked several jobs, uh, up to three, but on average too, her whole working life, uh, until she had some serious health problems and, and had to stop all that I shouldn't say had to stop, could, could no longer continue all that 0:15:27 - 0:15:49 . And I've had this conversation with her many times. I, I was like, you know, you have health problems but man, what a blessing, you basically have nothing to do at this point. From, from this point on, in your life, you have massive quantities of time to do almost anything. And she's like, yeah, health 0:15:48 - 0:16:07 problems though. And I said, ok, we'll subtract that out of the list. You like, you could read any book you want to all day long, you could write anything you want to all day long, you could learn anything you want to all day long. And that's just the tiny part. That's just you not. What could you do 0:16:07 - 0:16:23 for other people in that time? I mean, my goodness. And I told her, I've told her this many times, but I'm not sure she believed me until the last time we had this conversation, uh, where I said I would trade you all those health problems. It doesn't matter. I would trade you in a quarter of a second 0:16:22 - 0:16:49 for my life. If I didn't have other people to take care of, I would trade you in a, in a split second and it sort of dawned on her maybe a little that I was serious. Um, anyhoo. So the two mites were valuable because it was all she had. Right. So, God cares about 30 minutes. People think that God doesn't 0:16:49 - 0:17:13 care what you do when it's not Sunday. People think God doesn't care how you decide on certain decisions. Just the ones that are overtly religious or somehow touch things that you overtly were told by some overtly religious leader. No. Throw all that in the trash every second of every day. He cares what 0:17:13 - 0:17:40 you're doing to be in his path means to be thinking about what he would have. You do 24 7, 24 7. There's not a moment when it doesn't apply. Now, acknowledging the fact that hardly anyone knows God well enough to fill in all that time, meaning they don't know what kind of breakfast cereal he would have 0:17:39 - 0:17:56 you eat this morning, or if he'd have you eat breakfast cereal at all because they just don't know him well enough to know what he would do in that situation. Fair enough. And that exposes a wonderful way to spend your time finding that out. Ask the question. It might take 10 years, but you'll figure 0:17:56 - 0:18:20 it out unless you meet someone who's more like him than you. And then they can just tell you, but the 30 minutes it matters. Ok. So now what about all the people who say? But I don't have 30 minutes. Well, guess what, that 30 minutes, those two mites were two coins. They're p two physical coins. And 0:18:20 - 0:18:42 so even if they weren't together, they existed just as two separate objects. Your 30 minutes doesn't have to, to exist contiguously, meaning touching each other, meaning one block, it doesn't have to exist as one solid chunk of time. There are a lot of people who don't have 30 minutes in solid block 0:18:41 - 0:19:04 . I don't know anybody that doesn't have 30 minutes distributed over a day. But even if that person does not have 30 minutes distributed over a day, they've got it distributed over a week. So this person said, well, I don't know what I would do with the whole day in the week. That's a problem for several 0:19:04 - 0:19:23 reasons. One sounds an awful lot like our former speaker of the house who said you have to pass the bill to know what's in it. Which is obviously absurd. If you don't know what you would do with a Sabbath Day, there's no point in God giving you one. There are many reasons for this, but just to try to 0:19:23 - 0:19:48 touch on it briefly, there are only two ways that I figured out that you can understand the value of something. One is by God showing you through your understanding and revelation and thought and all that fun stuff before it happens. That's the best way. But it's also in a way, it's the hardest way because 0:19:47 - 0:20:09 you have to have the faith for Him to explain it to you. And that's a process it takes understanding. Um But also it causes a great deal of pain for you to comprehend or at least begin to comprehend the value of something while you still don't have it. Now, this doesn't stop people if you think about 0:20:08 - 0:20:34 the fan just kicked off. So, um that means that Starlink isn't working at the moment, um It'll turn back on. So if you notice a difference, let me know. Um So the value of something you do not have is painful because you, you have this desire that's unfulfilled and your desire increases as, as God explains 0:20:33 - 0:20:55 how good this thing is actually gonna be. And then, um, and it's, it's not necessarily a thing. It could be a situation or a person and then, um in experience, but this doesn't stop people if you think about any kind of faithful person using my definition of the word. And through faith again by Robert 0:20:55 - 0:21:17 Smith, you can get on Amazon, you can get on upward thought.blogspot.com for free PDF. You can watch the or listen to the audio here on youtube for free. But if you think of a faithful person, one who envisions what could be and all the options and then finds out how to get what they want. And then does 0:21:16 - 0:21:44 those people all experience this? Um uh could you call it a pre emptive loss where you en you are envisioning what could be and what it's desired but not yet attained. And you carry the weight, the burden of the, the unfulfilled desire. So it happens all the time. It's totally doable. Um But the greater 0:21:44 - 0:22:14 the blessing, the more that hurts. It's a terrible thing to have to carry that. But if you don't care about it before it happens and then it happens, will it give you as much joy as if you had figured that out beforehand? Probably not. So I would say that the kind of person that can develop an appreciation 0:22:13 - 0:22:37 for something while experiencing it is maybe the rarest kind of person there is. Now, what's my evidence for that? I'll just use one point. Jesus in Hebrews. Paul tells us that Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered. It's not a good translation, a more effective uh phrasing of that idea would 0:22:37 - 0:23:02 be something like Jesus learned the value of always obeying the father through the things he suffered because he didn't learn obedience in the sense that he was ever disobedient. But he did learn the value of being obedient and how through the things that he suffered. So if suffering was required for 0:23:02 - 0:23:24 the Son of God to learn the value of things, I think it's safe to say that you and I require it. So that suffering either happens in the way I've uh I previously described where you look forward to obtaining something and you experience what it's like to not have it or you get it, you don't appreciate 0:23:23 - 0:23:45 it because people don't and then you lose it. And that is a way that you can learn the value of what you had and lost. Now, of course, the problem with that is that you've lost it, right? So, and most people don't go through an experience like that with retroactive joy. Like now I didn't know what I 0:23:45 - 0:24:06 had when I, when I had it, but now that I've lost it, I'm really grateful that I had it, you know, you might get comments like that from time to time from a spouse who's died. And the, the survivor says, well, um, you know, I really didn't know what I had until he or she was gone. And thank God that 0:24:06 - 0:24:27 we had that time together. But most of the time it's just bitterness. So, and, and, and the reason for that is, is that most of the time it's not recoverable. You can't just go out and get another one of whatever it is that you had, that you didn't realize you had. So uh you live in relative prosperity 0:24:26 - 0:24:50 , all of you uh on a historical basis, you're richer than kings and queens of the past. But do you feel that kind of joy? Um I have a friend who lived in a TP for seven years and he says every single night that he gets into bed, he feels over the moon happy that he's not sleeping on the ground again 0:24:50 - 0:25:12 . And I haven't done that, lived in a teepee, but I have slept on the ground a lot, particularly in the army. And um it's never, it's something I never enjoyed and I do every single night and when I get into bed, I am just so happy. Um I'm also exhausted. So whatever. But the point is there are things 0:25:12 - 0:25:35 that you are massively value that, that we take for granted. Valuable. I, I'm super grateful for plumbing. I, I love toilets. I love toilets. And, um, it's weird. Uh, again, this is the first kind of value that I was talking about. I look ahead and I, I know what's coming. Uh, I know a great deal of 0:25:35 - 0:25:57 what's coming and because of my faith, I have experienced a great deal of what's coming. And so I appreciate things a lot when, when I get, um, my favorite kind of peanut butter is Skippy and it's weird. Uh, I, I, there are a few things like this where there's nothing fancy about Skippy Peanut butter 0:25:56 - 0:26:16 , but if it's not Skippy, I'd rather not eat it. And that's not to say that I'm some kind of peanut butter snob. I just enjoy Skippy that much that nothing else can compare. And that's a, that's a nice safe example to use of that concept. But every time I don't have peanut butter too often. Um, but I 0:26:16 - 0:26:37 , we always have it because we have a lot of kids and that's a commodity food. Um, as you get older, you can't eat so much peanut butter and bread. But, uh, it's great for the kids. So, um, anyway, anytime I open a jar of peanut butter and I just have a little spoon of peanut butter, that's a real treat 0:26:36 - 0:26:59 . I, I just am over the moon are grateful for Skippy Peanut butter. Right. Because I know there's gonna be a time when we don't have that and I, I have relative value versus the other peanut butter anyway. Um So, um it's really important to value things and there are only two ways that you can gain the 0:26:59 - 0:27:20 value. Really. One is you suffer before you get it. The other is you suffer after you get it. And if you had the choice, most people would say I'd rather suffer before I get it. But they don't live that way. They say that because rationally they realize man, if you lose out on it and you never get it 0:27:19 - 0:27:41 again, that really stinks the other way is hard in a lot of ways, it's harder, but you get to keep it. That's the thing is you don't have to lose it as part of the, gaining the value, but they don't actually live that way. So in this case is a perfect example, you say, well, I don't have time for a Sabbath 0:27:41 - 0:28:03 . So I don't even know what that would be like. Maybe, or maybe you don't have time for a Sabbath because you don't know what it's like. And I contend that that's actually truer because if you knew what it was like, you would absolutely make the time. Even if you couldn't do it in one solid block, you'd 0:28:03 - 0:28:28 make, you'd, you'd move towards, that is probably obvious that this is where we're going by more effectively blocking out smaller chunks of time throughout the week, maybe only 10 minutes, maybe only five minutes. Um At various times in my life, I've lived in poverty in one of these times of, of course 0:28:28 - 0:28:48 , relative poverty, but relative to the standard of living in the United States, certainly below the line. One of these times I was visiting with an older gentleman. And, um, it was interesting because I was visiting. Well, it was on a Sunday is how, when I didn't live in the middle of nowhere, I'd spend 0:28:47 - 0:29:10 my Sundays this way visiting people that were lonely amongst other things, but it was a normal staple. And so I was visiting with this guy who didn't have many visitors and I thought I was doing good for him and as is frequently the case, I probably got more out of it. Um, that not in a bad way. I, I 0:29:10 - 0:29:32 did give what I intended to give to him, but he gave me more. We were talking about something and as you know, I don't, I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that I am a person with, with no guile maybe I am, but I am a person who speaks what they really think and what they really feel and anyone who 0:29:32 - 0:29:57 knows me to any extent knows that very quickly. Um Usually much to their dismay. So, uh with him, I was myself as I always am and I said something about how I was, I was lamenting. Uh I've always had a lot of desire for service in my heart and um I was lamenting that things were so tight financially 0:29:56 - 0:30:17 that I didn't have more to give to others because I really wanted to. And without a, a hesitation of any type, he turned to me and he said, well, you can always give a dollar. And this is shocking to me because this guy was, was really poor and he had been, um, pretty much his whole life and he was old 0:30:17 - 0:30:40 now. And I said, huh, it cut me to the core because I didn't realize that I wasn't doing the best that I could in that regard that I had more to give that I didn't know about. Um, so I was very grateful and I instantly changed and I've never forgotten that idea that you can always give a dollar. So you 0:30:40 - 0:31:08 might say you have no time. Do you have five minutes? And now let me give you an example of this. So, uh, I was in the National Guard for a decade and, um, if you totaled up all the time that I was on orders, it was, it was over two years. So, um, across those years there were many times when, oh, and 0:31:08 - 0:31:39 , and it wasn't like office time. It was usually like, pretty intense, um, training time where we're out doing stuff. So, not, not a whole lot of normal life in those two years, two or three years. So, lots of intense things to do and not much sitting around and, um, at some point, I realized that there 0:31:38 - 0:31:57 had to be a way for me to find time to study the scriptures and pray because, you know, when you're in a barracks or you're sleeping on the ground or whatever, it's like, it's really hard to get alone. I was, I was in a lot of situations where I was always around tons of people and there's a lot of noise 0:31:56 - 0:32:22 and a lot of carrying on and uh things to, to worry about uh is in intense situations. And then I realized that in most of the places we're in, there were these porta pots, these portable toilets and it was really hot outside and it was really smelly in the portable toilet. But we had cargo pockets and 0:32:22 - 0:32:47 I had a little tiny version of scriptures. And so I started carrying them in a cargo pocket. And uh that was a tradition I picked up and I, I kept with and um I would go into the toilet and I would stay in there for as much time as was reasonable. And uh that would be my little devotion time and it made 0:32:46 - 0:33:08 all the difference in the world. That was literally all the time. I had to give the rest of the time. I was expected to be doing things and I needed to be doing things to not let people down. So that's, that's the way it went. And so um if you apply that toilet time principle, um I bet that you have 0:33:08 - 0:33:27 time during the week that you're not actually using to the full extent. Maybe that time is literally, man, I'm sorry, maybe that time is literally toilet time. So if you sum up all the time that you're sitting on the toilet every week, um if you're just scrolling through your phone, maybe that's not 0:33:27 - 0:33:48 the best use of your time and you'd be shocked to find how much you can get out of reading the scriptures during that time. If that's the best use of your time, um you can pray while you're on the toilet. I think that that would probably offend a lot of people, but you need to realize that one. Jesus 0:33:48 - 0:34:15 was a man and he had to poop too two and that didn't make him any less. Holy, right? Two. We were uh Adam and Eve were naked in the garden of Eden and we are all naked before God clothes, don't hide who you are. He knows you poop. It's not offensive to him. Now, is that gonna be like a holy of Holies 0:34:14 - 0:34:39 experience? Well, it could be, it could be if God wants to make it one. But the idea is like that, that should not be the pinnacle of your spiritual life, your toilet time. But the, the principle here is if you truly are so burdened by the toil of life that you don't have now, I'm not, you're gonna look 0:34:39 - 0:34:59 and see the comments, see who made it. I'm not saying this is the case of this person I already told you. I don't know anything about him or her might be her. But um I'm saying if you can't find the time to achieve the relationship with God that you're searching for, because you're so burdened with the 0:34:59 - 0:35:22 toils of life. It doesn't go from where you are to jumping to having uh a 16 hour day extra over what you've got. That's not the way anything works in the gospel or the world, even in the temporal world. No one does that. No one says, man, I'm making, I don't know what minimum wage is now, but uh I make 0:35:21 - 0:35:42 $8 an hour um flipping burgers and man, if I was just making $2 million a year, wouldn't that be great? But uh well, I guess there's no path from A to B and I just have to flip burgers until $2 million drops out of the sky. Well, it's not gonna happen, right? So the question is from where you stand right 0:35:42 - 0:36:03 now, what's a step in that direction? Just one step, just one step in that direction that you could do right now, even today. And maybe that step is I'm gonna spend five minutes while I'm sitting on the toilet reading the Bureau of Labor Statistics website to see what other jobs are out there and what 0:36:03 - 0:36:28 it takes to get them just five minutes. On the toilet, that's a step towards that end. Right? And it might change your whole life because the path we're getting there to, to a greater explanation at this point, the path to any and goes through today, anything in your future goes through today, no matter 0:36:28 - 0:36:59 how big something is, it's going to go through this moment. So every path comes to now or every path leads from now, we are horrifically bad at looking at the big things and the little things in the way they should be seen. Alma 37 6 says now you may suppose that this is foolishness in me. But behold 0:36:59 - 0:37:22 , I say unto you that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass and small means in many instances. Doth confound the wise. What he's saying in plain English is the biggest of things come through. The littlest of things don't look over little things because they make all the big things 0:37:21 - 0:37:46 happen. This is true in every scope if if I look back on my short life and I were to make like a bubble chart, do you know what those are a bubble chart? Sorry of how important things were. Uh So the size of the circle is the importance of the thing. If you read the label of what it was, it would shock 0:37:45 - 0:38:12 you like what, what made all the difference? It's always the least likely thing that starts in the smallest meaningless way. And that's one reason why you need to understand every moment matters because it's a fallacy to believe that things of great value will seem to have great value to you right now 0:38:11 - 0:38:35 because they want. It's just like if you go to Walmart and you look at the great value cans, they're plain white, they look cheap, they're designed to look inexpensive so that you buy them thinking you're saving money, whatever the price is. But it's funny because the label says great value. God sends 0:38:35 - 0:39:00 you all kinds of things in life that the label literally says great value. But the can looks cheap, right? So you got to pay attention to all the little things and adopt behaviors that don't rely on the obviousness of the value of the thing. It's super important and I am going to write literally volumes 0:38:59 - 0:39:22 about this, but they're not ready yet. So here's some real world examples of small things making enormous differences, hormones, hormones. You're talking about a tiny, tiny, tiny little quantity of stuff. It makes all the difference in the world in how your body operates, how you feel and what you get 0:39:22 - 0:39:48 done. It's a tiny thing with an enormous impact, slightly related. But you know, this is the field that I work in effective dose of drugs. That's you're talking tiny, tiny, tiny little quantities. The effective dose is, is um actually there's another phrase and now I'm embarrassing myself because I can't 0:39:47 - 0:40:09 remember anyway, the minimal amount of drug where it starts making a difference in your body. It might be effective dose, but it might be another phrase. I can't remember. Those are tiny, tiny little quantities. It, it matters to what I do because we make software to help them see these things in samples 0:40:08 - 0:40:29 that they analyze. And it's a, it's a safety concern where it's complicated but, but the human body is complicated and if you put a tiny, tiny, tiny, little amount of a drug in someone, it's not gonna hurt them. But you can measure if your equipment and your analysis is good enough, you can measure when 0:40:29 - 0:40:53 it starts making a difference. And if you start there, you can test in a way where you graduate that and you, you don't hurt someone. Um So that's nice anyway, minimal effective dose. So, so fentaNYL right now is a huge problem because it's got such a low um effective dose. It's tiny quantities can actually 0:40:53 - 0:00:00 kill someone. And so, um it's a big deal even though it's a little. So there, there are many things in life that, that, that have an effective dose in tiny increments. And this is why the more someone gets to know God, the more extreme they seem on certain things that no one else cares about. Right? 0:00:00 - 0:41:40 Jesus made a whip and he started whipping people doing what whole crowds of people thought was OK. Whole crowds of people thought that the the exchanges of money and animals in the temple courtyard was ok. The way that was going down was ok. And the, um, yeah, all the people just thought he was nuts 0:41:39 - 0:42:01 for doing this. Right. But you have to ask yourself why the priest didn't intervene and stop him because they didn't, they all stood there and let him do it. They didn't want him to do it but they didn't stop him. And you should ask why I have. And the answer is because they knew that what those people 0:42:00 - 0:42:25 were doing was wrong. But they didn't have the fortitude to do anything about it. They were, they were also making money off of the situation. So, but they knew it was wrong. So they didn't stop it. But the crowds of people thought he was nuts. Why? Because they didn't understand that it was wrong. The 0:42:25 - 0:42:49 priests whose job it was to tell the people that it was wrong, literally, that was their job were not doing their job. And so the people didn't know it was wrong. So in you, you've got the crowds which is the natural man. You've got the priest, which is you, you your spirit and then you've got Jesus 0:42:48 - 0:43:17 , the holy ghost, right? Jesus is not the holy ghost. But I'm saying the these are the roles played by all going on inside of your body. And so you have to yield to the influence of God within you because you don't know the effective dose. You're the natural man and your priest isn't doing his job. So 0:43:16 - 0:43:48 to sum all of this up, everything you do matters. And um this is a point I didn't make separately. I'll, I'll just make that now. Everything you do. Uh sorry, everything you need to go on in progress with God, you have every day, every day. He, he has precisely arranged every day as long as you're keeping 0:43:48 - 0:44:15 all of His commandments, as far as you understand them, he has arranged in each day precisely what you need to draw as near to Him as you can in a day. This is an enormous promise as you do everything you imagine he would do in your place. And as you don't do everything you imagine he would not do in 0:44:15 - 0:44:43 your place according to your sincere belief right now, you have the promise that all you need to make all the progress that can be made today is in today. But and so it's important not to see each day's toil as separate from your spiritual journey. They are as combined as your body and your spirit. There's 0:44:42 - 0:45:06 no such thing as temporal and spiritual with God, they're all one. So as you're billing your 15 minute increments as a hotshot executive accountant, you need to be thinking, how can I be a hotshot executive accountant like Jesus would be in my place because he's using that time to shape you like Chiseling 0:45:05 - 0:45:31 stone. He's shaping you in every situation. He designed creation specifically for that purpose. And your work that you do in the office is a chisel. The work that you do as a plumber when you're knee deep in sewage, that hardly happens as a plumber. But, you know, that's the chisel. You're a mom. You 0:45:31 - 0:45:54 have five kids. They're driving you nuts. That's the chisel, right? Or you're a mom and you're, you're cleaning the counter for the five billionth time. That's the chisel. How would Jesus clean that counter? How would Jesus plunge that toilet? And what you're gonna find is the toilet plunging the counter 0:45:54 - 0:46:19 , wiping the whatever, whatever, whatever isn't the point. The spirit you do it in is and that spirit you do it in will come out when you're wiping that counter and your cute little kid comes up to you and says, uh, I don't know, mom, can you read me a story or mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. And how you 0:46:18 - 0:46:46 react to that? That's the chisel for the day. That's the effective dose that, you know, uh Bob works for me and he's killing himself. He's been such a loyal, dedicated employee and I would probably give him a raise right now. But I know I don't have to because I know he's gonna keep working for me. Even 0:46:46 - 0:47:07 if I don't. That's the chisel. What do you do? What would Jesus do? He would do? What's just give the dude a raise. Inversely, Bob's really slacking. He's been slacking for a long time. I've talked to him like 20 times because I hate firing people, but he is not doing his job and I've exercised all the 0:47:07 - 0:47:43 mercy I can because at this point I'm endangering the well being of all the people who are doing their job by keeping Bob. What do you do? What would Jesus do? He would fire Bob, right? So that's the chisel. So in summary, make, let's see, approach every aspect of your daily toil as a spiritual experience 0:47:42 - 0:48:08 and you will gain more blessings as if you had explicit spiritual time step one while these aren't chronological or sequential, but these are just separate ideas. That's idea one idea two, you might not have 16 hours in contiguous time in a week to have a Sabbath. I won't get into the argument of if 0:48:08 - 0:48:32 that's true or not, doesn't matter to the point, which is how much time do you have distributed throughout the week? And are you making the greatest use of it even in unexpected atypical situations like toilet time? That's idea two and uh idea three, be super careful about the little things because they 0:48:32 - 0:48:58 make all the difference, think about effective dose and be very particular at all times. And in all places about thinking about what the Lord would do in your place because sometimes that whole day was constructed for one interaction or one moment when you're by yourself and you need to catch those things 0:48:57 - 0:49:24 . Paul says um, oh gosh, the language of it is weird. So I'm paraphrasing, I'm gonna butcher this. But he said something about um entertaining angels unawares. So be mindful of strange of strangers because many people entertain angels unawares. Something like that is a terrible phrasing. But um on face 0:49:23 - 0:49:48 value, what, what he's saying is be real careful about all of your interactions with people. Because when you come across an angel of the Lord, it won't always be super obvious. Now, this has fulfillment in real ways because angels do come in disguise, they do as humans, they come in disguise and these 0:49:48 - 0:50:12 are beings from heaven in disguise. But God has mortal angels and I'll talk about this a lot more later and it's actually way better if you come across one of those versus the ones that drop out of heaven, right? The visit from heaven, it's way better to come across a mortal angel. And Paul was, was 0:50:12 - 0:50:34 actually in that verse, he was giving us keys to identify when that's happening. But um the nugget out of that, that's relevant to this conversation is it's because of the value they bring. That's what indicates whether you've got one on your hands or not. And I could talk a lot more about that, but 0:50:34 - 0:50:57 just keeping it to what is relevant for this every moment of every day. It's not just about interactions with people though, that tends to be super important for various reasons. Um Because we're made in the image of God, it's a canvas that he can paint any image on. Whereas rocks or janitor work or 0:50:56 - 0:51:20 whatever the case may be, those are all limited. The human canvas is unlimited except by, by our choices. So there exist people he can do anything with that he needs to do, which is an amazing thought and you can be one of them. If you just uh if you just love him, he can use you to that extent. So anyway 0:51:20 - 0:51:46 , every moment though, speaking of time and situations, every moment of every day could be the tool God's trying to use to reach you and you have to learn, if not to be in gear all the time, you have to learn how to be instant in season out of season. That's another scriptural, quote, instant in season 0:51:46 - 0:52:14 out of season. You have to be ready to switch over at any moment. There's an analogy coming to mind. Um There are tools that, that instantly switch. So for example, uh I have a welding mask and when I'm not welding, I can see through it just fine. But the second the sparks fly, it goes super dark, right 0:52:13 - 0:52:34 ? And it's, it's not instant, but it's fast enough that I don't notice the sparks, right? Which is great because I don't get blinded. Um but our eyelashes are super sensitive too. So, just recently I was plugging in a tractor hose. Oh, my gosh, I'm not even gonna get into how frustrating that is. Um 0:52:33 - 0:52:53 , but, but seasonally those things they become from time to time and it's just, there's one in particular on my tractor, it's like super high pressure. It's ridiculous. And so I went to relieve the pressure, uh, with some Macgyver, like tricks and, uh, most people that watch his channel are at least 0:52:53 - 0:53:11 as old as me. So they'll get what I'm talking about. So I did the Macgyver trick, which was not my idea. It, it was a brilliant idea by someone else and oil just sprayed everywhere. And it's funny because I turned to my friend who had the idea and I was like, be careful. This is pressurized, watch your 0:53:11 - 0:53:30 eyes and then it sprayed all over my face. I had my hand over it. I really thought that that would be ok. But there's a joke with, uh, it's, it's usually a guy joke, but safety squints. Most, most men know what that means. And that's when you squint for safety because you're, this is like in lieu of 0:53:30 - 0:53:54 going and getting safety goggles. Um, but your eyes react very quickly. And so I actually like, I didn't notice the spray, I noticed my eyes closing and then the spray hit, right. It's like psychic eyes. Um So there are things that react like that and you have to be instant out of season when God's situations 0:53:54 - 0:54:16 hit you, which here's the hint, they're all his situations. But, but um you don't know the importance when it happens typically in the moment. So when it hits you, you have to have this sensibility that you switch over like, OK, this is a test, right? And there's only so much you can encounter in life 0:54:16 - 0:54:35 with that mentality of this is a test. Therefore, I will care. You have to care all the time. That's what I'm trying to tell you is you don't know when it's a test. So the the hack to being instant in season out of season is don't be out of season ever, right? That's overwhelming for people. But remember 0:54:35 - 0:54:56 his burden is light, his yoke is easy and his burden is light because his way, it might seem harder. But that's only because we're stupid. If we saw more. If we understood more of what he understood, we'd get that his way is the easiest possible way. Given reality, it's the best thing. There's nothing 0:54:56 - 0:55:15 better and you really have to believe that for real, there's no faking it, right. If you don't really believe that, then you're just gonna spend your toilet time doing what people do on the toilet. But it might make all the difference in the world. The scripture you find during that, that uh brief interlude 0:55:14 - 0:55:39 might change your whole life and he'll give it to you, he'll draw it to your attention and teach you what he will teach you because you're making the sacrifice, all things come through faith, you can't get around it. So if you don't have riches to give, whether that be money or time or ability, it doesn't 0:55:38 - 0:56:06 matter. He doesn't actually care about the quantity, he cares about the quality. And what I mean by that is he cares about the fraction of what you have to give. And here's the, the, it's not a clue, but here's the answer we can solve the puzzle pat. It's 100% is what he needs. Not 99 not 15, not Sundays 0:56:06 - 0:56:35 , only 100 100%. So, go and find out what kind of accountant Jesus would be. What kind of school dude. And the one other thing I was supposed to say, which I forgot was here's, here's how, here's a very, very practical example. I'm going to tell you how Jesus would grade exams, which that probably sounds 0:56:35 - 0:56:56 as ridiculous as it gets. OK? But this is legit, I'm telling you. OK? And there might be a better way, there might be a more close approximation to explaining how Jesus would grade exams and I'm all ears if there is. But I'm telling you this is gonna be uh eternities ahead of where most teachers would 0:56:56 - 0:57:20 be. OK. I'm gonna lay it out for you and it's important because you have to understand this principle, this, the principle being, what would Jesus do in my place is not Sunday school stuff. It's practical. How would Jesus relieve the pressure on that tractor? Not the way I did it the other day. But now 0:57:19 - 0:57:47 I know and knowing is half the battle. So a me how would Jesus grade papers? I'm gonna tell you how I did in like 40 minutes. What would take my colleagues about 10 hours, not joking, maybe 40 hours. And this is the level of productivity. When God says I will prosper you in the land. It's no joke. To 0:57:47 - 0:58:12 quote our wonderful president. It's no joke. When he says he will prosper you in the land. This is a huge mystery. I don't want to get into it. All right now. But a big chunk of this is he will show you better ways of getting the same amount of impact in less time. That's not the bulk of what that promise 0:58:12 - 0:58:33 means or what it entails, but it's a serious chunk. Ok? And one of the blessings of prosperity is that in the Lord, we can find the real rules of cause and effect and we can gain the understanding through the quickening of the spirit in our minds. We can gain the understanding of how things actually 0:58:32 - 0:58:57 work in order to do them more effectively. And we can break free from the corruption in our desires in our heart so that we can actually focus on why something matters and not be doing it for actually like a shadow reasons, reasons in the dark that are more about wanting to feel good about ourselves 0:58:56 - 0:59:22 than actually doing good, particularly for others. Ok. I've just given you some really important things that you've probably never thought about and you may never have thought about if I hadn't said it. So, let's dig into a very practical example. Um, these are things that are laid out on hundreds and 0:59:22 - 0:59:49 hundreds of pages in these books and I'm just giving you a super condensed version to chew on for those with ears and eyes and brains. So, computer science exams, as I was a computer science professor for about eight years, computer science exams are notoriously terrible to take and they're even worse 0:59:48 - 1:00:09 to grade. They're really hard because, uh, what they tend to, to entail are, are programming questions where you have to write it out by hand. The problem with that is that they're always complicated. I mean, that's the whole point you want to test someone so you give them something hard and the, the 1:00:08 - 1:00:32 magnitude of possibilities of answers that people can give. It's insane. And then you need to know as the, as the greater you need to know your, uh, craft well enough to know exactly how the computer would evaluate that code. Even catching one character worth of a deviation from what it ought to be knowing 1:00:32 - 1:00:56 all possible ways of doing all possible things. It's insanely hard. Ok. It's a nightmare. And uh so one technique with this is instead of all that you just ask them to bring laptops to class and you give a live test and you can have people sitting in the back or walking around watching screens to make 1:00:56 - 1:01:15 sure people aren't using chat or something. So there is some level of trust because you can only police it so much. But um that's one level of doing it that just bypasses all the difficulty and then they either have the output or they don't. Right. Um And that's much more realistic because they can actually 1:01:14 - 1:01:40 write and run code and they don't have to be these automaton robots that are able to produce perfect syntax in one go. Um But um for a while, there was a lot of resistance to the idea of asking students to bring laptops even though almost all of them had them. Um and all of them should have had them 1:01:39 - 1:02:05 but uh whatever. So with paper tests, the question is, how do you gain productivity? How do you save 40 hours? Well, and this is several times a semester, by the way, it's, it's terrible. Um Well, uh sorry, another side note is in any credible university, a class like that will have an army of Tas and 1:02:05 - 1:02:21 the Tas have to do all this work. So you give them a key and they have to do the grading and then the, the professor only has to deal with people that want to complain about grades or I should say challenge, but I've already veal revealed my bias. They want to come in and challenge the grade. And so 1:02:21 - 1:02:39 you have to have those conversations and then if you find a problem with the way the T A was doing it, you have to call them in and, and fix that. But those are, those are credible universities, not, uh, questionable ones in a questionable universities. The either the resources aren't given or they're 1:02:38 - 1:03:01 squandered by, uh, a, a, um, a department chair that has serious issues and I'll leave it to your imagination to fill in the blanks on that. So, um, when you're doing a paper test and you don't have any tas, you're gonna burn 40 hours grading this thing. How can you do it more efficiently? Well, I'll 1:03:01 - 1:03:31 tell you, you, before you start, you ask, why are we doing this? What's the point? Ok. That's how you do it. Step one. The point in this is to see if they know what they're doing. Right? Ok. Do you need to parse through every single word of their answer to figure that out? Absolutely not. Ok. So here's 1:03:31 - 1:03:58 the technique that I used. I graded each question one at a time. So if we're on page three of the exam, everything, every single exam, my whole stack was on page three and the first step was to make three piles, the one pile was this is essentially correct. The other pile was, this is essentially incorrect 1:03:57 - 1:04:30 . The essentially corrects got full points. The essentially incorrect, got zero points. The middle pile was, I'm not sure. So just that step would always reduce the pile by at least 50%. Sometimes a lot more than that. So then you take that pile and you subdivide it into partial credit. And let's say 1:04:30 - 1:04:54 the question is worth 10 points. So you, you split it into two piles and one pile gets, um, like let's say 2.5 points or three points if we just, and then the other gets eight points or something like that and you split it between those and in some cases, you'll end up with a, a third pile. That's, I 1:04:54 - 1:05:19 really have to actually look at these closely. Now, what's interesting about this is that most students will not actually come and complain about their grades. There's, it's always a subset of the ones that actually question them. Most, most, most of those people will not come and question them to your 1:05:18 - 1:05:45 face. Um, they'll just leave you a nasty review passive aggressively. Um But objectively, the number of students that came to complain once I employed that system was less than half that came before. And so this tells you something about the effectiveness of this, of this grading is the students were 1:05:45 - 1:06:18 happier with it, right? But, um, in, in objective terms, if you compare what the point was of grading these exams. Um, it was at least as effective as the other way. There was no loss and potentially there was gain in the effectiveness of doing the job. It's very interesting. Right. I'll give you another 1:06:18 - 1:06:42 example. Um, it's extremely time consuming to make a key for, for an assignment, which is the right answer. Right. Um, and one of the challenges of that is there can be more than one right answer in a complex problem. And I went over a little bit of that. So to get around this teachers usually use the 1:06:42 - 1:07:03 same assignments semester after semester. The problem with that is that students will absolutely sell their assignments to future classes. It's cheating is an enormous problem. It's an enormous problem and it's, it's a terrible problem because the honest students are punished for not cheating and it 1:07:03 - 1:07:21 skews the averages and ignorant teachers don't realize how extensive this is and they don't want to face it because it would make them do more work and have more uncomfortable conversations and get more heat from their boss because they're failing people who are cheating. So it's interesting that that 1:07:21 - 1:07:44 student conduct codes are always nice on paper, but the administrations don't really want you to enforce them. It's just like when I was in the army, I was a company commander, we had phys physical fitness tests all the time and, um, we were given mandates of compliance of, of how many people had to 1:07:44 - 0:00:00 be, to, to, at or above the standard. But then if you actually enforce what the handbooks say you would get in trouble because they didn't want to lose people. Even if they were overweight and out of shape, they didn't want their numbers to go down because then they'd get in trouble for that anyway. 0:00:00 - 1:08:25 So it's all sort of a joke and very dishonest but sticking to the point here, um, to make a key, um, no one is gonna change the assignment every time and make the key because they're not gonna spend all that extra time. They'd rather just have people cheat and have their life be easier, not the cheaters 1:08:24 - 1:08:45 , the, the professors, the teachers. So instead of making a key, what I realized was reliably about 3% of the students would be absolutely brilliant and you could always pick out who they were very early on from class interactions. And so, um, and even if you didn't know who they were, you knew who they 1:08:45 - 1:09:08 were on the first exam because you could tell that they had all the right answers. So, what I did was I just took all the exams from the brilliant students and made them the key. And so I never made a key after I figured that out. And, um, so, and sometimes like you could, you could pick out like maybe 1:09:07 - 1:09:25 no one got this question right. And then it's your fault as a teacher and you don't grade it anyway and you give everyone the points for that one. So my point in going through all this detail on this was one you can see very quickly why I was something like 10 times more productive than all my peers 1:09:24 - 1:09:48 at everything I've ever done. You have to think about what you're actually doing and what the point is. So then the question becomes, why don't, why didn't everyone do it that way? Well, um, if you ask them what the point was of what we were doing, they'd probably come up with the same answers that I 1:09:47 - 1:10:09 did. I don't think that would be disputed. However, if you looked at the way they did their job and you asked them, why do you do it this way, rather than that way, if I had told them this is how I did things, they would immediately go ballistic, their minds would explode. They'd be very upset and angry 1:10:08 - 1:10:31 and they'd accuse me of things, why they being lazy or doing this or whatever, you're not doing your job, you get paid to do this job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Um, and the reason they would say things like that is not because I did a less effective job because objectively, my performance 1:10:30 - 1:10:55 in the ways we differed was better than theirs, not the same and certainly not worse. Ok. And they weren't complaining that it was bad somehow that I had more time than them as a result because I invested a great deal of that time making other things better, like, constantly improving the quality of 1:10:55 - 1:11:12 the class. Right. Because I had time to do it where they didn't, they didn't, they had to use the same stuff every year because they didn't have time to, to revise it for me. Every semester was like a new class. I'd keep the stuff that worked really well. But I'd always be improving the things that didn't 1:11:12 - 1:11:39 , um, the reason they would complain would be because they couldn't do it that way because it would violate the real reason they were doing what they were doing. It wasn't to teach the students. It was so that they could feel good about themselves. And I, I figured this out pretty early on and I wondered 1:11:39 - 1:11:56 why there were so many terrible computer science teachers because I'd watch people teach things a certain way, you know, being in all the classes myself coming up through the ranks. But then we'd sit in on other people's classes and things and I'd say why do they do it that way? That's like the hardest 1:11:55 - 1:12:12 possible way to get someone to understand this idea. Or I'd suggest things that we could change in the curriculum. Like the way math is taught in computer science is horrifically terrible. It's, it's, it's 100 times harder than it needs to be and people struggle with math and we do it. We weren't doing 1:12:12 - 1:12:31 any exit interviews. They said, can we start doing Exit interviews for people that leave the program or either by graduating or by quitting? And when we did prominently, like 85% of the time people left is because quote, the math was too hard. We're sending people over to the math department to learn 1:12:30 - 1:12:51 math because we need it in computer science and they're learning it from these. Uh I'm trying to be nice here. But if you know any math professors right there, the nicest way I can say this is there are people who are naturally proficient at math and who think that that's the cat's pajamas, right? Who 1:12:51 - 1:13:06 , seriously think that's the most interesting thing that anyone could ever do. And it naturally makes sense to them. They've never had to think about why, because they just memorize what other people tell them and it makes sense to them. They don't actually think about the sense part. They just do what 1:13:06 - 1:13:23 they're told and that's math, right? It's most modern math people, you don't have people coming up with these brilliant new theories because people who are good at math, they actually just good at memorizing math that other people have figured out. Well, computer science isn't like that. You can't just 1:13:23 - 1:13:39 regurgitate what you're told. You actually have to think about everything that you're doing because everything is new, right? Unless you're some Java programmer who's been doing the same thing for 20 years, every day is a new problem. And there are plenty of computer science jobs that are competitive 1:13:39 - 1:13:56 or uh repetitive. But the program, the teaching is not, it's new, you're barraged by new things all the time. You actually have to understand them. So lo and behold, we had people failing out of the math all the time. So, and then they'd leave the program. So I said, well, why don't we just integrate 1:13:56 - 1:14:17 what's needed in the context of computer science directly? We happen to have a very math oriented professor in our department who I thought was a tremendously great teacher. And he was all over the idea because he would love to teach math instead of computer science and, and merge them all together because 1:14:17 - 1:14:36 he was super good at both of them. And a I shouldn't say instead of computer science, but those aspects of computer science and there was tremendous resistance. And I figured out the reason why they gave all these excuses that had nothing to do with reality. And I knew they were lying and I figured out 1:14:36 - 1:14:57 the real reason was because they had all made it through that math and it was a badge of their worthiness. It was a badge of their worth. And they liked when people failed out of the program because it made them feel better about themselves. And these are people who had nothing else going on in their 1:14:57 - 1:15:28 lives of which they were proud. And so they needed this to be hard for the students and it was super hypocritical because um several of them were only good at it because they had put in the time to be good at it at the cost of everything else. And they couldn't pass their own exams if they were in their 1:15:27 - 1:15:51 class, at that level, if you get what I'm saying, and it was abundantly obvious and that's hypocrisy. It is very bad anyway, so that was a deep dive into strict applications. But what I'm, you know, applying to your situation, if you find yourself working 70 hours a week, pause, take some time, even 1:15:51 - 1:16:15 if it has to be on the toilet and get a legal pad and write down, why am I doing what I'm doing? So, so first ask, what am I doing? And that list will be easy to make and then next flip the page and say, why am I doing this? Go down the list of the whats and write the why now throw away the whats and 1:16:15 - 1:16:43 flip it around. Go down the wise and ask yourself prayerfully what's the best possible way to achieve this outcome? You'll probably get a different list than the whats you started with and then go with that. The challenges you are gonna face are your own traditions, your own self esteem. And that's why 1:16:42 - 1:17:07 I went into all those examples. You'll see your own self esteem the traditions uh and the criticisms of others. So don't tell them your whats, right? So if you're in a job where someone's over your shoulder all the time, th this is gonna be something you have to address with your supervisor and you can 1:17:07 - 1:17:31 ask them, what's your, what's your why? Like why are you paying me? And is that what you really want? Right? If you're the boss, this is a lot easier or if you have a job that's semi-autonomous where you are graded, so to speak on what you contribute, not how you get there. So, I mean, I'm not in sales 1:17:30 - 1:17:52 , but a salesperson could tell you they know what they get paid to do and sales people I think tend to be really good at this, figuring out what it's really all about and then doubling down on that. So I know a salesperson, let's see. Actually, I just did a quick count. I know a surprising number of 1:17:52 - 1:18:15 sales people and none of them punch the clock so to speak. They, they know what they need to do to get their commissions and they go and do that in the way. It makes most sense. I talked to a guy really awesome guy. I just loved this conversation and it, it was facilitated by someone from this channel 1:18:15 - 1:18:39 . So thank you. Um You know who you are, but I talked to this guy. Um We'll call him slim, although that's not his name. So slim is in his sixties and he's had this illustrious career in business. And um iii, I said that I do this, I do this. I went into this conversation as a mentor call and I had all 1:18:39 - 1:19:02 these questions that I thought would be relevant and then the conversation went elsewhere and I was just soaking it all up. I took like six pages of notes in this call. And um one of the things that slim told me he said, here's how you become an effective salesman. Um You find out when prime time is 1:19:01 - 1:19:21 to make sales, which is, you know, depending on the customer and what field you're in and everything. And then you spend all your other time developing yourself into a better salesperson. That's like the simplest advice in the world. But how many, how many people actually do that? And so like if you're 1:19:20 - 1:19:43 not a salesperson, cool, what are you? And do you do that? So how often are you sharpening the saw to use uh Stephen Covey language? And have you ever thought about why you're actually doing what you're doing? So, OK, this video is long enough and I've dumped on you tons and tons of ideas. I hope something 1:19:43 - 1:19:48 here is helpful for somebody but uh take care. I gotta, I gotta roll