Mark: Here’s a wild statistic: 80% of managers admit they have no process for planning their week. They're just winging it. That's four out of five leaders in a constant state of reaction. It's chaos by default. Michelle: That is terrifyingly relatable. And I don’t think that’s just managers, Mark. That’s… everyone, right? My Sunday nights are a masterclass in dreading Monday, not planning for it. It’s this vague sense of impending doom, knowing a tidal wave of tasks is coming, but having no idea how to surf it. Mark: Exactly. You’re just bracing for impact. And that feeling is precisely the problem tackled in the book we're diving into today: Do What Matters Most by Steve and Rob Shallenberger. Michelle: Shallenberger. Got it. Mark: And what's fascinating is who wrote it. It's a father-son duo. The father, Steve, is a 40-year leadership researcher who actually helped found the Stephen R. Covey Leadership Center. So he’s deep in the theory. But his son, Rob, is a former F-16 fighter pilot and worked as an advance agent for Air Force One. Michelle: Whoa, okay. So you’ve got the professor and the Top Gun pilot in one package. That’s an unusual combination for a productivity book. Mark: It’s the perfect blend of deep research and high-stakes, real-world execution. And that F-16 experience is actually the perfect place to start understanding the core problem they’re trying to solve. Michelle: A fighter pilot co-wrote a productivity book. That makes me think of high-stakes, life-or-death situations. Where does he even start with fixing that 80% chaos?

Mark: He starts with a concept from the military called "task saturation." Rob tells this harrowing story from his time as a pilot. He’s on a night training mission, flying in formation. It’s pitch black, he’s wearing night-vision goggles, and the world is just this narrow, green-tinted tunnel. Michelle: I’m already stressed. Mark: He calls for a routine turn. But as he’s turning, a simulated threat pops up on a small radar screen by his knee. It’s just a drill, but it’s designed to be a distraction. And it works. He diverts his attention for just a few seconds to the radar screen instead of his flight path and his wingman. Michelle: Oh no. Mark: At the exact same moment, his wingman gets distracted by a warning light in his own cockpit. So you have two pilots, flying at a combined speed of over 1,000 miles per hour, both momentarily forgetting their number one priority: don't hit the other multi-million dollar jet. They cross paths and miss each other by less than 100 feet. They didn't even realize how close they came to dying until they reviewed the data in the debriefing. Michelle: Wow. That gives me chills. And okay, I see the connection now. That's the extreme, life-or-death version of me trying to answer an "urgent" email while I'm on a critical Zoom call, and my phone is buzzing with Slack messages. The stakes are obviously lower, but the mental breakdown, the feeling of being overwhelmed and making stupid mistakes, is exactly the same. Mark: That’s task saturation. It’s when your brain has too many inputs and you lose the ability to prioritize. You start focusing on the thing that’s blinking the brightest, not the thing that’s most important. And the book’s first solution to this is something that, on the surface, sounds a little… soft. Michelle: Let me guess. It’s a vision board, isn’t it? Mark: Close. It’s a written personal vision. Michelle: Hold on. A 'personal vision'? Mark, that sounds so incredibly corporate and fluffy. It makes me think of a team-building retreat where they make you write a "personal mission statement" that you immediately shove in a drawer and forget forever. How does that possibly prevent a fighter jet crash, or, you know, my inbox apocalypse? Mark: That’s the exact cynicism the book pushes back against. And it’s why so few people do it—the authors found that only 2% of people actually have a written personal vision. They argue it’s not about writing a cheesy slogan. It’s about, and this is a key phrase, "creating the mental reality before the physical reality." Michelle: What does that even mean? Mark: Think about the Wright brothers. They had a crystal-clear vision: man can fly. They saw it in their minds long before they had the engineering figured out. That vision drove every single experiment, every failure, every late night in their bicycle shop. The vision came first; the reality followed. For the fighter pilot, a clear vision of "my primary job is to fly this plane safely" would have overridden the distraction of the blinking light. Michelle: Okay, so it’s less of a mission statement and more of a North Star. It’s the fundamental principle you look at to remember which way is up when all the alarms in the cockpit are blaring. It’s the filter for all the noise. Mark: Precisely. It’s not about what you want to do, it’s about who you want to be. The book gives the example of a leader named Amy at American Express. She was a high-achiever who hit a wall. She felt overwhelmed, reactive, and her performance was slipping. She attended a keynote by the authors and had this lightbulb moment. She realized she was living without a vision. Michelle: What did she do? Mark: She spent time crafting one. Not just for her job, but for her health, for her role as a wife and a mother. A month later, she emailed the authors. She’d lost 10 pounds, was exercising regularly, her team saw her as more positive and organized, and she felt like she had found hours in her day she never knew existed. She said, "These habits changed my life." All because she started with that vision. Michelle: I can get behind that. It reframes it from a corporate exercise to a deeply personal act of defining your own priorities before the world defines them for you. Mark: And that’s the antidote to task saturation. When you have that internal clarity, the external chaos has less power over you.

Mark: Exactly. It's your North Star. But a North Star is useless if you don't have a map and a compass to navigate by. And that's where the book gets incredibly practical, moving from the 'why' of the vision to the 'how' of daily life. Michelle: Right, because my vision might be 'be a great and present parent,' but on a Wednesday night, that just gets steamrolled by the immediate demands of 'make dinner,' 'check homework,' and 'find the missing soccer cleat.' How do you connect that big, beautiful vision to the messy reality on the ground? Mark: This is where they introduce a familiar tool, but with a twist: the "Do What Matters Most" Matrix, which is their version of the famous Eisenhower Matrix. You’ve probably seen it. It’s a four-quadrant box. Michelle: Urgent and Important, right? Mark: Yep. Quadrant 1 is Urgent and Important—these are crises, fires, deadlines. Quadrant 3 is Urgent but Not Important—most emails, some meetings, other people's priorities. Quadrant 4 is Not Urgent and Not Important—mindless scrolling, time-wasters. But the magic, the place where a great life is built, is Quadrant 2. Michelle: Important, but Not Urgent. Mark: Exactly. Things like strategic thinking, building relationships, exercising, learning a new skill… and, crucially, planning. The book cites research showing that struggling people and organizations spend 40-50% of their time in the crisis mode of Q1. But high-performers? They spend 60-70% of their time in the proactive, calm world of Q2. Michelle: That makes so much sense. Q1 is survival mode. Q2 is thriving mode. But the urgent always feels like it has a louder voice than the important. Mark: It does! Which is why you need a system to give the important a voice. The book uses this brilliant analogy of an aquarium. A teacher brings out an empty glass aquarium and a pile of ping pong balls, pebbles, sand, and a pitcher of water. He asks the students, "Can we fit all of this in the tank?" Michelle: I think I know where this is going. Mark: He starts by pouring in the sand, then the pebbles, then the water. The tank looks full. He tries to add the ping pong balls, but they just overflow and bounce onto the floor. Then he takes an identical empty tank. This time, he puts the ping pong balls in first. Then he pours in the pebbles, which fill the gaps. Then the sand, which fills the smaller gaps. And finally, the water. Everything fits perfectly. Michelle: The ping pong balls are the big, important Q2 things. Your health, your key projects, your relationships. The sand and water are the daily emails, the interruptions, the administrative junk. If you let the little stuff fill your week first, you'll never have room for what truly matters. Mark: You have to put the big rocks in first. And this is where the second and third habits come in: Identifying Your Roles and Goals, and Pre-Week Planning. Your Roles—like Parent, Leader, Athlete, Partner—and the Goals within them are your ping pong balls. The Pre-Week Plan is the act of deliberately putting them into your calendar before the week starts. Michelle: I've seen some reviews of this book that say these ideas aren't entirely new. People like Stephen Covey talked about this stuff years ago. What makes this feel different? Mark: I think it's the relentless simplicity and the powerful stories that show the human impact. It’s less about inventing a new theory and more about creating a foolproof, repeatable process. There's this one story about an executive named John who worked for a big PepsiCo distributor. He was successful, but he had this massive weight on his shoulders: he hadn't spoken to his adult son in over seven years because of a stupid argument. Michelle: Oh, that’s heartbreaking. Mark: During his very first pre-week planning session—a classic Q2 activity—he looked at his role as 'Parent' and knew what he had to do. He wrote down "Call my son" and scheduled it in his planner for Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. He was terrified, but because it was written down, because it was in his plan, he felt accountable. Michelle: Did he do it? Mark: He made the call. And his son answered. They talked, they cried, they couldn't even remember what the original fight was about. John found out he had two grandchildren he'd never met. His entire life changed with that one phone call. And he said, "Without pre-week planning, I probably would have never made that call." Michelle: Wow. That story just completely reframes what 'planning' is. It’s not about scheduling work meetings and optimizing efficiency. It’s about carving out sacred time for the ping pong balls—for your family, your health, the stuff that actually makes up a life. The stuff that gets lost in the sand and water of daily chaos. Mark: That’s the whole point. It’s not about prioritizing your schedule. It’s about scheduling your priorities.

Michelle: So, when you put it all together, it's a three-step cascade. It’s so logical. First, you define your North Star with a vision so you know where you're going, especially when things get chaotic. Mark: That’s step one. The 'why'. Michelle: Second, you identify your big rocks—your key roles and the most important goals within them for the year. That gives you clarity on what your ping pong balls actually are. Mark: The 'what'. Michelle: And third, every single week, you physically put those big rocks into your calendar before anyone else can fill it with sand and water. That’s the pre-week plan. It seems so simple, but that stat you shared at the beginning—80% of people don't do it—shows it's not easy. It requires discipline. Mark: It does. The book's power isn't in revealing some secret, magical habit that no one has ever heard of. Its genius lies in providing a simple, repeatable system that connects your highest values to your daily actions. The authors argue that our legacy is nothing more than the sum of our habits. And these three, practiced consistently, shift you from a life of reaction to a life of intention. Michelle: From chaos by default to a life by design. Mark: That's the phrase they use. It’s about taking back control from the endless stream of notifications and other people's demands and deliberately building the life you want, one week at a time. Michelle: It makes you wonder, what's the one 'big rock' you've been letting slip through the cracks week after week? What would happen if you scheduled just 30 minutes for it this Sunday? Not as a vague to-do item, but as a real appointment in your calendar. Mark: That's a great question for everyone listening. It could be a call to a parent, an hour to read a book, or 30 minutes to go for a walk without your phone. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our socials and tell us what your 'big rock' is. Let's get a conversation going. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.