If you answer 'no', you're more likely to have a marriage that ends in divorce, grow old alone, die early from a preventable cause, be in constant debt, and work at a job you don't like (stats at These 7 brutal truths about aging will help you get your shit together).
With that said, here are the questions that make all of the difference...
- Do you put aside time everyday for deliberate learning?
- Are you investing as much time with your family and friends as you want to?
- Are you exercising regularly?
- Are you consistently eating a healthy diet?
- Are you setting aside money for savings?
- Have you still not started that dream business, project, or experiment yet?
- Are you getting a good night's sleep every night?
Although each of these seven questions may seem completely unrelated, they're actually all connected at a fundamental level.
They're all activities which almost everyone would acknowledge as important yet procrastinate on anyway. When there are looming deadlines combined with overwhelm, these are the first things we delay. Only 4% of people who start a diet actually stay consistent with it. Only 20% of people exercise regularly. 80% of Americans say they live paycheck to paycheck.
I've always found this contradiction fascinating. We've collectively discovered the keys to a good life. Yet, we rarely act on them consistently. It's like deciphering an impossible code to get into a bank vault, but then not taking out the money.
In Economics, there is this idea of revealed preferences, which asserts that the best way to measure consumer preferences is not by what people say they want but by their actions. Based off of this idea, it's almost as if humans have a revealed preference to live a shorter, more lonely life, less impactful, and less successful life.
What's going on? Why the huge disparity?
To answer this question, we need to go to the root...
The Eisenhower Matrix Perfectly Captures The Real Issue
Dwight Eisenhower, America's 34th president, was known for his legendary productivity. At different points he was also the president of Columbia University, a renowned 5-star military general, and the first Supreme Commander of NATO.
Eisenhower's most lasting productivity legacy is the Eisenhower Matrix...
The Eisenhower Matrix divides activities into four boxes based off of how important and urgent they are. And more importantly, it suggests what you should do for each box...
- If important and urgent, do now.
- If important and not urgent, schedule for later.
- If not important and urgent, delegate.
- If not important and not urgent, delete.
Here's where the real issue begins...
The Quadrant 2 Dilemma
"What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important." — Dwight Eisenhower
We humans are terrible at quadrant 2—activities that are important, but not urgent. Activities like exercise, diet, sleep, savings, family and friends, learning, and dream projects.
In the Eisenhower Matrix, Decide technically stands for Schedule Later, but in reality it means Pretend That You Will Do It Later. In our heart of hearts, when we say we'll do it later, we fully intend to. But the problem is that when tomorrow comes, and it still isn't urgent and we're still overwhelmed, then we schedule it for later again. It's a never-ending loop...
To be able to solve the Quadrant 2 Dilemma, we need to understand more about how the brain is wired...
Research Shows Why We Humans Are Terrible At Quadrant 2 Activities
Researchers now know that scarcity is like crack for the mind. Scarcity whether it be time pressure (ie - deadline) or monetary pressures intensely focus our attention. The leading researcher on this topic, Sendhil Mullainathan, calls this tunneling. When we tunnel, we tend to let go of all of the other plates we're juggling and focus on completing the urgent task at hand. In his book, Scarcity, Mullainathan explains the effect scarcity has on the human brain at a deeper level...
The time pressure focuses the mind, forcing us to condense previous efforts into immediate output. Imagine working on a presentation that you need to deliver at a meeting. In the days leading up to the meeting, you work hard but you vacillate. The ideas may be there, but tough choices need to be made on how to pull it all together. Once the deadline closes in, though, there is no more time for dawdling. — Scarcity forces all the choices.
We think about scarcity as a wholly bad thing, but Mullainathan reminds us that tunneling can have huge benefits...
Scarcity can make us more effective. We all have had experiences where we did remarkable things when we had less, when we felt constrained.
I still remember pulling several all-nighters in college. I remember one specific episode in particular. It was in the middle of night, and I had only begun writing a seven-page paper that evening. As I walked to the corner store for a red bull at 2am, I shamefully asked myself, "Why didn't I just write this paper two weeks ago? I could've easily pulled out an hour per day and had no stress." Ultimately, I always finished the paper, even if it seemed impossible at first. But, not without cost—I essentially borrowed from the future. My mood and energy would be thrown off for at least a day. I had to miss other classes to catch up on sleep.
And so the same borrowing from the future patterns continues for us throughout our life unless we intervene with a new operating system...
We Must Change Our Operating System In Order To Succeed At Quadrant 2 Activities
Now that we understand the root cause of why we procrastinate on Quadrant 2 activities, the question becomes, how do we stop?
Over the years, I've perfected a simple 5-step process...
1) Replace the "do tomorrow" illusion with "do today" reality
- Illusion: I will be less busy tomorrow. Therefore, I'll do it tomorrow.
- Reality: If I don't do it today, I never will.
2) Never negotiate with the "do tomorrow" illusion
Even if we know we're seeing an illusion, it still feels real. What I've noticed is that I almost always lose if I try to reason with the illusion. My mind will too easily come up with a convincing, logical reason why it is ok to procrastinate.
3) Have faith that the urgent things will still get done when you constrain their time allotment
In the moment, the idea of finding time for a Quadrant 2 activity may feel impossible. We're already overbooked. There is no way we can remove even more time without falling apart.
But, this is where the magic happens. Somehow when an immovable boulder is added to our schedule (ie - exercising), everything else still has a way of getting done. Just like when a boulder is added to a stream, the water finds a way to flow around it. This concept is also known as Parkinson's Law, which states that work expands or contracts so as to fill the time available for its completion.
4) Understand the incredible power of compounding so you can more easily delay instant gratification
When we make time for Quadrant 2 activities, we are using time to our advantage. Rather than borrowing from the future, we are investing in it. As time goes by, the 'interest' from our previous investments puts more and more wind behind our backs. All of the exercise we do, ensures that we have vibrant energy as we age. Saving money ensures we have a nest egg. Investing in friendships means that we have deep relationships that last decades through ups and downs. For more on the power of delayed gratification, I recommend reading Your Desire For Immediate Gratification Is Destroying Your Success & Happiness According To Science.
5) Make the habit bulletproof so it always survives resistance and disruptions
When starting a new habit, especially one that doesn't have builtin urgency, scheduling it typically isn't enough. Below are some of the methods that have worked over and over for me...
Each of these frameworks incrementally improve the odds that a habit will be consistent. Together, they make a new habit bulletproof.
Summary
We are not born understanding time. Rather, it is socially-learned construct.
Yet, all too often we feel behind and overwhelmed. It doesn't have be this way.
To let go of this behind-ness and overwhelm, we need to realize that because time is a construct, we can change it. In other words, time is more like silly putty than like a rock. Life is like a lucid dream.
Taking these five steps will take you from a victim of time to a creator of it...
- Replace the "do tomorrow" illusion with "do today" reality
- Never negotiate with the "do tomorrow" illusion
- Have faith that the urgent things will still get done when you constrain their time allotment
- Understand the incredible power of compounding so you can more easily delay instant gratification
- Make the habit bulletproof so it always survives resistance and disruptions