Ultraworking — Day 4: Your Most Important Work

What is your most important work? What is the thing that really drives results in your life? What is your biggest goal?

Chances are it sits here, in the upper right hand corner of the Eisenhower Matrix.

I would have made a prettier image, but this one from Wikimedia Commons was good enough, I guess.

The first problem is that things in the upper left, the “Urgent and Important” kitchen fire, beat out everything else. Franklin Covey discusses this at length in their work The Four Disciplines of Execution. Everything in life seems to conspire against you to prevent you from getting anything done on the important but not-urgent tasks.

Apparently it’s execution by whirlwind, which is a heck of a way to go!

Then there’s the second problem. Useless trivia, unimportant tasks . . . basically anything other than “eating the frog” — doing that one task that you’re dreading. Everything is suddenly way more attractive. Cleaning out the cabinets? Check! Mopping the bathroom floor? Check! Any of those side projects that you’ve been putting off until you found the right time? Now is the perfect time to fire them up. Bonus points for starting a new project!

The Ultraworking Pentathlon scores you on a number of things. One of those things is doing your Most Important Work. You get a hefty chunk of points for even ten minutes of your Most Important Work every day. It’s *that* difficult to be consistent. Thankfully, the Ultraworking Pentathlon puts it in your face every single day. And there are scores, so your teammates can get mad at you for bringing down the average score by being a flake.

Some days I’m not a flake. But it’s 2:30 PM and I still haven’t even done ten minutes of my Most Important Work.

Now that I’ve got all of this out of my system, it’s back to calling my credit card concierge to see if they can find me a sombrero in Seoul for a dinner at a Mexican restaurant . . .

The next urgent and important task.

. . . and then moving on to the next most urgent task, where people are waiting for me so they can get their work done.

(But hey, between 11:50 PM and midnight there’s always 10 minutes for your Most Important Work!)