Just One Simple Thing

This is it! The last episode of theJanuary Reset series... a month spent cleaning up our ministry and biz clutter to make room for the new opportunities God has for us in 2023. Are you ready to talk about financial stewardship? Let’s dive in to Episode 96 of Just One Simple Thing.
I know it is really not nice of me to ask you to look at your finances right after the new year. But maybe this is the be best time. Maybe after navigating the spending frenzy of the holidays, you are more sensitive to the need to be good stewards of our financial resources.
It's so easy to generate a load of online financial clutter. $5 per month here, $29 per year there, before we know it, we've burdened ourselves and our ministry with monthly and annual obligations that restrain our ability to freely respond to needs that arise.
Let's use this lens to examine two areas where we tend to accumulate financial clutter.
Review your monthly charges
As you look at each thing you are paying for, ask yourself if there are ways you can maximize a free tool to do the same thing... or almost the same thing that is good enough.
Also, see if you can combine some things into one resource with one fee.
Review Your Affiliate Programs

If earning an income through your writing or growing your business is one of your goals, sharing helpful resources with your audience is one way to serve them.
Faithful stewardship of these resources means that we are honest and transparent about the commissions we earn. It means we share only things that we truly believe in and can authentically convey how they help us and our audience. It also means we are choosy about whose products we promote. We should have high standards of service and values for those we lock arms with, not just promoting the brand that pays the highest commission.
So make a list of all the affiliate programs you are a member of and examine each one. Do they hold up to high standards you can stand behind?
ACTION STEP
Head over to my free Facebook group Plan & Pray with Do A New Thing and grab your January Reset tracker. You can check off the actions you took all month and look back at what a difference it made. Snap a picture and share it on social media so we can celebrate the progress you are making!
RESOURCES
Do A New Thing Preferred Partners

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If you’re frustrated because your business or ministry has you so overwhelmed, you may need an upgrade to your systems. Shannon Baker is just the person to help you. She assessed my business and found the gaps in my systems, suggested tools and tech to fix them, and created a prioritized plan of action. Visit Shannon here to schedule time and get a plan to improve your operations.

Are you tired of struggling to establish good habits? In this last episode in the Habits series, you’ll learn practical steps and biblical principles to help you change your mindset, pick the most essential habit to change, and make a plan for consistently practicing your new habit for success. Let’s dive in.
Welcome back to Just One Simple Thing! We are at the end of our series about habits. In the last episode, we talked about three ways that you can break bad habits.
Once you’ve broken that bad habit, you need to put some good habits in place that will help you do the thing you want to do. So let’s look again at some Biblical principles paired with practical steps to create good habits.
1. Fix your mindset
You might be tempted to think of changing your habits as suffering or sacrifice. The new habit you are trying to create often doesn’t seem nearly as fun as the bad habits you are replacing.
In Hebrews 5:8, where it says Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered, the Greek word for “learned” is also translated as “being in the habit of”. Jesus was in the habit of being obedient, and we can also be obedient to what God wants to do in our lives by creating good habits, instead of whining about what we are giving up.
2. Stick to the essentials and make it easy
One of the biggest mistakes we make when creating new habits is trying to make too many changes at once. That complete disruption of our life’s routines overwhelms us.
3. Repeat, repeat, repeat
Make a plan for how you will consistently practice your new habit.
Every time you repeat your new habit, you are building your habit muscles. You see the results and gain confidence in your ability to do the right thing, so it makes it easier to do it again the next time.
To sum it up ... three ways to create good habits are:

• Change your mindset so you are focusing on obedience rather than sacrifice
• Pick the one most essential thing to change and make it easy to do
• Make a plan to consistently practice your new habit.

ACTION STEP
Make a plan for how you will implement these tips to create a new habit. If you didn’t get it after my last episode, head over to my free Facebook group Plan & Pray with Do A New Thing and grab my Habit Planner. Snap a picture of your planner and share it on social media for a little more accountability.
RESOURCES
Create Holiday Wellness Plans –Jill Hoven –The concepts in this series can be used for any type of habit in any season of the year

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If you’re frustrated because your business or ministry has you so overwhelmed, you may need an upgrade to your systems. Shannon Baker is just the person to help you. She assessed my business and found the gaps in my systems, suggested tools and tech to fix them, and created a prioritized plan of action. Visit Shannon here to schedule time and get a plan to improve your operations.

It’s the second part of our January Reset ... time we have set aside to clear out some of our ministry and business clutter and make way for the amazing opportunities God has in store for us this year. In Episode 94 of Just One Simple Thing, let’s talk about some simple principles for organizing digital files.
In Episode 93, we started our January Reset with our email inbox. Did you make any progress?
In this episode, we'll tackle our digital files.
Keep files that are:

• Related to your purpose, niche or content
• Helpful to your friends
• Useful for your blogor podcast
• Contributing to your goals

Delete files that are:

• Outdated
• Available online
• Duplicate

Now that we have some guidelines on what to keep and what to get rid of, here are three things you can do to tame your digital files.
1. Develop an Electronic Storage Plan
Map out a plan of what you will store where. If you are going to store everything in the same place, I recommend that you use some kind of backup system.
Free cloud storage is available on several platforms, but it has limits.
If you are not ready to invest in file storage and want to maximize the use of free space available, save different types of documents in different places. For example, save all your photos to Dropbox, your book manuscript on Google Drive, etc.
2. Clear Out your Downloads folder
Don't let your Downloads folder become like the pile of miscellaneous papers on the corner of your desk. Now that you have an intentional storage plan, spend some time deleting what you don't need from your Downloads folder and filing the rest.
3. Organize Your Most Unorganized Files
Or the ones that are causing you the most pain when you have to look for something. It's probably overwhelming to think about going through all of your folders and organizing everything. But organizing the one thing that is causing you the most pain is do-able. Keeping it that way is easier than getting it that way in the first place, and it will motivate you to organize other areas as well.
ACTION STEP
Head over to my free Facebook group Plan & Pray with Do A New Thing and grab your January Reset tracker. You’ll be able to check off the actions you take all month and look back at what a difference it made. Snap a picture and share it on social media so we can celebrate the progress you are making!
I hope you are starting to feel a little bit of relief from all the clutter and seeing a firm foundation for build on this year. If this series is helpful, I’d love for you to leave an honest review on your favorite podcast platform.
RESOURCES
The Mind Your Time Podcast - How to Organize Your Documents

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If you’re frustrated because your business or ministry has you so overwhelmed, you may need an upgrade to your systems. Shannon Baker is just the person to help you. She assessed my business and found the gaps in my systems, suggested tools and tech to fix them, and created a prioritized plan of action. Visit Shannon here to schedule time and get a plan to improve your operations.

Before we close our 2022 planners and open the crisp new ones, blank with possibilities for 2023, there are some things we can do to make way for all those possibilities. We need to unload some things and straighten up others. Let’s kick off the new year in Episode 93 with my best tips for managing email.
All this month, we'll work on getting organized ... just a little at a time. Think of it as a January Reset, opening yourself up and making room for all the new blessings God has for you in 2023. My one word for 2023 is "FOUNDATIONS," and I'm determined to shore up some of the foundations in my business. Wanna join me?
Each week in January, we'll focus on one area, and I'll give you two or three assignments to choose from. So let's dive right in to one of the biggest time sucks we face ... email.
Here are three tips for managing email and keeping things simple.
1. Review Your Subscriptions
We know how important email lists are. Most of us with an online presence work to build a relationship with our audience using an email list. But honestly, if my email is just going to sit unopened in your inbox, that's not much of a relationship. So unsubscribe from my list or any other list that is not delivering something you love to your inbox.
2. Clear Your Inbox
Once you've got the subscriptions under control, now it's time to clear that inbox. Michael Hyatt has a great method for clearing out the inbox.

• Do –Take action on the task right now.
• Delegate –Pass the task on to someone else
• Defer –Consciously decide you will do it later
• Delete –If you don’t need it for later, send it to the trash
• File –If you need it for later, file it

A piece of advice from Mr. Hyatt :
Do not create an elaborate set of file folders. This is the single most important piece of advice I can give you. Just file everything in one folder called “Processed Mail” or use Gmail’s Archive function.
3. Remove Your Inactive Subscribers
If you have people who have been on your list for over six months and not opened any emails from you in that time, there are several reasons why you need to remove them:

1. You are or will be paying for them at some point.
2. Gmail and other email services screen incoming messages to put them in Spam or Promotions folders. If your email routinely has a low open rate, Google is more likely to put it in Spam or Promotions.
3. Subscribers who open your emails are (for the most part) the ones who really matter.

If you are ready to do this, identify your inactive subscribers, send them an email asking if they want to stay on your list (I bet very few of them will even open it!) then archive the ones who don't respond.

ACTION STEP
Head over to my free Facebook group Plan & Pray with Do A New Thing and grab your January Reset tracker. You’ll be able to check off the actions you take all month and look back at what a difference it made.
I’m excited about this reset. If you know someone else who needs clean up their foundations to make room for what God wants to build, share this episode with them so they can join us!

RESOURCES
Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt
Build A Better Year

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If you’re frustrated because your business or ministry has you so overwhelmed, you may need an upgrade to your systems. Shannon Baker is just the person to help you. She assessed my business and found the gaps in my systems, suggested tools and tech to fix them, and created a prioritized plan of action. Visit Shannon here to schedule time and get a plan to improve your operations.

What’s the hottest topic right now out in the online business space? If you said “ChatGPT” or another AI program, you are correct! It’s what everyone is talking about. We are kicking off our Time Saving Tools series with 4 ethical ways you can use ChatGPT to make the most of your time. Curious? Keep listening!
It’s not very often that something dominates the conversation the way ChatGPT has the last few months. Since it came out late last year, everywhere you turn, people are talking about the AI-powered chatbot that generates human-like responses to written inputs. Opinions are strong ... people either love the idea or hate it.
In this episode, I’m going to share four ways that I’m using ChatGPT.
1. ChatGPT can be used as a research tool
The program is conversational ... you ask it questions or make a request, just like you would ask a person, and it responds.
You do have to be careful about using ChatGPT for research, because it does not quote its sources unless you ask, and it will state things that are opinions with so much authority, that you think it is a fact, especially when you are dealing with cultural or political-type topics.
2. ChatGPT can modify the tone of your writing
It’s still your voice, but ChatGPT helps you change the tone to be more appropriate for your audience.
3.ChatGPT can help you repurpose your content
Input your podcast episode script or blog post, and ChatGPT can create social media posts or an email promotion from the content you've already written.
4. ChatGPT helps you get off the blank page
If the blank screen and blinking cursor are big barriers keeping you from making progress, ChatGPT can help you get started until your creative juices get flowing.
Let me close with a few tips for using ChatGPT.

• Remember that the chatbot is not really writing original content. It’s aggregating existing content from the internet, and what it comes up with can be a fairly generic composite of the available information.
• It works better when you make small, incremental requests.
• The more broad and general the question, the more broad and general the answer.

ACTION STEP
Go to chat.openai.com and give it a try! Let me know what you think and how it works for you.
This is just the beginning of our Time Saving Tools series. Over the next few episodes, I’ll share some of my favorite ways that Canva, Trello, and Gmail streamline things for me so I can spend more of my time on the work I really love. Be sure to subscribe or follow the podcast wherever you listen so you don’t miss a thing.
RESOURCES
These are some of the resources that helped me think through the pros and cons of ChatGPT:
AI Made Easy for Christian Business Owners –Free mini-class from Katie Hornor
ChatGPT Has A Bias Problem –Business Insider article
How to Use ChatGPT and Still Be A Good Person –New York Times article.

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If you’re frustrated because your business or ministry has you so overwhelmed, you may need an upgrade to your systems. Shannon Baker is just the person to help you. She assessed my business and found the gaps in my systems, suggested tools and tech to fix them, and created a prioritized plan of action. Visit Shannon here to schedule time and get a plan to improve your operations.