The Physics of Finite Attention: What My Boss Taught Me About Sacred No's

There's a sentence that changed the trajectory of my career, though I didn't realize it at the time. It came from the last good boss I had at Caltech, Marianne Haggerty. She delivered the message during what I thought was a routine conversation about competing priorities. But Marianne never forgot that she said it to me—in fact, she had to repeat it to me several times as I kept making the same mistake, saying yes to colleagues' requests for favors that pulled me away from the strategic work we'd mapped out together.

"When you say yes to someone, you are saying no to me."

Eight words. Patient repetition. Profound implications.

What Marianne was teaching me had a name, though neither of us knew it at the time. Years later, I'd discover that organizational psychologist Adam Grant had been researching the exact principle she'd been patiently drilling into me: that productivity isn't about time management—it's about attention management. As Grant puts it, focusing on time management "just makes us more aware of how many of those hours we waste" (Grant, 2019). What matters instead is learning to "prioritize the people and projects that matter" (Grant, 2019).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back then, I was just a guy who couldn't say no to a favor.

The Architecture of Ordinary Moments

I've spent many hours over the years thinking about how small actions accumulate into organizational culture—how my Friday donut runs at Caltech became institutional memory, how consistent small gestures build trust that survives major disruptions. But this moment was different. This wasn't about building culture through repetition. This was about how a single reframe can fundamentally alter someone's decision-making apparatus.

Marianne wasn't trying to be profound. She was trying to teach me something I kept failing to learn: that when long-time colleagues asked for favors—help with projects outside normal processes, quick fixes that would only take "a few minutes"—I needed to consider what I was abandoning rather than defaulting to helpfulness. Every commitment, she was showing me, exists in relationship to other commitments. Attention isn't just finite—it's relationally finite.

The architecture of those repeated conversations has proven remarkably durable. Each time Marianne had to remind me of this principle, she was building a framework that would eventually become automatic. What started as a lesson I kept forgetting became the foundation for how I approach everything from email responses to strategic planning.

It's exactly what John Wooden meant about little details making big things happen. Not because the detail itself was earth-shattering, but because it provided a structural principle that would inform thousands of subsequent decisions.

Beyond the Eisenhower Matrix

I've written before about the Eisenhower Decision Matrix and how it helped me navigate competing priorities throughout my career. But my boss's insight added a dimension that the traditional urgent/important framework misses entirely: the relational physics of finite attention.

The Eisenhower Matrix is brilliant for categorizing tasks, but it doesn't address the emotional and political reality that every yes creates a disappointed no somewhere else in the system. It assumes that good priority-setting is primarily about personal productivity rather than organizational loyalty.

What I didn't understand then was that Marianne was teaching me about what Patrick Lencioni calls "First Team" loyalty (Lencioni, 2002). Your first team isn't the people you manage or the colleagues who ask for favors—it's the leadership team you're part of. Every time I said yes to a colleague's request outside our strategic plan, I was demonstrating that my loyalty lay with being helpful rather than being strategically aligned.

Grant's research would later validate what I was learning the hard way: that productivity struggles aren't usually about efficiency—they're about motivation (Grant, 2019). When colleagues asked for favors, I wasn't just bad at time management. I was saying yes for the wrong reasons, relying on willpower to push through competing demands instead of being naturally pulled toward what mattered most.

The sacred no isn't about being difficult or uncooperative. It's about what Lencioni calls "commitment"—one of the core behaviors of functional teams (Lencioni, 2002). When Marianne and I agreed on strategic priorities, I needed to commit to those decisions even when more appealing opportunities arose. My pattern of saying yes to colleague favors was actually what Lencioni identifies as "artificial harmony"—avoiding the discomfort of disappointing people in the moment, which ultimately undermined the larger commitments I'd made (Lencioni, 2002).

The Physics Are Unforgiving

What Marianne helped me understand—and what Grant's research validates—is that attention operates under laws as predictable as physics (Grant, 2019). The favors I kept agreeing to seemed harmless in isolation, but they created a pattern where my strategic work suffered while I solved everyone else's urgent problems.

This isn't time management—it's what Grant calls attention economics (Grant, 2019). And like any economic system, it works best when the underlying scarcity is acknowledged rather than ignored. Time, after all, is fixed. But attention? That can be managed strategically.

Grant's insight about timing adds another crucial dimension to this framework. As he puts it, "It's not about time; it's about timing" (Grant, 2019). You might spend the same amount of time on tasks even after rearranging your schedule. The difference is that you're "noticing the order of tasks that works for you and adjusting accordingly" (Grant, 2019).

I've watched too many well-intentioned colleagues burn out trying to violate these basic laws. They say yes to everyone, thinking they're being helpful, not realizing they're creating a system where no one gets their full attention. They mistake responsiveness for responsibility, availability for competence.

The physics are unforgiving. You can redistribute attention, but you can't manufacture it. You can be strategic about where you focus, but you can't focus everywhere simultaneously. Understanding this doesn't make you selfish—it makes you honest about the trade-offs inherent in any finite system.

When I started applying this framework to my own management style, it changed how I talked to my teams about competing demands. Instead of pretending we could do everything, we started having explicit conversations about attention allocation. Instead of promising the impossible, we started making conscious choices about whose priorities would take precedence when conflicts emerged.

The result wasn't that we disappointed more people—it was that we disappointed them more strategically, with advance notice and clear reasoning. We created what Lencioni calls "healthy conflict" around priority-setting rather than avoiding those conversations and letting competing demands create passive-aggressive dysfunction (Lencioni, 2002).

People can handle not being the priority if they understand why and when they might be again. More importantly, teams function better when everyone understands what the first team's commitments actually are, rather than trying to guess based on who's getting attention day-to-day.

What We Pass Down Without Realizing

Here's what humbles me about those repeated conversations: Marianne knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn't just managing immediate priorities—she was patiently building a framework that would serve me for decades. Each time she had to remind me about the physics of finite attention, she was making a deliberate investment in my development as a leader.

In many ways, Marianne was teaching me what Grant describes as the essence of sustainable productivity: shifting from external pressure to internal motivation (Grant, 2019). The end goal wasn't becoming more efficient—it was becoming more intentional.

But Marianne also recognized that I needed more than just her repeated reminders. She encouraged me to work with an executive coach—someone who could help me develop the self-awareness to understand why I kept falling into the same patterns. That's how I found David Samuels at DLS Partners, whose focus on helping leaders become genuinely authentic gave me the tools to finally internalize what Marianne had been teaching me.

That's how inheritance works in organizational life. The casual comments, the throwaway observations, the small moments of clarity—these often have more lasting impact than formal training or intentional mentoring. We're all inheriting frameworks from conversations we barely remember, and we're all bequeathing them through interactions we think are routine.

Working with David helped me understand the deeper psychological patterns beneath my surface behaviors. Through our coaching sessions, I began to see how my people-pleasing tendencies and conflict avoidance were actually preventing me from showing up as my complete, conscious self at work.

Now, when I hear myself repeating that phrase to my own teams—"When you say yes to someone, you are saying no to me"—I'm conscious that I'm not just managing current priorities. I'm potentially shaping how they'll think about attention and loyalty for the rest of their careers.

David's approach helped me see that Marianne's framework wasn't about creating rigid hierarchy—it was about conscious choice-making. The goal wasn't to become someone who says no reflexively, but to become someone who says yes and no intentionally, with full awareness of the implications.

The Details That Build Big Things

Looking back, I can trace a direct line from that eight-word sentence to some of the most important decisions I've made—career moves, team structures, even how I approach parenting. The principle that every yes requires a corresponding no has become central to how I think about stewardship, whether I'm managing a database conversion project or helping my children understand why they can't participate in every activity that interests them.

Grant's research helps explain why this framework has been so durable: it's grounded in intrinsic motivation rather than external pressure (Grant, 2019). When I learned to ask "If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to that matters more?" I wasn't just managing my time better—I was aligning my attention with my values. As Grant puts it, this approach means "you'll be naturally pulled into it by intrinsic motivation" rather than having to rely on willpower to push through (Grant, 2019).

It's helped me be more honest about trade-offs, more strategic about commitments, and more comfortable with the inherent limitations that make prioritization necessary in the first place. Most importantly, it's taught me that good leadership often requires disappointing the right people at the right time for the right reasons—not out of callousness, but out of commitment to the decisions you've made with your first team.

This is what John Wooden understood about details: they matter not because they're intrinsically important, but because they create frameworks that guide countless future decisions. A coach's attention to fundamentals shapes how players approach the game long after they leave the team. A boss's casual comment about priorities influences how someone thinks about loyalty and stewardship for decades.

The Ripple Effect of Ordinary Wisdom

I wonder sometimes about the conversations my own teams will remember twenty years from now. Which throwaway comments will become foundational principles? Which casual interactions will shape how they approach leadership when it's their turn?

Perhaps they'll remember the distinction between time management and attention management. Perhaps they'll understand, as Grant suggests, that attention management "leads to improved productivity, but it's about much more than checking things off a to-do list" (Thomas, 2019, as cited in Grant, 2019). Maybe they'll carry forward the insight that sustainable productivity isn't about doing more—it's about doing what matters most, for the right reasons, with full attention.

The responsibility is both humbling and energizing. Every interaction is potentially architectural—not just of current relationships, but of future frameworks that will outlive any specific workplace or project.

My boss's insight about the physics of finite attention has become something I consciously choose to pass forward, not just as a management technique but as a way of thinking about stewardship and accountability. It's my contribution to the ongoing conversation about how we can be honest about limitations while still striving for excellence.

What David taught me was that this framework only works when it's grounded in authentic self-awareness rather than people-pleasing disguised as conscientiousness. His emphasis on developing leaders who combine genuine empathy with the courage to make difficult decisions helped me understand that saying no isn't a failure of compassion—it's often the most compassionate thing you can do for everyone involved, including the person making the request.

Because in the end, the little details that make big things happen aren't just about efficiency or productivity. They're about the frameworks we inherit, adapt, and pass forward—one ordinary conversation at a time.

The physics of finite attention can't be changed, but they can be understood. And understanding them—with the help of insights from leaders like Marianne and researchers like Grant—might just be the little detail that makes the big difference.

The physics of finite attention can't be changed, but they can be understood. And understanding them—with the help of insights from leaders like Marianne, coaches like David, and researchers like Grant—might just be the little detail that makes the big difference.

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References

Grant, A. (2019, March 28). Productivity isn't about time management. It's about attention management. The New York Times. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/smarter-living/productivity-isnt-about-time- management-its-about-attention-management.html

Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. Jossey-Bass.

Thomas, M. (2019). Attention management: How to create success and gain productivity—every day. McGraw Hill.

The Eisenhower Matrix: How I Break Down My Professional (and Personal) World

There's a moment every Monday morning when I sit down with a Coke Zero, open my laptop, and stare at the tsunami of emails, calendar invites, and sticky note reminders that have accumulated over the weekend. It's the same feeling I used to get looking at a pile of green bar paper reports back in my Atlantic Richfield days—overwhelming, urgent, and somehow both crystal clear and completely incomprehensible at the same time.

That's when I reach for my mental Swiss Army knife: the Eisenhower Decision Matrix.

My path to discovering this framework was about as circuitous as my college career. When I was eighteen, fresh out of high school and convinced I was smarter than everyone else (as eighteen-year-olds tend to be), I marched into college dead set on engineering and mathematics. My mom, in her infinite wisdom, gently suggested that maybe I didn't have the personality to be an engineer. Being eighteen and knowing everything, I naturally ignored her advice completely.

It took me too long to figure out that she was right. Again. (Mothers have this annoying habit of being correct about their children, even when we're too stubborn to see it.) I thought that Aerospace Engineers were "airplane architects" which would demand both creative and systemic thinking. The rigid, systematic thinking that engineering demanded felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I was good at the math, sure, but I craved the messy complexity of human behavior and decision-making that engineering courses conspicuously avoided.

So I pivoted—hard—into Economics and Political Science. And suddenly, everything clicked. Economics gave me frameworks for understanding how people make decisions under constraints and competing priorities. Political Science taught me how those same people navigate power structures, build coalitions, and manage conflicts. The juxtaposition of these disciplines—one quantitative, one qualitative, both fundamentally about human behavior—created a lens through which I started seeing patterns everywhere.

That's where the Eisenhower Matrix first made sense to me. It wasn't just a productivity tool—it was a decision-making framework that bridged the analytical thinking I'd learned in economics with the strategic thinking I'd absorbed in political science. A way to quantify the qualitative, to systematize the human elements of priority-setting in a world where everything feels urgent and someone is always convinced their particular request is the most important thing in the universe.

You know the one—that deceptively simple 2x2 grid that supposedly helps you sort your life into four neat quadrants. Urgent/Important. Urgent/Not Important. Not Urgent/Important. Not Urgent/Not Important. It sounds like MBA buzzword bingo, but stick with me here. Because after years of wrestling with competing priorities in advancement work, I've found that Ike's framework isn't just useful—it's become my professional (and personal) salvation.

The Upper Left: Where Heroes Are Made (And Stress Lives)

Let's start with Quadrant II: Urgent and Important. This is where the real work happens, but also where most of us live far too much of our professional lives. It's the donor who needs a proposal by EOD for tomorrow's board meeting. It's the database that crashes during year-end giving season. It's the emergency meeting to discuss why our gift processing is behind schedule.

During Caltech's CRM conversion project, my team was drowning in Quadrant II work. Everything was urgent because the old system was literally dying, and everything was important because without functional technology, our entire advancement operation would grind to a halt. Those were the weeks when I found myself bringing donuts to the office, not just for National Donut Day, but because I could see the stress eating away at people's souls one TPS report at a time.

The thing about Quadrant II is that it's seductive. It makes you feel heroic, indispensable, always fighting fires and saving the day. But living there too long is like being the office's "go to tech guy"—a trap I fell into early in my career. You become so good at crisis management that people start manufacturing crises just to feel your expertise.

The goal isn't to eliminate Quadrant II work—some fires are real, and some heroes are needed. The goal is to not let it consume everything else.

The Bottom Left: The Delegation Sweet Spot

Quadrant III is where I've learned to park other people's emergencies that somehow became mine. Urgent but not important—the kind of work that feels pressing but doesn't actually move the needle on what matters most.

Take font changes. I still laugh about the time I was instructed to change fonts on thirty reports because "that's the font our executive prefers for internal documents." The request was urgent (he was reviewing them that afternoon), but decidedly not important to the actual content or function of those reports. It was a classic Quadrant III moment—something that could have been handled by literally anyone with access to the Format menu.

This is where delegation becomes an art form, and where I've had to get comfortable saying, "Let me connect you with someone who can help with that." Not because I can't change a font—trust me, I've shown the same person how to sum a column in Excel six times—but because my time is better spent on work that actually requires my particular combination of experience and expertise.

The volunteer work I did in Faith's computer lab taught me a lot about this quadrant. Parents would sometimes ask me to fix their home printer or troubleshoot their Wi-Fi during school events. Urgent for them, sure, but not really what I was there for. Learning to redirect those requests politely while still being helpful was like a master class in professional boundary-setting.

The Top Right: The Strategic Zone (Where I Should Live)

Quadrant I—not urgent but important—is where the magic happens. This is strategic planning, relationship building, long-term thinking, and the kind of work that prevents Quadrant I crises from happening in the first place.

When I started PRSPCT-L back in my UCI days, it lived entirely in Quadrant I. There was no urgent deadline, no emergency that forced the creation of a listserv for advancement professionals. But it was important—the field needed better ways to share knowledge and support each other. The fact that it became a cornerstone of our professional community happened because I was willing to invest time in something that wasn't screaming for immediate attention.

The same goes for the weekly donut runs that became part of our office culture at Caltech. Nobody was demanding pastries, and Foster's Family Donuts wasn't exactly mission-critical to our advancement goals. But recognizing and supporting team morale? Building the kind of workplace culture where people feel valued? That's Quadrant I work that pays dividends for years.

Here's what I learned the hard way: if you don't deliberately protect time for Quadrant I work, you end up living permanently in crisis mode. During that CRM conversion project, we were so buried in urgent tasks that we nearly missed the strategic planning needed to prevent future system failures. It was only when I forced myself to block out time for non-urgent but critical work that we started getting ahead of problems instead of constantly reacting to them.

The Lower Right: The Time Sink (Where Good Intentions Go to Die)

And then there's Quadrant 4—neither urgent nor important. The email rabbit holes, the meetings that could have been emails, the busy work that makes you feel productive without actually accomplishing anything meaningful.

I'm not immune to this trap. I've spent more time than I care to admit perfecting Excel formulas that saved thirty seconds of work, or following interesting but irrelevant research tangents because they were intellectually satisfying. There's something oddly comforting about Quadrant 4 work—it's controllable, measurable, and low-stakes. But it's also where good intentions go to die.

During busy December gift processing periods, I'd often pitch in to help my team enter donations into our database. What should have been straightforward data entry would inevitably turn into elaborate prospect research sessions. I'd spot an interesting company name on a check, notice an unusual address, or see a gift note that sparked my curiosity. Before I knew it, I'd be deep in Google searches, updating donor records with employment history, board affiliations, and family connections I'd discovered along the way.

It felt productive—after all, I was enriching our database with valuable information. But while I was adding fascinating biographical details to one donor record, dozens of other gifts sat unprocessed in the queue. My team would politely ask if I needed help with "my" pile, not realizing I'd fallen down a research rabbit hole that had nothing to do with the urgent task at hand.

The key is recognizing when you're there and having the discipline to climb out. Sometimes that means closing the browser tabs and returning to real work. Sometimes it means admitting that the "research" you're doing is really just intellectual curiosity disguised as productivity.

When the Matrix Makes Life-Changing Decisions

Sometimes the Eisenhower Box forces decisions that go beyond daily task management—it becomes a framework for life-changing choices. I learned this firsthand in 2014, when I found myself in one of the most professionally awkward situations of my career.

Cal Poly's CLA Building

I had just left Caltech after nearly a decade to become Executive Director of Advancement Services at Cal Poly Pomona. On paper, it was a great opportunity—more responsibility, a chance to lead a database conversion project from the ground up, and the perfect solution to a family logistics challenge. Faith had been accepted to a performing arts high school in Pomona, and taking the job would eliminate a daily commute for both of us.

But life, as it tends to do, threw a curveball. Faith decided to stay in La Crescenta for high school instead. Suddenly, I found myself driving past Caltech every morning and evening—a daily reminder of the professional relationships and institutional culture I'd left behind. Those twice-daily drives became an unexpected opportunity for reflection, a forced meditation on what mattered most.

Caltech's Millikan Library

Then Caltech called. They needed help. The database conversion project I'd initiated before leaving had hit complications, and they realized they needed someone who understood both the technical challenges and the institutional context to see it through. It wasn't just about technical expertise—it was about institutional memory, relationships, and the kind of deep understanding that only comes from years of working within a particular culture.

Here's where the Eisenhower framework proved invaluable for something far beyond email prioritization. Was returning to Caltech urgent? Not in the traditional sense—Cal Poly Pomona was a good job with good people, and I was learning a lot. But was it important? That was the harder question.

I applied the matrix to my life: Staying at Cal Poly was neither urgent nor particularly important beyond professional courtesy and short-term comfort. But returning to Caltech? That felt both important (helping an institution I cared about complete critical work) and, given the timing of their needs, increasingly urgent.

The decision to return to Caltech after only nine months at Cal Poly wasn't just about career strategy—it was about values clarification. It was about recognizing that sometimes the most important thing you can do is acknowledge when you've made a mistake and course-correct, even when it's professionally embarrassing.

Where the Personal Creeps In

That experience taught me that the Eisenhower Box isn't just a workplace tool—it's a life tool. The same framework that helps me manage donor relations and database conversions also helps me navigate Little League politics, school volunteer commitments, and the endless logistical juggling act of single parenting.

When Faith needed help with her science fair project, was that urgent and important? Important, certainly—but the urgency was mostly manufactured by our tendency to procrastinate until the last possible moment. When the Little League board needed someone to run for president, was that urgent? Not really. Important? Absolutely, if I wanted my kids to have a quality youth sports experience.

The personal stuff gets tricky because the lines between quadrants aren't as clear. Your kids' request for help with homework feels urgent to them and important to you, but maybe not both simultaneously. The school fundraiser volunteer signup feels important to the community, but rarely urgent until the deadline approaches.

I've learned to apply the same discipline to personal commitments that I do to professional ones. Not every volunteer opportunity requires my specific involvement. Not every school activity needs my attendance. And sometimes, the most important thing I can do is model healthy boundary-setting for my children by being thoughtful about what I commit to and why.

The Generational Divide

One thing I've noticed in my years of managing teams is that different generations tend to live in different quadrants by default. My younger colleagues often treat everything as Quadrant II—urgent and important—because they haven't yet developed the pattern recognition to distinguish between real crises and manufactured ones. Everything feels career-defining when you're early in your professional life.

Meanwhile, some of my more experienced colleagues have become so comfortable living in Quadrant I that they sometimes miss legitimate Quadrant II situations. They've seen enough manufactured urgency to become skeptical of all urgency, which can be just as problematic.

The sweet spot is developing the judgment to tell the difference—and that only comes with experience, mentorship, and probably a few mistakes along the way. Part of my job as a manager has been helping people calibrate their urgency meter, teaching them to pause and ask: Is this really urgent, or does it just feel that way? Is this truly important, or are we confusing activity with progress?

Beyond the Matrix: Values in Disguise

Here's the dirty secret about the Eisenhower Box: it's not really about time management or productivity hacks. It's about values clarification. When you force yourself to honestly evaluate what's truly important versus what just feels urgent, you're essentially defining what matters most to you, your team, and your organization.

Those Friday morning donut runs? They lived in Quadrant I because I valued team morale and workplace culture more than I valued an extra hour of email processing. My decision to keep coming to the office during the holidays? Quadrant II, because someone needed to be there, and I valued leading by example over personal convenience.

The volunteer work at Valley View Elementary? Pure Quadrant I—building community, supporting my daughter's education, and investing in relationships that would pay dividends for years. The decision to return to Caltech? A values-driven choice that prioritized institutional loyalty and meaningful work over career advancement and comfort.

The Ongoing Practice

Like most useful frameworks, the Eisenhower Box isn't a one-time sorting exercise—it's an ongoing practice. I find myself mentally revisiting it multiple times throughout the week, especially when I feel overwhelmed or when competing priorities start pulling me in different directions.

Sometimes I even share the framework with my team, particularly when we're facing competing deadlines or when someone seems to be drowning in everything-is-urgent work. It's a way of stepping back and asking: What really needs to happen today? What can wait? What should we be doing proactively to prevent future crises?

And yes, I've been known to sketch it out on a whiteboard during particularly chaotic meetings, much to the amusement of colleagues who've learned to recognize my "Eisenhower moment" expressions. These visual conversations often reveal how differently people prioritize the same tasks and help teams find common ground on what truly matters.

The Simple Truth

The truth is, most of us already know intuitively what's important and what's urgent. The value of the matrix isn't in the sorting—it's in the permission it gives us to act on that knowledge. To say no to Quadrant IV busy work. To delegate Quadrant III requests. To protect time for Quadrant I strategic thinking. And yes, sometimes to embrace the chaos of Quadrant II when the situation truly calls for it.

Because at the end of the day, whether we're processing gifts, coaching Little League, or just trying to get through another Monday morning email avalanche, we all need a way to separate what feels urgent from what actually matters. And sometimes, that way comes courtesy of a former president who knew a thing or two about competing priorities—and an eighteen-year-old who finally learned to listen to his mother's advice, even if it took a few decades and a career change to get there.

The matrix may be simple, but the wisdom is profound: not all urgent things are important, and not all important things are urgent. Everything else is just commentary.