How I Prioritize Like the President

Dwight Eisenhower was a busy guy. Yet, he created the committee slowing racial discrimination in 1964, constructed 41,000 miles of highways across America, and oh yeah ... ended the Korean War.

He was bombarded with daily distractions, from casualties of war to racial rioting, overloading his to-do list. Yet, he still managed to accomplish an astounding amount of work, attributed to one reason...

He created a system for prioritizing tasks.

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在不知不觉中，我们都是“当前偏见”的受害者。根据behavior economics research study at Wharton，现在的偏见是当我们被一个人分心时新的task, forgetting to complete ourold长期目标，因为新任务比较旧的任务更重要。由于缺乏优先级，这是我们目标失败的心理根源。

介绍Eisenhower的时间管理矩阵

像艾森豪威尔一样，我一直被新任务轰炸。如果我不优先考虑，我的待办事项清单每天可以长达50件事。That's where the Eisenhower matrix comes in.

艾森hower's Time Management Matrix visualizes tasks into four quadrants, separated by urgency and importance.紧迫性is obvious. It needs to be done right this second, having a fast-approaching deadline.

The key is understanding the difference between an "important" versus a "not important" task.

Important Tasks- Important tasks are things we specialize in that achieve long-term goals.

• For me, that's producing content to build a loyal, engaged readership.
• For my manager, that's hiring, training and strategizing to build a team that intelligently grows HubSpot Sales.
• For our front-end developer, that's coding to improve HubSpot Sales design and functionality.

The specific tasks depend on the role, but the point is, labeling "important" or "not important" forces me toconsciously thinkbefore blindly saying "yes" to everything. If it's urgent, I do immediately. If not urgent, I schedule on my calendar.

Not Important Tasks- 并不重要的任务是我们不专注于长期目标的中断。

• For me, that's wasting three hours attempting to customize HTML versus asking our front-end developer for help.
• For my manager, that's writing an email to promote a blog post versus training the new email marketing employee.
• 对于我们的前端开发人员，这是在社交媒体上发布的，而不是测试新产品功能。

Unimportant tasks are attempting another person's specialty instead of focusing on my own. Urgent or not, if I label a task "not important," I do one of three things.

1.Delegate任务。我不专注于前端开发。因此，我没有尝试（和失败）与HTML进行3个小时的时间，而HTML可以花在写作上，而是我向同事寻求帮助或发送给虚拟助手。

2.我问自己...我可以吗automate这个？例如，我可以从未来的待办事项列表中永久删除“发送电话会议拨号信息”scheduling an emailin advance. If our meeting is at 2pm on Wednesday, I'll schedule an email to send at 1:50pm Wednesday with all the info. However, I can write the email the week before.

3.衰退请求。放下手，这是最困难的方法，因为它需要对人说“不”。自然，我们倾向于帮助他人，但是如果您花费全部在您帮助其他所有人的时间里，您没有时间帮助自己。

The differentiator between success and failure is not 80-hour workweeks versus 40-hour workweeks, rather a laser focus on the core tasks that will make a difference.

根据某人的角色，重要和紧急的任务会有所不同，但以下是每个象限的一些常见示例。

Of course, all of this prioritizing is easier said than done. So we built acustomizable templatefor automating the entire process.

Early next week, we'll share this template, along with the prioritization secrets of a successful entrepreneur who sold two companies for millions of dollars. He explains his "never-ending to-do list", how's he's failed prioritizing it and how hefinallylearned to manage it.

所有电子邮件订阅者（下面订阅）将收到他的非常规的提示，包括下周初使用的可自定义模板。敬请关注。

Before then, I'm curious.

1.How do you define success?

2.如果您可以遇到任何“成功的人”，无论是过去还是现在，那会是谁？为什么？

I'd love to hear your opinion in the comments. :)