A couple of weeks ago in one of my Growability® Collaboratives we were reviewing the Eisenhower Matrix. You may be familiar. If not, you should be familiar.

Everything we do falls somewhere along the the spectrum of two lines: Urgent and Important. The idea is that we should spend most of our time and headspace with tasks that are both important but not urgent.

We should minimize our time and headspace in all three other quadrants.

We all have seasons where the urgent/important items are a thing, but you will burnout if you stay here. It's completely unsustainable.

Spend as little time as possible in non-important/not urgent things (does a high score in whatever game that's on everyone's phone right now mean that much to you?)

But we need to be very careful with the urgent/not important quadrant.

This is one is a thief. Most of the leaders I know are pretty good at determining what is important for them. But — many leaders I know have a hard time saying "no" to the things that are important to other people.

Don't let other people's "important" become your "important".

This is the quickest way to move from mere distraction and annoyance to long-term burnout.

As I look back on the times in my career when I was on the verge of burnout, it was often because my plate was filled with the things that were urgent and important for other people, rather than the things that were important for me.

When those plates came crashing down, they came down hard.
Figure out what is essentially important for you.
Say no to other people's urgent/important.
Let people figure out problems for themselves.