good morning Hank it's Tuesday I'm a
little bit stressed at the moment and as
such I have been thinking about the
Eisenhower matrix like most people I
have a wide array of urgent problems I
have to get my kids to school I have
deadlines for editing crash course
scripts I need to respond to emails that
literally have urgent in the subject
line I have an urgent desire to eat
several times a day and those urgent
problems are so numerous and so
immediate that it is really hard for me
to find time to do things that are
important but not urgent even if they
are more important than any of my urgent
problems there are many examples of this
updating my will is important but
hopefully not urgent as is clearing
honeysuckle from my backyard but the
biggest important not urgent issue in my
life is writing a novel partly because
writing fiction is my number one
strategy for maximizing sanity and
partly because it's you know like my job
but even though writing a new book is
much more important to me than say
paying the cable bill or responding to
an email that proclaims itself to be
urgent I end up forsaking the important
in favor of the urgent until the
important but not urgent problems just
become these vast expanses of dread that
I only visit late at night when I can do
nothing about them I think this may also
be a broader human phenomenon we are
much better at addressing emergencies
like disease outbreaks or natural
disasters than we are at addressing
ongoing problems that don't feel like
emergencies the most obvious example I
can think of is probably climate change
which is maybe the biggest problem
facing humans and yet we constantly
deprioritize it in favor of whatever
news happens to be breaking and
therefore in need of our immediate
attention all of which brings me to the
eisenhower matrix sometimes called the
eisenhower square or box and named for
US general and eventual president dwight
d eisenhower so this is the box that you
put all of your problems you can
conceivably fix into on a scale of
important to not important and urgent to
not urgent things that are both urgent
and important you do now so if your
kitchen is on fire for instance that
needs to be addressed immediately or if
AFC wimbledon are playing that needs to
be watched live and with complete focus
the things that are urgent but not
important you are supposed to delegate
but of course that's very easy if you're
a general or a president and somewhat
more difficult if you're not most of us
cannot delegate laundry or paying bills
or sending emails but we can ignore
the foe urgent demands on our time like
push notifications and some urgent but
less important tasks can be automated
like paying bills online instead of
writing checks the not important and not
urgent things we're supposed to just not
do like for me that would be every
second spent on Twitter but that's just
me Twitter makes lots of people happy
and we need to leave room for happiness
a lot of conversations about
productivity don't make room for like
joy which is unfortunate because I would
argue life is not about becoming the
most efficient problem-solving value
creation machine you can become it's
also about fulfillment and enjoyment so
if there are unimportant on urgent
things you love they aren't actually
unimportant right so then lastly there
is the important but not urgent updating
your will writing your novel exercise
connecting with people you love etc the
Eisenhauer matrix argues that the key to
addressing those issues is scheduling
uninterrupted and uninterruptible time
for them put it on the calendar create
deadlines make that stuff urgent that's
how I wrote my first novel I gave myself
deadlines and scheduled time at night
and on the weekends to write it and it's
how I'm gonna write my next novel if
there is a next one my parents
introduced me to this strategy for the
urgent and the important when I was a
kid and I have found it very helpful
throughout my life even though on a
minute-by-minute basis it is very
difficult to implement but I'm gonna
keep trying I was talking to a friend
recently who's much busier than I am and
I said I know you've got to go you've
got a lot going on and they said no no
I've got nothing but time and I realized
how true that is Hank I'll see you on
Friday