Eisenhower's PIE

How I use President Eisenhower's productivity matrix and a dessert themed acronym to maintain balance

It’s tough to balance all the demands of modern life: work, home, kids, and self. What gets the priority? Who wins the competition for my finite resources? Several years ago, I came across an idea that works for me: PIE.

PIE is an acronym for physical, intellectual, and emotional. These are the three competing demands I most often experience tugging against one another. When I’m most satisfied, all three pull together in a troika. When I’m miserable, it’s usually because I’ve allowed one of their bits to slip.

Many moons ago, when my back and ego were still intact, I engaged in seasonal farm work: stacking hay bales, picking fruit and vegetables, and other general labor. I was in great shape, and I slept like a baby. It was physically satisfying to work with my hands and emotionally satisfying to eat the literal fruits of my labor throughout the harvest season. But it was boring. I mean, it was seriously boring, and there was no respite.

Reading a book is out of the question when chucking hundred-pound bails of alfalfa around. Sure, I could indulge in some Tolkein-fed escapism once the work was done, but it was rare to get through a whole chapter without nodding off for the night. My brain idled while my body toiled.

Later, I would work as a software engineer. Talk about being intellectually satisfied! I spent all day solving puzzles. I moved into management, adding the emotional satisfaction from mentoring. Physical atrophy followed.

My waistline ballooned as my nutrition declined and exercise dropped to nil. I sweated sour mash whiskey; my Santa-like sugar intake left my face perpetually puffed and swollen. Back surgery and a cancer scare helped me see how far out of whack I’d gotten.

At the time, I was using the Eisenhower productivity matrix to manage my workload. If you’re unfamiliar with the former President’s approach, it’s fairly straightforward. Determine every task’s urgency and importance. Those that are neither urgent nor important are chaff and should be ignored. Noise is urgent but not important and should be delegated. Important tasks that are not urgent, like physical exercise or other skills training, should be planned. This allows you to focus on what’s both urgent and important.

This was a great approach to handling my professional challenges, and I reflected on how I might apply it to my personal life. Life’s noise was crowding out life-enriching activities. I decided to carve out time for the important but not urgent things: physical exercise, creative intellectual pursuits, and emotionally satisfying outlets.

Now, I have gym time scheduled every weekday morning. An hour a day is dedicated to reading for pleasure or learning something new, and meditation is in the evening. They’re events on my digital calendar with the same priority as any external meeting.

I don’t know whether this will work for anyone else, but it’s been super helpful to me. Whenever I’m feeling off-kilter, I can usually point to an aspect of my life that’s been neglected: physical, intellectual, or emotional. Getting back into balance is usually as simple as updating a few events on my calendar.