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The Eisenhower Principle
As a relatively young professional, there were just so many challenges you face. I mean, it’s not just that you’re going through your own professional walk — you’re trying to learn and grow in the job that you have — but it’s your life. It’s of course now, even with today, it’s kind of on steroids with social media. I mean, there’s so many pieces of information that are vying for your attention. And I found it was really tricky to try and figure out what’s the best way to prioritize that. And one of the best lessons I was given on this topic actually came from a TOPGUN instructor. I had just graduated from TOPGUN and I was talking with some of the more senior instructors about some of the techniques that they had found to be really positive and very impactful throughout their career.
And so one of the ones she shared with me was this concept that I kind of loosely refer to as the Eisenhower Principle. It’s how you prioritize these different elements in your life. And so if you think about it, it’s really a quad chart. You could imagine on the Y axis on the left, you’ve kind of really got two options. Something that’s either important or it’s unimportant, and it’s pretty basic. On your X axis, well, something can either be critical or it could be not critical. And so really at the end of the day, that’s how you can break down almost all these decisions about how you prioritize something, because it becomes very easy when you follow this Eisenhower Principle. If something is both important and time critical, well, guess what? You better do it pretty quick because obviously it has a limited amount of time in which it’s going to apply.
Conversely, you might find that there’s something that’s truly very important, but it’s not time critical. So that’s kind of your second zone and that’s something that you can of course address, but you have some time and some decision space to get to it. The third zone would be this concept of saying, well, look, it’s not important, but it is urgent. And of course, these are a lot of things that pop up in our daily life. So yes, you can address them, but that should be third on your list of priorities. And then the last thing that pops up, and the ones that are very easy just to completely get rid of, and those are those elements that are neither important and they’re also not urgent. So that’s kind of like your decision-making spam filter. That’s where the things go, that at the end of the day, really you can just almost completely dismiss. But if you walk through this rubric, if it’s something that becomes kind of how you automatically assess your decisions, it’s very helpful. Because again, on any given day, you know, each of us only has 24 hours in a day. There’s usually about 28 hours worth of stuff vying for your attention. And so walking through those steps will allow you to make better informed decisions about what you want to tackle and the timeframe in which you’d like to tackle it.
Quick Kills
There’s an extension of the Eisenhower Principle. There’s this concept that I just call quick kills. It’s those little things that pop up — they’re easy wins, and those are things you can get out of real quick. And so I love those. And what’s really positive about quick kills is a lot of times it actually falls under the rubric of helping someone else. Someone calls and they have a request for support, or they have a need for some kind of information. And so, you know, that’s your quick kill. It’s the ability to sit there and say, “Hey, yeah, I can give you 30 seconds of my time. Let me help you out.” And then I’m going back to my daily tasks. And so what you’ll find is that a lot of times, especially if those quick kills relate to other people, then you’re cultivating your network. You’re helping them. You’re building up that currency in the bank, in their eyes. That “Man, when I reach out to Guy for support, he’s always there for me. He’s willing to make the time he gives me 30 seconds. I get the answer I need, you know?” And so now once again, you’re doing that because in an altruistic sense, you want to help your network out. But you never know, six months, one year, three years down the road, you might need to call them and say, “I need something pretty quick. Can you help me out?” And you better believe they’re going to say yes, because for all those years, you’ve been making those quick kills available to help them as well.
Avoiding Burnout
One of the important aspects of learning how to prioritize is frankly, it’s like a self-preservation technique. It’s a way to ensure that you’re not burning yourself out because like we mentioned, there’s a multitude of tasks that are demanding your attention, but you’ve only got a certain amount of time in each day to accomplish them, it’s incredibly important that you carve out personal time. You have to find that reflection time.
Former Secretary of State, George Schultz, my old boss, former Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, you know, they all kind of said the same thing, which is some of the most important decisions they ever arrived at were the ones they made after forcing themselves to get reflection time. You know, it’s shutting off your electronic devices, it’s getting away from the day in and day out, and then giving yourself that space to really deeply think about what’s going on in your life. What’s going on in your career. What are those big decisions you’re facing, and to think deeply about them. And you’ll find that when you quiet the noise down and you start to really push it to the side, you’ll make better decisions. And then of course, after you’ve done that dedicated time, however long you think it’s important to do it, suddenly you step back in and it makes things easier to kind of catch back up and continue to sprint forward.