Download PDF Excerpt
Rights Information
Do What Matters Most Second Edition 2nd Edition
Lead a Life by Design, Not by Default
Rob Shallenberger (Author) | Steve Shallenberger (Author)
Publication date: 01/07/2025
This second edition of a time management bestseller is now updated with 30% new material, including a chapter on sustaining momentum as you develop healthy habits.
Real personal transformation requires both the right mindset and skillset. This book reveals how to adopt both while providing the actionable toolkit necessary for lasting change in your time-prioritizing development.
Drawing on the authors' forty years of leadership research, they offer three powerful habits that that will help people and teams do what matters most. These three high-performance habits are:
developing a written personal vision
identifying and setting annual roles and goals
and consistently doing pre-week planning
People who live these three habits can increase productivity by at least 30 to 50 percent, while reducing stress. For organizations, this means higher profits, happier employees, and increased innovation. For individuals, it means better physical and mental health, stronger relationships, and a greater sense of peace and balance.
By implementing this book's simple and easy-to-understand habits, supported by time management tools like a Personal Productivity Assessment, you will learn how to lead a life by design, not by default-you will feel the power that comes with a sense of control, direction, and purpose.
Find out more about our Bulk Buyer Program
- 10-49: 20% discount
- 50-99: 35% discount
- 100-999: 38% discount
- 1000-1999: 40% discount
- 2000+ Contact ( [email protected] )
This second edition of a time management bestseller is now updated with 30% new material, including a chapter on sustaining momentum as you develop healthy habits.
Real personal transformation requires both the right mindset and skillset. This book reveals how to adopt both while providing the actionable toolkit necessary for lasting change in your time-prioritizing development.
Drawing on the authors' forty years of leadership research, they offer three powerful habits that that will help people and teams do what matters most. These three high-performance habits are:
developing a written personal vision
identifying and setting annual roles and goals
and consistently doing pre-week planning
People who live these three habits can increase productivity by at least 30 to 50 percent, while reducing stress. For organizations, this means higher profits, happier employees, and increased innovation. For individuals, it means better physical and mental health, stronger relationships, and a greater sense of peace and balance.
By implementing this book's simple and easy-to-understand habits, supported by time management tools like a Personal Productivity Assessment, you will learn how to lead a life by design, not by default-you will feel the power that comes with a sense of control, direction, and purpose.
1 The Do What Matters Most Mindset and Skillset
As mentioned in the introduction, Rob was a fighter pilot for 11 years in the US Air Force. Years ago, Rob was flying an F-16 during a night training mission. He and his wingman were flying at 20,000 feet, and their two jets were about a mile apart. That evening seemed unusually dark, and the only visual frame of reference was the narrow field of view in Rob’s night vision goggles. Everything seemed routine until Rob called for a hook turn to the left—a simultaneous 180-degree turn with both jets going in the same direction. As he called for the turn, a simulated threat popped up in the radar display over his right knee, distracting him. Instead of focusing on the turn and watching his wingman, he shifted his attention to the radar displaying the threat. So much was going on in the jet that he misprioritized what mattered most. That mistake almost cost him his life.
What Rob didn’t realize was that when he started the 180-degree left-hand turn into his wingman (Rob was on the right side), his wingman mistakenly turned to the right. Without either of them realizing it, they crossed flight paths and missed each other by less than 50 feet, traveling at a combined speed of over 1,000 mph.
This hook turn was supposed to be a safe turn in the same direction in which they never got closer than a mile from each other. Yet so much was happening in the cockpit that Rob lost track of his priorities and nearly died. Unbeknownst to him, something similar was happening in his wingman’s jet. The wingman had a light on in the cockpit that distracted him from his priorities, and he quit watching Rob, the flight lead. In the debrief, while they watched the tapes, both of them breathed a huge sigh of relief when they realized how close they had come to hitting each other.
Task saturation is an aviation term referring to when a pilot has so many things going on in the cockpit that they can no longer process everything. When task saturation creeps in, the pilot starts to task shed (drop things from their crosscheck or cockpit scan) and can quickly lose track of their priorities and what matters most. For example, in the cockpit, there are six primary instruments that a pilot should always be aware of, such as altitude and airspeed. Unfortunately, many pilots have crashed because they were task saturated, they misprioritized, and they lost track of their primary instruments—as Rob did that night.
Interestingly, it was not until the debrief that both Rob and his wingman realized how precarious their situation had been. During the hook turn, Rob and his wingman should have first ensured their flight path was clear rather than worrying about what was on the radar. Because they were both task saturated, which they didn’t realize until the debrief, they misprioritized and focused on the wrong task at the wrong time.
Likewise, the busyness of life ebbs and flows. Although sometimes task saturation is extremely obvious, at other times, a person may not realize they are task saturated and may be lulled into a false sense of complacency. Task saturation is insidious, and the most dangerous form of it is when it is unrecognized—as it was with Rob and his wingman that night. Often, it’s only when people step back to look at the situation (like Rob did in the debrief) that they realize how task saturated their lives have become. The point of this book is to give you a chance to step back and see yourself through a new and clear lens.
Looking at your own life, can you relate to that feeling of task saturation? Surely at some point in your life, you have felt the stress of having so many things coming at you but only a limited amount of time to accomplish them. When that happens, you likely know what we are talking about when we say that stress increases, productivity decreases, and communication (especially effective communication) goes out the window.
A common adage in many organizations is to do more with less. This approach is a perfect recipe for task saturation and everything that comes with it, such as lower productivity, higher turnover, and a decline in morale. Other feelings associated with task saturation include being overwhelmed, upset, frustrated, and perhaps unsure of what you should be doing. When a person is task saturated, it is easy to lose track of what matters most. In other words, when a person has too many demands competing for their time, it is common for their priorities to slip through the cracks. While it certainly manifests itself at work, the bigger toll often shows up in people’s personal lives, which is why well-being and work–life balance have become such hot topics that have cost organizations huge amounts of money in lost time and productivity.
These kinds of prioritization and productivity challenges are becoming commonplace. It might be a stay-at-home team member who is burned out because they don’t have a personal vision. Or, maybe it’s a rising leader who has a solid mindset and habits but needs additional tools to prioritize their time and do what matters most.
Imagine a leader or team member who is task saturated like Rob was during the hook turn: How many of their “primary instruments” are likely to slip out of their crosscheck? This demanding environment is why the Do What Matters Most program and tools are so critical to helping people focus on their primary instruments or, in other words, what matters most.
Phrases you might hear others say (and maybe you have said them as well) as precursors to task saturation include “I really want to [fill in the blank], but I’m just too busy,” or “I know I should do [fill in the blank], but I just don’t have time.” Sometimes, we wear that busy badge as a badge of honor, as if busyness equals productivity.
Examining your own life and the people around you, does busyness equal productivity? Certainly not if we’re busy with the wrong things.
The truth is that when a person isn’t focused on their priorities and what matters most, it can negatively impact their productivity, personal well-being, health, relationships, and even finances. In fact, being busy on the wrong tasks can do far more harm than good—we will explain more in Chapter 3.
There is a direct correlation between performance and productivity and someone’s level of task saturation. When task saturation rises, performance almost always decreases. The most successful people know how to do what matters most and use their time on high-influence activities—those that produce the highest return for the time invested. That seems obvious, so why are time and productivity such enormous challenges for so many people? As mentioned in the introduction, we set out to answer that question, and that’s how this program came about.
We have had the opportunity to see behind the curtains of hundreds of global organizations. A common denominator in almost every organization is that most people are busier than ever. Many feel like they are running from fire to fire or endlessly chasing the next shiny object, unable to catch it. Leaders have an enormous opportunity to help their people focus on what matters most and use their time on high-influence activities that contribute to the growth and well-being of the organization while also taking care of themselves and maintaining a high work–life balance. As a member of the executive team of Clif Bar said, “It wasn’t until going through the Do What Matters Most program that I realized how connected my different roles were. I’d spent almost all my time in my professional role, which was taking a huge toll on other areas of my life. What was so unique about this approach is how it’s packaged into a simple program. Once I learned how to use these tools, I realized there was a lot better way to lead my life and schedule my priorities.”
At this point, one of the most common questions we get is, “Where should I start?” As we noted in the introduction, we believe the answer is that real transformation requires both a mindset and a skillset. In other words, if a person or team wants to see a significant improvement, they must start with the right mindset and follow it by applying the skillset.
The Do What Matters Most Mindset
Developing the do what matters most mindset is a journey, not a destination, and requires you to look internally.
It starts by asking yourself whether you have a growth or fixed mind-set. Someone with a growth mindset is humble, willing to look at something differently, and hungry to learn. This mindset is characterized by thoughts such as, What can I learn from this? and What’s out there I’m not aware of that could help me improve? In contrast, someone with a fixed mindset might think, I’m fine the way I am and not be open to seeing something from a new perspective. The fact that you’re reading this book is a great indicator that you have a growth mindset.
The do what matters most mindset is described in one of our favorite quotes, attributed to St. Jerome:
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ’Til your good is better, and your better is best.
It doesn’t matter where you are today or what your starting point is. For a lot of people, life may already be good in many ways. For example, you may be considered a “good” manager, team member, partner, parent, or friend. However, the do what matters most mindset means honestly asking yourself, What can I do to be a better, more productive leader or team member? On the personal side, it might be asking, What can I do to be a better parent, spouse, friend, son/daughter, or brother/sister? Or, most importantly, maybe it’s asking, What can I do to take better care of my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health? No matter your starting point, St. Jerome’s quote invites you to consider taking one more step forward today to become a better version of yourself. In our experience, it’s also safe to assume nearly everyone is going through a challenge most others aren’t even aware of. So, whether life is good right now or you’re going through a challenging time, if you continue reading with this growth mindset, you’ll experience the life-changing impact of the skillset.
This growth mindset we’re describing is also a shift away from reactionary living to proactive or intentional living. It is a willingness to make the time to schedule your priorities rather than letting your schedule dictate your every action. The do what matters most mindset shows the discipline to make the new skillset a part of your weekly habits. We like to define discipline as doing the right thing at the right time, regardless of how we feel about it. At the same time, remember that it’s important to give yourself grace rather than expect perfection, so that even if you miss a week of pre-week planning you’ll still stay on this growth journey.
A great example to illustrate the mindset we’re discussing came from a 92-year-old business owner in Kenya. During our workshop, he told the entire group, “My best is still ahead! I can’t wait to finish my vision and goals and start doing pre-week planning!” Imagine the tone and culture this leader was setting throughout his organization. He clearly showed that he valued learning and growth, even though, statistically speaking, he may not have a lot of time left. He certainly communicated that he wasn’t complacent or comfortable with where he was—even at 92 years old! This type of mindset is what leadership looks like, whether in your professional or personal life.
The Enemies of the Do What Matters Most Mindset
To develop and maintain a growth mindset, you need to be aware of several common enemies that might hinder you.
A mindset battle we have all faced to one degree or another is complacency. In the fighter pilot world, complacency is known as the silent killer, and it should be just as much of a concern for any individual or team as it is for a pilot. There is a long list of organizations that got too comfortable where they were and didn’t pivot when they should have: Blockbuster, BlackBerry, and Kodak, to name just a few. Complacency is a close cousin to the fixed mindset. It can sometimes feel like being in cruise control. The complacent mindset is dangerous because it often closes the door to the idea that there might be a better way. For example, someone might say, I don’t need to worry about pre-week planning because my life is fine.
Another enemy of the do what matters most mindset is what we label the cynic or the skeptic. Cynicism is a very natural emotion, and it serves as a filter or defensive barrier. Here’s what we mean by a filter: What would your life be like if you believed everything you saw and heard every day? Chaos! The cynic or skeptic serves as a filter to wade through all the noise and block out what is not helpful. However, because the world is full of so much noise, many of us have let that natural emotion dominate our way of thinking. When skepticism becomes dominant, it can quickly become an enemy of the do what matters most mindset because you might brush something aside that otherwise could have changed your life.
We invite you to acknowledge that internal cynic or skeptic and then set it aside for just a few hours while you read this book and test the three habits. In other words, be open to testing the power of these habits in your life. In the spirit of good, better, best, see what impact these habits might have on your work and personal life.
The last enemy of the do what matters most mindset is procrastination. Procrastination—summed up by the words “I’ll just do it later”—is one of the great enemies of success. It is insidious and can creep into any person or culture. We have all experienced it to a degree.
Organizational theorist and author Robert Anthony wisely said of procrastination, “Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait—the truth is, there are only two things in life: reasons and results, and reasons don’t count!” In the book’s conclusion, we’ll share some tips and ideas on how to keep moving forward and eliminate procrastination.
It is critical that you remain vigilant about how complacency, cynicism, or procrastination could manifest in your personal life and within your team. The do what matters most mindset continually reminds you to keep your guard up to avoid these issues and enables you to maintain the growth mind-set consistently. The skillset of a personal vision, roles and goals, and pre-week planning works to combat these mindset enemies.
Henry Mintzberg, a business management professor and author, wrote a classical article titled “The Manager’s Job” in the August 1975 issue of the Harvard Business Review.1 He captured the exact mindset we are describing when he said, “The manager is challenged to gain control of his or her own time by turning obligations into advantages and by turning those things he or she wishes to do into obligations. Free time is made, not found. Hoping to leave some time open for contemplations or general planning is tantamount to hoping that the pressures of the job will go away.”
It is easy to blame a busy schedule or all the competing demands on our time for a lack of focus or productivity. However, adopting the do what matters most mindset shows a willingness to look at how things were done in the past and consider that there might be a better way. Once you are willing to see if there’s a better way, the skillset becomes invaluable!
Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone
Another way to think about the growth mindset and how it impacts your life is to consider the analogy of a rubber band. A rubber band is not designed to sit in a drawer. If it does, it loses its flexibility and becomes brittle. A rubber band is made to be stretched!
Likewise, as humans, we are meant to grow and be stretched. Sometimes, this takes us out of our comfort zone, but massive growth can happen when we step outside this zone.
We each choose to either lead a life by design or live a life by default. For example, our friend Dr. Mao Shing Ni is a 38th-generation healer and doctor of medicine (it’s hard even to imagine counting back that many generations), and his father is currently 107 years old. Certainly, genetics and other factors play a role in that type of longevity, but rarely does someone live to be 107 without being intentional about their life choices. Hence, Dr. Mao and his family have led a life by design and experienced the benefits as a result. This type of intentionality in our life choices is part of being stretched and getting outside our comfort zones.
This stretch starts with a willingness to test the habits discussed throughout the book. When you do, they will positively impact your health, relationships, and well-being—even if you don’t do them perfectly at first!
Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, said it well: “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset.”2
One of our certified trainers with the Florida Department of Transportation recently emphasized that this growth process is a journey and doesn’t happen overnight. Some people jump right into pre-week planning, and it’s an easy extension of what they’re already doing. For others, it may take months to develop the habit fully. In other words, this program is not a pass-or-fail proposition.
Another person who recently completed a refresher course said:
The first time going through the course, I didn’t finish my vision and goals, and I only did pre-week planning for a couple of weeks. So, even though I wasn’t applying the habits as I was taught, just the new thought process of looking at my life through the different roles was still life-changing. That alone was a great start.
After the refresher course, I really started doing pre-week planning consistently. Even though thinking about my life through the lens of the different roles was great, actually doing pre-week planning consistently has become a total game-changer. I want other people to realize that it might take them some time to develop these habits, and everyone is on a different journey.
The point is that the process of stretching yourself and developing these habits differs for everyone and doesn’t happen instantly for most people. Just thinking about your life through the lens of your various roles is a significant change for most people. That’s why having the tools to develop the big three habits and the right mindset is a powerful recipe for success!
To illustrate the organizational perspective, the following is an example of what happens when a team has the right mindset and is willing to stretch.
A successful energy company in California had been working on these habits for years. One day, their sales team went through a half day of internal training focused on Do What Matters Most. This team averaged about 17 sales per day before the training, which was “good.” At the end of the workshop, the trainer invited the team to set a new goal: averaging 34 sales per day. The new goal meant a big jump in sales and would require a different mindset and a new skillset to help the team schedule their priorities and shift their time to high-influence activities—what we call Q2 activities, which we will cover in Chapter 3.
You can probably guess the team’s initial responses to the new goal. They said things like, “We’ve only hit 34 sales once before,” and “I don’t know, that’s a huge jump.” You can see in their responses how real the skeptic was in each of them. These are natural and common first responses for most of us. Despite their initial doubt and skepticism, however, the team members were good sports and set 34 as their new sales goal to average throughout the coming month. The next day—after being armed with a new mindset and applying the new skillset—the sales team had a record day. Their sales manager was ecstatic when she proudly shared with the trainer, “You’ll never believe it. Today we just shattered our old record and hit 41 sales!”
A month later, this same manager wrote an email saying, “This has been so amazing. Can you guess what our sales average was this month? Thirty- four sales per day!” The team hit the exact goal they had set a month prior. This story repeats itself over and over when people and teams come with the right mindset and then apply the same skillset you will get in this book.
Do you think this sales team could ever go back to 17 sales a day and be satisfied? No. Once the mental bar (mindset) is reset, there is a new standard. This team shifted what their “normal” was, which yielded an additional $2.4 million in revenue for the company. More importantly, it meant more money in each sales rep’s pockets and significantly higher job satisfaction.
This same type of mental shift can happen to you, whether it’s in your professional results, health, relationships, finances, or general well-being. It’s difficult to return once the bar is moved, because you’ve redefined your “normal”!
The Do What Matters Most Skillset
Having the right mindset is a great start, but it doesn’t matter how good the mindset is without the right skillset. You wouldn’t ask someone to perform heart surgery if they don’t have the right skillset and training, regardless of how willing and motivated they might be.
The combination of the big three—a personal vision, roles and goals, and pre-week planning—makes up the skillset that will help you take control of your schedule and lead a life by design. When developing this skillset, you can step back and look at your life from the 30,000-foot view (vision) and then get specific, down to your weekly and daily actions (pre-week planning), where the rubber meets the road.
As mentioned in the preface, we researched thousands of people from more than 108 organizations, and 68 percent felt that prioritizing their time was their number one challenge. At the same time, 80 percent did not have a process for planning their weeks and doing what matters most. In addition, only 2 percent had a written personal vision, and less than 10 percent had both personal and professional written goals for the year.
Most organizations are thirsting for a program or approach that will help their people prioritize their time, do what matters most, and solve the task saturation problem. In fact, 84 percent of the people we researched felt that if they had a process to prioritize their time, it would have a big impact on their productivity.
Since 68 percent of people feel like prioritizing their time is their greatest challenge, and yet 80 percent don’t have a solution, this is an area where the skillset can make a big difference, especially in terms of productivity, health, and work–life balance. We are confident that the big three will close this gap. Recall that 96 percent of people who go through the Do What Matters Most course indicate that organizing their lives through the lens of roles— especially when using the accompanying tools—is a new approach they’d never before considered. Like them, with the approach and tools you learn about in this book, you’ll develop the big three habits and start on your own life-changing journey.
In his classic book The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino wisely said, “The only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus, the first law I will obey, which precedeth all others is—I will form good habits.”3
Vision, roles and goals, and pre-week planning are the skillset and habits that are strongly predictive of success. However, like anything, they take discipline and effort, which is the growth mindset part of the equation.
We like to use the term performance average to describe the current level of productivity across the different roles in our lives. Regardless of your starting point right now, when you implement these three high-performance habits (the skillset), they will have a tremendous impact on your mindset, and everything will seem to improve. Just like the change in the mindset of the sales team that went from averaging 17 sales to 34 sales, your performance average will increase in almost every area of your life. What this means for you is that you’ll see the change in your health, relationships, and how you feel when you wake up each day.
When your performance average increases, you transform your mindset about what you are capable of both as a person and as a leader. In other words, once you raise your performance average, the bar is reset, and it isn’t easy to go back. Applying the skillset raises the mindset, which is why the mindset and skillset are so closely tied together. Over weeks and months, they have a compounding effect. When you focus on one area, other areas also tend to improve. For example, when you increase your focus on your mental and physical health, sleep also tends to improve, which in turn improves your relationships. This focus on the skillset will be a compounding effect for good in your life.
What compounding results should you expect when you finish the book, apply the skillset, and increase your performance average?
- ☉ A purpose-driven life
- ☉ Improved productivity
- ☉ Significant improvement in workplace results
- ☉ Better health and work–life balance
- ☉ Higher-quality relationships
- ☉ Improved finances
- ☉ Peace of mind and a connection to your true, authentic self
- ☉ Reduced stress and greater peace
- ☉ Better leadership and team-player skills
Wrap Up
The fact that you are reading this book and going through this program already shows that you have a growth mindset. Your willingness to test the power of a personal vision, roles and goals, and pre-week planning will open doors of growth you may not have even known existed. Just like Amy in the introduction and the sales team that increased their average sales from 17 to 34, you’ll be amazed by what is possible for you, both personally and professionally.
As you start this process, remember that it’s a journey. Extend grace to yourself while at the same time focusing on the stretch. This type of thinking is the spirit of good, better, best, and the high-performer mindset. The combination of the high-performer mindset and this skillset will empower you to fend off task saturation, complacency, cynicism, and procrastination.
Before we discuss the Do What Matters Most program and the actual habits, we’ll share our research, why it matters to an organization, and—even more importantly—why it matters to you.
