How to make time for your most important tasks

Author

Jon Kalis
January 14, 2025 • Read Time: 11 minutes

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What’s on the agenda:

A verse I’m thinking about

A Delayed Promise

Do you ever feel like you’re bound for great things?

Abram certainly did after the Lord promised to bless him in Genesis 12 and make him into a great nation. But like Abram, who believed and labored after these things, sometimes it takes longer than expected.

After ten years of waiting to have a child, Abram and his wife Sarah were childless, and they believed Sarah to be barren. Because of this, Sarah told her husband to try and have a child with Hagar, their slave. He did, and Hagar bore a son, Ishmael.

Twelve more years pass, and God returns to Abram, confirming his promise to give Abram a son through Sarah (which eventually happens). Abram laughs at God and says, “How can that happen? She’s ninety.”

Then what I think is the most important part…

“If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” - Genesis 17:18

Takeaways & Thoughts

  1. What promises or beliefs have I lost faith in?
    I wonder when Abram stopped believing that God would provide a son through Sarah. In the story, it was sometime within ten years, but 10 years is a long time to believe in something and not see it happen.


    Are there beliefs or dreams I’ve lost faith in?

  2. What am I working on that I know is not right?
    “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing” stood out to me. Abram knew God’s promise but tried to achieve it without him. As he did that, he gained fondness and even preference over the promise being fulfilled through his labor.

    Am I holding on, or striving towards something that is not being blessed with growth? 

  3. I wonder if it would have taken 25 years for God’s promise to have been fulfilled if Abram had just waited on God

    I don’t know when Abram stopped believing, but I know he started working on his own plan after 10 years. I wonder what would have happened if his faith had been unwavering and if he’d continued to trust the promise.

    Where am I delaying success by working on my own?

A lesson I’ve learned: Making time for your most important tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix

60% of people say they find it extremely difficult to balance work and their personal lives claiming they don’t have time to do the things that matter.

It’s true, our lives are busy and there is an endless list of things we could be doing. To make matters worse, we are constantly looking for ways to add more to be effective (kind of ironic right?).

Here’s the problem…

The most important things are rarely the most urgent.

The date night with your wife to build your relationship, the training session to avoid disease and stay healthy, the work building a side hustle or personal business can always wait… until they can’t.

Year after year, people look back and wish they’d spent more time on the things that matter. Yet they don’t know how to make changes.

Let me introduce you to the Eisenhower Matrix, a useful tool to help you make sure you prioritize, and get to, the most important things in your life.

What Is the Eisenhower Matrix?

The Eisenhower Matrix, also known as the Urgent-Important Matrix, is a decision-making framework popularized by Dwight D. Eisenhower. He famously said:

"What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important."

It just sounds profound, right?

The matrix is a simple grid divided into four quadrants based on two criteria: urgency and importance. Here’s how it looks:

How to Use It (Without Overcomplicating Things)

  1. Start with a Brain Dump
    Write down everything on your to-do list. Big or small, important or not, it all goes on paper (or your favorite app).

  2. Sort Into Quadrants
    Ask two simple questions about each task:

    • Is this urgent?

    • Is this important?

  3. Act Accordingly

    • Quadrant 1: Do it now. You’ll feel accomplished when these are out of the way.

    • Quadrant 2: Schedule it. Block time for these tasks because they’re the ones that truly matter in the long run.

    • Quadrant 3: Delegate it. If possible, let someone else handle these. If not, minimize the time spent here.

    • Quadrant 4: Delete it. Be ruthless. If it doesn’t serve you, let it go.

Pro Tips to Make It Stick

  1. Review Often
    I don’t know how busy your life is, maybe you feel like this would be a useful tool to do each morning, but for most life isn’t quite that fast.

    But this is a valuable tool to look at monthly or quarterly or to apply to different aspects of your life. Different aspects of our lives hard different rythms. Vacations and times of rest are long, work relationships are middle-length, and health is frequent.

    Make sure you’re proactively doing, planning, delegating, and deleting across your life often.

  2. Combine It With Time Blocking
    Schedule your important, non-urgent, (the things that matter) WAY in advance. Don’t wait until the last minute to carve out time because your days and evenings inevitably get full.

    It’s hard to plan a gym session for tomorrow when you’ve already packed your work calendar and life responsibilities, it’s harder to carve out an evening for a date night this week, it’s to carve out periods of rest and time away from work.

    The secret is to get it on the calendar and protect the time you dedicate to it.

  3. Don’t Overthink It
    Look, the goal here isn’t to add another framework or planner to your life. You don’t need to spend hours and hours drafting and optimizing this framework. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s clarity.

    If you feel like you have time to do the important things in life and don’t feel like you're drinking from a firehose every day, maybe this isn’t for you. But if you looked back at 2024 and wondered where the time went and why you weren’t able to commit time to the important things, spend 15 minutes running through this exercise

Each week I feature someone I think embodies a wellness-based life. I met Nate here in Miami a few months ago. I’m also doing a Hyrox with him in April! (The dude is a monster)

About Nate Diaz

Nate’s a clinical and sports performance dietitian with 8 years of experience, and a dedicated running coach. Most recently, he’s served as the Director of Olympic Nutrition at the University of Miami, where he collaborated with elite athletes across multiple sports teams. Before that, he specialized in clinical nutrition, helping people of all ages manage acute and chronic conditions through tailored dietary strategies.

He truly lives out his mission which he self-proclaims is to “empower individuals to optimize every meal, every mile, and every moment of their training, enabling them to live the full, purposeful life God intended—now and for a lifetime”.

You can learn more or connect with Nate on Instagram or his website.

Question 1: What belief, mindset, tool, or habit has drastically improved your life?

The idea of discipline over motivation is simple but powerful.

While motivation can light the spark and get you started, it’s not something you can rely on—it comes and goes. Discipline, though, is what keeps you showing up and putting in the work, even when you don’t feel like it. And consistency? That’s what makes progress happen. It’s not about big, flashy moments; it’s about doing the small, everyday tasks that might seem boring but add up over time.

Real success comes from sticking with it, even when the excitement wears off, and staying committed to your goals no matter what. This has helped me tremendously in my health and fitness, business, and my faith.

Question 2: What is one health, fitness, or wellness recommendation you swear by

Nutrition is THE FACTOR when it comes to health and fitness.

Think of working out as the spark that lights the fire, but nutrition is the fuel that keeps it burning. Fitness happens in the gym, but progress is built in the kitchen. Treat your nutrition like your secret workout partner - they might not sweat with you, but they’re doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

Quick Question!

Surface area of accountability

This was a rough week. I actually gained some weight. I could list out some excuses but instead, let me share what I’m doing this week to change it:

  1. No alcohol (had two glasses of wine last week)

  2. Eating a high-protein breakfast (I skipped breakfast a few times last week & it made me snack late in the day

  3. Hitting my protein goals every day (avoiding hunger with satiating protein.

An Optimization to try?

I haven’t tried Huel, but I think I’m going to take advantage of this link and give it a shot. As I said above, protein and breakfast are two key aspects I need to get dialed in to hit my weight loss goals.

Huel seems to be a two-for-one special.

Your Breakfast Is Holding You Back

Coffee alone isn’t breakfast.

For lasting energy, peak performance, and real health benefits, your body needs more than just empty calories. That’s where Huel Black Edition steps in. Packed with 40g of protein and 27 essential vitamins, it’s the ultimate high-protein meal, ready in just 30 seconds.

Start fueling your day the right way. Use code BEHUEL15 for 15% off your first order, plus a FREE t-shirt and shaker.

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