Time Stewardship vs. Time Management: Why Shunta Grant Throws One of Those Terms in the Trash

Shunta Grant will tell you straight up that time management is the wrong term, and one of the first things she does with a new client is throw it out. She is a former business litigator turned corporate time management coach and the founder of Best Today, and in this episode she reframes the entire conversation around time stewardship, intentionality over productivity, and why you are both the problem and the solution.

Shunta walks through a career path she calls organic rather than linear. She clerked for a judge for two years, moved to private practice as a business litigator, and started making hair bows for her daughter on the side. Those bows ended up in stores, and in 2015 she left law to run "Because of Zoe" full time. People started asking how she replaced her income, which turned into business coaching, and business coaching turned into something else entirely once she noticed she cared more about people's lives than their revenue. She launched Best Today in March 2020, the same week her daughter came home from school for what everyone thought would be a few days. Home became everything, people needed help with time, and the business grew from there into corporate coaching for law firms, hospitals, and universities, almost entirely by word of mouth.

She also talks about the self-discovery underneath all of that, including the habit she had of opening every introduction with "I used to be a lawyer." She caught herself doing it and asked why she was introducing herself in the present by referencing a past she willingly left. She dropped the phrase and had to confront the belief that you only get one or two gifts, that you are either logical or creative but never both.

The heart of the conversation is the distinction between time management and time stewardship. Shunta's argument is that time management makes time the villain, some wild beast you have to lasso and bring under control. But time does its job every single day. Sixty seconds still make a minute. Making time the problem is a convenient way to avoid ownership, and she would rather you be the problem, because that means you are also the solution. Every morning you wake up with hours you did not purchase, which makes you responsible for what you do with them. She gives the same treatment to the word productivity and swaps it for intentionality, since productivity lets you run yourself ragged and still check the box, while intentionality means doing only what actually matters.

Roslyn and Shunta get into how intention gets lost in the first place. Shunta's answer is that it starts with the loss of self. She teaches what she calls top to bottom planning, where your days are the last thing you plan, not the first. Above your days sit your values and identity, and above your days also sits your season. She names her own three values as freedom, faith, and joy, and says if something costs her any of those, the answer is no. She also names her identity as a disciple first, before wife, mother, Black, or woman. Without that clarity, there is no filter, and you end up chasing whatever the world says is important that week.

The season piece is where a lot of listeners will find themselves. Your season sets your capacity and your boundaries, and Shunta says most people are operating outside theirs because they are watching people who are not in their season and do not share their values. Her diagnostic is simple. If you are constantly comparing, constantly frustrated, or constantly saying you do not have time to do something, you are probably operating outside your season. She works clients through a framework called Name Your Season, built around four questions: what are the responsibilities, what is actually required, what are the opportunities, and what boundaries does this season need.

They also talk about the invisible part of building anything. Shunta points out that the shortest part of an Olympic win is the part you watched, and that David was in the back tending sheep where nobody was looking, which is exactly what prepared him for what everyone eventually saw. Roslyn connects that to praying in the closet and to capacity, that the throne requires a level of groundedness and emotional maturity most people have not built yet.

Then there is the Mary and Martha conversation, which Shunta says she brings up constantly enough that her friends tease her about it. Her read on Luke 10 is that the serving was never the problem, the order was. Mary chose to worship before the work, and the worship informs the work. Shunta applies that directly to how you start your day. If you are anxious, troubled, pointing at what other people should be doing, or in somebody else's business, those are signals that the order is off. Roslyn shares that this happened to her the morning of the recording, when she stopped, pulled out her prayer book, prayed for about forty-five minutes, and executed the rest of the day with noticeably more calm.

On the practical side, Shunta gives her three planning non-negotiables. Preview your week in writing before Sunday ends, including what is most important and when you are going to stop. Plan every day in writing, limited to what is actually necessary. And let everything else live somewhere other than your head or your list, which for her is an "everything spreadsheet." She has no use for to-do lists and compares them to junk drawers, where the important and the unimportant get mixed together until things get lost. She also makes the case for not making real-time decisions, because deciding in the moment all day long can quietly cost you two hours.

The conversation closes on why people resist hearing that they are doing too much. Shunta starts by asking what agreement you came in with, meaning who taught you that being important requires always going, always being on every board. Then she comes at it from self-love, because dragging yourself down to the bone is not actually loving, and she asks the uncomfortable question of whether some of the over-giving is really about being perceived as self-sacrificial. She uses the image of one cup trying to fill seventeen glasses, where seventeen people leave thirsty and you leave empty. Roslyn adds the clinical version from her own practice, where clients with high responsibility do not believe they are doing too much until they realize they give themselves no time at all.

If you have ever been told to just manage your time better and it did not touch the actual problem, this conversation gives you a different starting place.

SCRIPTURE REFERENCED

• 1 Corinthians 4:2, quoted in the episode as a steward must be found faithful, and used as the foundation for the time stewardship framing.
• Luke 10:38-42, the account of Mary and Martha, read in the episode from the New King James Version. Jesus tells Martha she is worried and troubled about many things, that one thing is needed, and that Mary has chosen the good part that will not be taken from her. Shunta uses this as her central illustration of priority and order.
• Matthew 6:6, referenced by Roslyn as praying in your closet, with what is done privately being rewarded openly.
• Matthew 6:27, referenced by Shunta with the question about worry adding a cubit to your stature.
• Matthew 6:34, referenced as tomorrow having its own worries, and tied to Shunta's trademark phrase one today at a time.
• Philippians 4:6-7, referenced as being anxious for nothing, making your requests known through prayer and supplication, and receiving peace.
• Philippians 4:8, referenced as thinking on what is true, pure, lovely, and of good report, framed in the episode as a choice you make about where your thoughts go.
• John 16:33, referenced as the promise that in this world you will have trouble, used to make the point that the goal is not avoiding trouble but becoming more resilient inside it.

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Shunta Grant's website: shuntagrant.com
• Instagram: @shuntagrant
• Best Today, the planning and time management stewardship company Shunta founded, launched March 2020
• One Day at a Time for women, including a monthly workshop, a first Thursday of the month focus session, and quarterly planning
• Where to Start, Shunta's program and her recommended entry point
• Right Now Routine, an online resource Shunta created for building routines
• Worth Reading Wednesday, Shunta's weekly email
• Name Your Season, her framework for identifying responsibilities, requirements, opportunities, and boundaries in your current season
• Values Vault, her tool for getting clear on your values and identity
• Corporate and team coaching, available through her website
• Shunta has been featured in Forbes and Essence

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