Learnings and Missteps

Stop Living Reactive And Start Choosing What To Optimize For

• Jesus Hernandez • Season 3

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What if your calendar isn’t the problem—your priorities are? We walk through the FIRE Box, a clear, practical framework that helps you stop living reactive and start building a week that reflects what you value. Instead of chasing every ping, you’ll learn how to Finish First on the urgent and important, and, more critically, Invest Focus Here on the important and not urgent work that drives real progress.

We start by clarifying urgency and importance in plain terms so you can judge tasks without overthinking. Then we tackle the trap everyone knows too well: staying stuck in constant firefighting. From there, we shift to the growth zone—important but not urgent—and name the areas most people neglect until they explode: exercise, sleep, nutrition, and relationships. These aren’t “nice to haves.” They’re the foundation of sustained performance, and treating them like scheduled work is how you protect your energy and momentum.

You’ll get simple tactics to design your week with intent: build a shortlist of priorities you want to backfill into new space, set recurring blocks you defend like any critical meeting, and start reducing and extinguishing the noise that hijacks your schedule. Along the way, we share a preview of upcoming strategies to deal with urgent-not-important and not-important-not-urgent tasks, plus tools to help you plan, commit, and execute with less stress and more agency.

Ready to decide what you’re optimizing for and make your calendar serve that choice? Listen now, then share one task you’re moving into the Important-Not-Urgent box. If this helped, follow the show, leave a quick review, and send this to a friend who’s tired of being busy without progress.

Get all the templates for mastering your time: https://www.depthbuilder.com/time-management-webinar-sign-up-page

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SPEAKER_00:

Let's first start with like the most important question when it comes to like time management and all the time and effort you're gonna put into optimizing your situation. The most important thing to know or start getting an idea about is what are you optimizing for? For real, for real. What are you going to do with all of the extra time that you're breaking your brain to find? If you don't know that answer, just keep doing what you're doing. And so today we're going to talk about the firebox. F-I-R-E. It's a four quad system, right? And finish first, invest focus here, reduce extinguish. And today, specifically, we're going to be talking about the top two. Finish first and invest focus here, because that helps us answer the damn question of what the hell are we actually optimizing for? This system, this method is what I have used to help me like stop double booking myself. So if you've ever had two or maybe even three meetings accepted at the same time, that's a problem. You know, there's a button that can say decline invitation. So it helped me stop double booking myself. It helped me get away from rushing around from meeting to meeting to meeting to sess to session, the job visits, all the things like scatterbrain and in a massive hurry all the time. And more importantly, those things helped me stop staying late to finish the work that I should have been doing all day, but I couldn't because I was caught up in the meetings and all the ridiculous stuff. And so my name is Jesse. I am your selfish servant, and I'm sharing these things so that you can start focusing your time and energy towards leaving this industry better than you found it. All right, so we're gonna get into it. The main idea here is like how to make space for you in your calendar. Uh, and if you've ever heard of the Eisenhower matrix, this is gonna sound very familiar to you. Now, I love the Eisenhower matrix, right? Urgent and important, important, not urgent, urgent, not important, and not important, not urgent, right? It's a it's a framework to kind of help us look at the things and take specific actions on them. The problem that I've had with the with the Eisenhower matrix is it's a pretty, I mean it's a nice framework, but it's pretty general, right? It just kind of tells us these are the look at these things this way, and there's kind of a you know, uh order of operations or an action to take for what whatever lands in the particular bucket. And so what I had to do, I had to justify it, and so I kind of made it into the firebox, right? Because okay, if it's urgent and important, obviously you got to get those things done. If it's important and not urgent, and this is where the most important thing comes up that if you get anything from any of these live streams, from any of the videos or blogs that I put out there, what are you optimizing for? What is important and not urgent? So we're gonna let's just get into it. Come on, that's what y'all want, right? So, super simple. There are four boxes, and we're only gonna talk about two today, uh, because guess what? I've got a group of people. Uh, we've got a group call with folks to like dive into distraction detox. So, um, anyways, tooth points. There's four boxes. Anything that's urgent and important, you want to finish that first. Simple. Anything that's important, not urgent, you want to invest more focus there. And I'm gonna come back to that and hammer that home. Anything that is urgent and not important, you want to reduce that. And on the next live stream, we'll get into strategies, tactics, and things that I do to help reduce those things that are urgent, not important. And then, of course, there's not important and not urgent. We want to extinguish those. And on the next call, we'll get into you know, some super, super awesome cheat codes to actually on the how to extinguish, right? Uh, because general thinking is you stop doing those things, but you know, real life, it's not that easy just to stop doing those things. So, what I want to talk about is here if you the stuff that you have in the F box, urgent and important. So, a lot of people will ask, like, okay, well, how do I know if it's urgent? How do I like define that or give it a framework? The easy way to think about it, the way I think about it is if it's time sensitive, right? And if uh when I'm looking at my calendar, like I use this to really manage my calendar and design the week that I really want or the month, however you want to look at it. If it's time sensitive, right? Like the if it's due tomorrow, it's urgent. How do I gauge whether it's important or not? Well, you know, there may be a consequence. Somebody might be pissed off. I might let the team down, I might get written up. Like, you know, I use those things to kind of gauge whether it's urgent. I'm rather where it's important, but urgent is simply a matter of time sensitivity. Now you can think of it in different terms, but I just wanted to give you that example so you can handle that. Now, here's the thing is we spend most of our time and energy in this box, in the urgent and important box. Why? Because there's already like these underlying systems that help motivate us to get that stuff done, right? We might get written up, we might get in trouble, somebody's gonna get after us. And so there's already systems in place to reinforce the execution of the things that are urgent and important, and that's a good thing, except that if we stay in the urgent and important box all the time, that's what happens. You end up living in a reactive state, like forever, forever and ever and ever. And then you get in the situation which I was in, where it's like, man, I'm working my butt off, but I'm not making any progress, I'm not getting anywhere, but I'm getting my stuff done. And it's because we're not necessarily, we don't have a system to like reinforce and bring us back to focus on the important but not urgent things. And so if you're in that situation and you're looking for a system or a way to break that, uh, drop double D in the comments, and I'll hook you up with the links, you can sign up for the webinar, get all the freaking downloads, all the templates, the template that we're looking at, and all the other ones that we're doing, just drop double D in the comments and we'll get you hooked up with that stuff. Of course, it's going to be after the live stream because I don't have a moderator or administrator or one of those things. But, anyways, key point that I want you to think about is if you're in always, always, always on the urgent and important stuff, and you're not working on the things that that you care about that bring you joy, that bring you fulfillment, I got I got the next step for you. The most important box. And if you've missed uh like the first the other sessions we were talking about guilt-free future planning, the answers to this question, we've kind of the systems designed to kind of pull those things out, identify what those important things are that we want to do that are gonna help us grow our talents, grow our skills, uh, and and serve people better. Guess what? That's where you pull the answer from. But, anyways, you can go back and watch those. Now, here's the thing with the important and not urgent things in the eye box. We want to invest focus here, invest time, invest energy there. Uh, and here's the deal we neglect those, right? We neglect them. Why? Because they're not urgent, right? It's not the end of the world. I'm gonna give you three examples of like super, super important things that we neglect until they're urgent. And the issue is is when those things become urgent, you got a big damn problem on your hand. So three things. Well, you know what? I'm gonna throw a fourth one in there just for fun. So, number one, exercise. We know how important exercise is, but it's not really urgent, right? Like nobody's gonna get after me. My, you know, the worst thing in the short term, I might have to buy another belt and start buying some stretchy pants and get bigger clothes. And we just kind of keep uh, we just kind of keep doing deprioritizing it. So exercise, number two, sleep. I know for sure when I'm like under pressure and I got to get a lot of stuff up, I got a lot of urgent and important things to get done. And oh, it's time sensitive. I got deadlines. Oh my God. Guess what? I'm gonna do I'm gonna work an all-nighter. I'm gonna cut into my sleep. I'm gonna get up super, super early, which isn't a big deal. Except that when I neglect it for an extended period of time, it has a major, major impact on my immune system and alertness, attentiveness, all the things. There's nutrition, right? When I'm super, super busy and super stretched and got a lot of things going on. Guess what I do? I eat a lot of damn fast food, right? I don't make the extra trip to go find a nutritious place or prepare my meal because I'm in a rush. I'll just pick something up at Whataburger, Mickey D's, or whatever it is. And then the fourth thing, which I think a lot of us are in this situation, is we neglect our relationships, right? I know, and if any of my exes are out there listening right now, I I admit it, I'm finally gonna admit it. I neglected my relationships. I put work because I had so much work, so much busyness going on that I didn't have the time, energy, or focus to dedicate to them. And what ended up happening, it came to a head. That's why they're exes now, or that's why I'm the ex. So the point here is when we think about like important things that we have to get done, we need to expand our thinking beyond just what the work responsibilities are. Because when we neglect the important, the things that are not urgent, but they're important, they will always, always, always, always become urgent. And those important things that become urgent, the fix is massively more expensive, more intensive than if you would just maintain them with some regular focus and regular effort. Question Do you know this answer? What are you optimizing for? What would you do if you had more time? What are the things that you have been neglecting or putting off because I'm too busy, because it's impractical, because that doesn't make sense, because, because, because all of those things qualify as important and not urgent. And so I'm I I know I'm kind of beating it up, but this is the most important thing when it comes to time management or self-management, right? When it comes to high performance and sustained growth, is being damn ultra clear about what it is we are optimizing for, or more uh plainly stated, what we would what we wish we would be doing with the time. We don't need more time, we usually make better decisions, and so what I want you to think about if you know the answer, drop it in the comments. That would be big. And it doesn't have to be one answer, right? I mean, here's the thing a lot of people we like we get caught up in this idea of man, I gotta have the one answer that's gonna be true always and forever, and it's gotta be right, and it's gotta be measurable, and it's got to be perfect, and it's gotta be little like come on, man, this is your life. And if you lived any time out there, you know how crazy things get, how twisted things get, and how many, how conditions transform on the regular. And so if you have a list of things that you would prefer or that you want to work on that you haven't, they're important to you. If they're bugging you, if they're sticking to the back of your head, guess what? They're kind of important. You haven't done anything with them because they're not urgent. That goes in the box. That's the list. So write those things down. What are the important? It could be exercise, right? Here we are in January. Um, and a whole bunch of people are like, New Year, new me. I'm gonna start exercising, I'm gonna start working out, da da da da. And I applaud you and I wish you the best. And I also know that the the idea, the enthusiasm about starting the new thing is easy. Actualizing the idea is difficult. Why? Because we have so much garbage up here in the urgent and important box. And again, I want to remind you if you don't have an idea of what the hell is important but not urgent, you're always going to be in the urgent and important box, and you will be stuck in a reactive state forever. But all you got to do is start thinking about it. So, for real, for real, your homework right now. I want you to think about the things that are important, not urgent. Start off easy. Is it exercise? Is it sleep? Is it relationships? Is it nutrition? Those are easy. It may be true for you, it may not be true for you, it doesn't matter. But there's something that is important to you that you have not committed any focus, any energy to. And if you don't know what you're going to backfill, right? This idea of time management, we think that okay, if I get super, super efficient and get, you know, take out the waste of my processes and my systems, then I will be more effective. No, you won't. All you're gonna do is create more space for other crap because you don't know the answer. You have no idea, you haven't given the appropriate attention to what is important, like what is super, super important. And once you get that list out, you get those things out of your head in front of you so you can look at them, and then you start tinkering around and putting some of these practices into place, the daily domination board, guilt-free future planning, uh, strategically self-rescheduling, all of those things are designed to squeeze out the things that are stealing your energy and backfill with the important things. And so that's the main point today. I don't want to get too uh, I'll give you a real quick preview of what we're gonna be talking about on the next live stream. And again, I want to remind you if you want to get like a super, super awesome, in-depth overview of the whole system, uh, drop double D in the comments and I will hook you up with the link because I have a webinar that we go over the whole system. It is a plan, commit, execute system, and that takes us from long-term planning, calendar management to daily execution. Some of us need help in all three, some of us only need help in one. And I got some magical stuff for you if if you're there. Uh so drop double D, I'll send you some stuff, or rather, I'll send you a link. But here's the preview. So, what we're gonna be talking about on the next live stream is the other half of the firebox. What we talked about right now is the important stuff, urgent and important, important, not urgent. We're gonna talk about next time is the not important things, and more importantly, what the hell to do and how to get those things off of our calendar. Because here's the thing I cannot get you more time, but I can give you some stuff to help you manage yourself uh a little more good. Or I appreciate y'all very, very much for being here. Be kind to yourself, be cool, and we'll talk at you next time. Peace.