Create More Time

How the Eisenhower Matrix can save you hundreds of hours a year.

Andrew Yeung

Aug 16, 2023

👋 Friends,

My article today is on managing your time effectively, which is ironic as this is the “busiest” I’ve ever been. The floodgates have opened and I’ve been struggling to keep up with what seems like an endless stream of tasks over the past few weeks.

Time to take my own advice.

But I did go for a long, majestic run this past weekend in Central Park. NYC is incredible, and I remind myself of this fact whenever I’m in a state other than grateful, optimistic, and happy.

I’m truly thankful.

Enjoy today’s piece and I hope you find time this week to be present and still.

The most successful people I know aren’t constantly “busy”.

They’re in control of their time. Some even make it seem effortless.

How? Because they’ve mastered the art of prioritization and delegation.

I used to have a lot of trouble managing my time and and juggling multiple tasks - especially ones that involved a variety of disciplines (context switching is tough!). But over time, I’ve learned a few things that have helped me Create More Time.

Today - I’m still juggling a few things:

A full time Product Lead job at one of the world’s largest tech companies
Running a deal-flow program to help founders raise money
Producing 4-5 events a month for 15,000+ tech leaders
Writing this bi-weekly newsletter for 24,000+ readers
Advising venture-backed startups
And building something new…

If I used the same approach to time management from a year ago, I’d be working 48 hours a day. But thankfully I’ve learned a few concepts about prioritization and delegation that I now incorporate into my routine.

One concept was coined by Dwight Eisenhower, a US General and President, and an overall impressive guy.

Enter the Eisenhower Matrix

Born in Texas, Dwight Eisenhower was one of America’s greatest military commanders and the 34th President of the United States.

He was an accomplished dude who did a TON for someone during his time.

He did this by using a method of prioritization that he called the Eisenhower Matrix (of course).

The approach:

Immediately Do anything that is Important and Urgent
Schedule a time to do tasks that are Important but Not Urgent
Delegate tasks that are Urgent but Not Important
And Delete (Eliminate) tasks that are neither Urgent nor Important

An example of how I prioritize my tasks:
Do: event design and production, relationship management, business operations.
Schedule: writing, career planning, social media marketing.
Delegate: event coordination, sales outreach, logistics.
Delete: irrelevant parties and social events.

Divide everything you have to do into these 4 boxes - and take action on them, and you’ll save hundreds of hours a year in productivity.

Remember that your time and energy are your most precious resources.

Focus on tasks that uniquely suited to your skills, experiences, and life circumstances, and triage the others accordingly.

📌 Andrew’s Picks

Fascinating internet things I’ve come across:

Elon Musk’s Five-Step Process for Improvement — I had a chance to listen to SpaceX’s lead engineer and he talked about this process. Gold.
Amazon’s Correction of Error (COE) Mechanism — Amazon’s notorious for their “mechanisms” that aim to improve efficiency and speed. This is one of my favorites. Anytime you screw up - use this.
Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck — We tend to think of luck in a two-dimensional way. But you can “engineer” luck and create your own.

🖼️ Behind the Scenes

$100 if you guess what I’m doing here. No, I’m not chillin’ on the beach.

Last week - I missed my flagship rooftop tech mixer in Williamsburg with 1,000+ attendees because of a personal trip to Mexico.

I put a plan together and set up a team to run the event. Everything was good to go.

But during the day of the event, the elevator breaks. Hundreds of people were waiting in line (I’m sorry…).

For the event rookies out there - LESSON 1: Sh*t always goes wrong. Plan for the worst.

Luckily I had good coverage and was able to quickly coordinate with the team and staff to fix. It’s an incredible what a smartphone can do.

Though it was a positive outcome in the end, I don’t recommend it!

What did you think of this article?

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