When you are feeling overwhelmed by so much to do, do you ever just wonder how the richest people on the planet manage it all? As of last month, Warren Buffett – through his primary company Berkshire Hathaway — owns more than 65 companies that are diversified across the technology, consumer cyclical, energy, financial services, and healthcare industries.  Of those, 47% of the portfolio is dedicated to financial services and 27% to technology companies, which are evolving at a rapid-fire pace.  Jeff Bezos is best known for founding eCommerce behemoth Amazon in 1994.  Today, Amazon has 40 subsidiaries in several industries, including health care, retail, robotics, real estate, and media.  But Bezos, personally, also has direct investment in 38 additional companies through his investment arm, Bezos Expeditions.  Meanwhile, Elon Musk cofounded and runs six companies including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX, tunneling startup Boring Company and social media platform Twitter.  These three individuals own a total of 149 companies and they have a combined net worth of nearly $500 Billion dollars. 

Technology has made it easier than ever before to learn about the systems, methods, processes, habits and tools that people use to become successful.  Once upon a time (meaning more than 25 years ago), one had to go to a library or bookstore to find books and magazines discussing what entrepreneurs like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates or Sir Richard Branson do to be more efficient and effective at work.  But blogs, podcasts, websites, and social media platforms have put that kind of information at the fingertips of anyone with a cell phone and WIFI.  In fact, information abounds.  The problem, now, is that there is too much information about managing time and tasks that compete for attention.  Finding out specifically what Buffet or Branson do to manage their time and tasks requires research and digging through the morass of posts and articles, which may or may not be true.   In a sense, it has become harder – not easier – to learn the approaches of the most successful people for managing time and tasks.  But rest assured that they have crafted and honed their own methods for maximizing their efficiency and boosting productivity.

Do you know anyone who is great about tracking tasks and working through To Do lists methodically and diligently… except when it comes to a major project or a complicated or delicate task?  Someone who cherry picks which tasks get done and leaves the ones they loathe for last?   When they get to the end of the workday and review the To Do list made earlier, there is one project at the bottom of the list that has been put off.  It’s late—and they still haven’t gotten to it.  They decide to tackle the item the next day, and the same thing happens again and again.  It is a source of frustration for the person and everyone else involved.  They don’t see themselves as procrastinators, and yet there are definitely certain tasks they routinely avoid or delay doing.   

Learning.  Working.  Exercising.  Connecting with others.  Worshiping.  Staying informed.  Eating.  Sleeping.  Grooming.  Shopping.  There has always been a lot to do.  But with the advent of computers, tasks mushroomed exponentially.  And with it, task management approaches have blossomed. 

Last week, we looked at how the Eisenhower Matrix a/k/a Urgent-Important Matrix helps with prioritization.  Named after President Eisenhower, who embraced this approach for distinguishing between important tasks, urgent tasks, and tasks that should either be delegated or deleted altogether.  In 1954, Eisenhower gave a speech in which he quoted an unnamed university president who said, “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”  For someone like a General or President, knowing the difference between Urgent and Important is key since every task is likely to be one or the other or both.  Using his approach, urgent tasks were those that were time-sensitive and demanded attention. These are tasks must be addressed but puts the person in a reactive mindset:  defensive, rushed, and narrowly-focused.  On the other hand, important tasks contribute to long-term mission, values, and goals. They may not yield immediate results (making them easy to neglect) but puts the person in a proactive mindset:  calm, rational, and open to new ideas.  The goal, then, was to try to identify important vs urgent tasks and focus on the former as much as possible.

Highly successful people generally are excellent managers of tasks and time. They guard their time zealously, govern their schedules methodically and prioritize tasks ruthlessly. Some people and organizations are so good at it that they come up with their own system or approach. 

When it comes to managing tasks and time, few organizations are better at it than the U.S. military. In fact, the U.S. Army’s slogan is “We do more before 09:00AM than most people do all day.” It is no surprise then that President Dwight Eisenhower, a former U.S. Army General, even developed his own Matrix for prioritizing tasks which became known as the Eisenhower Matrix or Urgent-Important Matrix.

People have been formulating ever-better systems and strategies to manage time and tasks for a long time.  In fact, the well-known Franklin Planner – created and sold by Richard I. Winwood in 1984 – was a planning system named after U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin, who kept a small private book to track his tasks, notes, ideas, appointments, and finances.  A core technique of Ben Franklin’s was to start each day with 15 minutes of “solitude and planning.”  He did this planning in a little book.  Similar to Ben Franklin’s book, the modern-day Franklin Planner was a paper-based time management binder.  Pages are drilled, loose-leaf style pages in different sizes, covers and formats, but all planners contain areas for appointment scheduling, prioritizing daily tasks, and taking notes on ideas.  A section in the back of the planner contains addresses, ledger sheets for tracking finances or vehicle mileage, exercise logs, and other individualized reference materials.

Employees are one of the biggest expenses for any company.  Deciding how many people to employ is always a moving target for most businesses.  Leaders struggle with who to hire, who to keep and, especially, who to let go.  Layoffs are especially difficult because they aren’t a reflection of the person’s skills, value, or attitude.  How to keep staffing at just the right level can seem a lot like Goldilocks’ search for the bowl, chair and bed that was just right for her.  Businesses look not only at their own books but also at news reports and key indicators for cues of when they need to expand or cut back on staff.  But given today’s news, even the most savvy business owners may not know what to think.  It seems like a tale of two very different economies.

A year ago, U.S. labor markets were crying about such a shortage of labor that it was pushing up wages.  Businesses could not find enough qualified people or hire fast enough.  Demand for products and services was going gangbusters thanks to a robust post-pandemic recovery.  There was more demand than supply.  Companies just couldn’t hire enough people to meet production demands.   In turn, that was spurring inflation.  In fact, the economy was so hot that the Federal Reserve hit the brakes and started raising interest rates to bring inflation under control. 

For the past two weeks, we’ve been looking at breaking habits that keep us from achieving goals.  Habits are nothing more than neural pathways forged in the brain.  Indeed, the human brain is composed of thousands of neurons that are connected by dendrites. During the process of forming a new habit, these dendrites increase in number and form new connections in the brain.  These connections are called neural pathways.

Think of neural pathways like a network of roads.  The first time a person does a task, a crude neural pathway is created… like chopping a rough path through a dense forest.  That is the learning process.  The more the task is repeated, the more an unpaved road begins to form.  With even more repetition, it turns into a habit.   When the habit is solidly formed, the neural pathway finally becomes a paved road.  The stronger the habit, the more it becomes a highway—strong and well-formed. 

Habits are powerful because they literally have an ‘unconscious’ mind of their own.  Habits are created in the basal ganglia part of the brain, the “primitive” low-level part that is also responsible for emotions and pattern recognition.  Habits are created by routines…. things we do every day, over and over, until we no longer need to think about what we are doing while we are doing it.  Habits get hard-wired into the brain and then deploy even without conscious thought.  Habits allow us to perform tiny, repeated tasks daily without having to mentally engage at all.