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Are You Busy or Are You Actually Moving Forward? · Commander's Intent

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's a business or life, it can cost you everything.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Commander's Intent will keep to inspire you how to lead with clarity, courage, and purpose.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: So here's your host, retired Air Force Colonel, fire pilot, and your leadership mentor, Derek Oak.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Derek Oakes, and welcome back to another episode of Commander's Intent.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with my co-host, Rob Powell, and with his clean-shaven face, he's giving us the new look for today.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk a little bit about something that initially you guys aren't going to understand, but I think the light bulb will go off pretty quickly for every single one of you and give you a little bit of perspective on something that I think is absolutely key for running your own life and running any kind of an organization and for how you make decisions of what matters most in your life.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: To start with that perspective, there's a term when you're flying airlift aircraft.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Rob flew some form of airlift aircraft his entire Air Force career.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I flew airlift aircraft for about six years.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I started in a C-130, then I went to a C-17.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: C-130 is kind of the baby airlifter where it had a max carrying capacity of 42,000 pounds.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: There were six pallet positions of 108 by 88 inches.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: The C-17, in comparison, could carry 18 pallet positions and 170,000 pounds.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of weight.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look at the C5, which I never flew, and the C5 could carry 281,000 pounds.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's now that's a lot of weight.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: There were 36 pallet positions.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You could put a lot of really big stuff inside of a C5 and a C17 for that matter.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I flew the C130 and then I flew the C17.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Rob flew the MC-130, which I don't know if it had the same carrying capacity because it carried a lot of extraneous gear.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: What was it, Rob?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: We had one less pallet position than a regular 130.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those pallet positions, I'm now getting into the weeds, but there are five on the floor and one on the ramp.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the one on the ramp was less weight, but it was still 4,664.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's I'm dating myself a little bit there, and it's kind of amazing that I can't remember my kid's birthday, but I can remember how many pounds I can put on the ramp of a C130E.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So but the term was you cube out before you gross out.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: What exactly does that mean?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It means that I would fill the space of that cargo bay, I would fill the space with gear, whatever it is that I'm carrying, more often than not, more than I would gross out.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So even though I could carry 42,000 pounds, I would carry stuff and I would fill the entire cargo bay with stuff that didn't weigh 42,000 pounds.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as a pilot, you love that because carrying less weight meant that the aircraft performed better, but you're not optimizing the aircraft.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you're truly really trying to move the most amount of equipment, you're not optimizing that aircraft a lot of times.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in the C-17, it was the same thing.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: After I got out of the military, I went to smaller aircraft, you know, literally two and four, and sometimes some cases six-person aircraft, where almost every time you would gross out before you would cube out, meaning that you would reach your weight limit before you would reach your cargo space capacity.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like if it was a four-seater most small aircraft, you're only going to be able to put three people in those in that four-seater aircraft because you reach your weight limit when you add in how much fuel I can carry, how much cargo I can carry, you know, luggage, and then how many people, because all that you know contributes to what is the maximum gross weight of that aircraft.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Rob has a similar example, but he did it in the military.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you explain to us a little bit about some of the aircraft that you flew, Rob, the smaller aircraft?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I threw 130s originally, but then I went to King Airs and Pilates Porters and Twin Otters and Cespick caravans.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: And most of the time in the smaller airplanes, we were severely limited by the weight we could carry.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: I remember one time in particular flying the Pilates Porter, which is a very small airplane.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: In addition to the two pilots, you could normally carry about five people max in that airplane.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: But we got tasked to go take some ammunition to some Army Rangers that were in the middle of a battle and they needed some heavy resupply of ammunition.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: And we realized we couldn't get very much ammunition in that airplane before we hit the weight limit because ammunition is incredibly heavy.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's incredibly dense.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's something that we found.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then later on, I was dropping some Army special forces out of a Session Caravan, and they asked me how many guys they could get in the airplane, and we did all the calculations and found out I could put 10 guys in that airplane if they were just jumping with just their uniforms on and their parachutes.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then later on, when they told me that they wanted to carry, you know, full combat gear on their jump, I couldn't take 10 anymore.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: I could only take six because we ran out of you know weight capacity on that airplane.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, if you look at it, people go, well, that seems strange.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Why are you running out of weight so quickly on a smaller airplane?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's mostly because the amount of weight that they have to be able to carry in a smaller airplane is much, much less because you're working on percentages.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I joked when you put 300 or 400 pounds in a Pilates border, you're changing the weight of that aircraft craft by like 20%.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's pretty incredible when you look at it like that.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you did that on a C17, if you change the weight of the airplane 20%, you're talking, you know, 60,000 pounds.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that was something I found quite often.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so when people say, Yeah, you cube out before you gross out, that's true on most of the bigger airplanes.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Not so true on the smaller, where the space really comes at a premium for those airplanes.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now you talked about those jumpers that initially you said, what did you say, 10 could go on it, and then you dropped it down to six afterwards when they showed up there with their full gear?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times the customer, the user or your boss is gonna say, Well, you got more space on your plate.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: You've got more room in your cargo bay, so of course you can fit more.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: What was their response when you told them they could only take six?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I told them they could only take six and they got math.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: They said, Well, wait a minute.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: You said you already told us we could take ten.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Yes, I said ten without your gear on, but you put your gear on, it makes you weigh quite a bit more.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the combat load of an army special forces guy is pretty heavy.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so you've almost doubled your weight.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I can't take that.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: And they go, well, but wait a minute, you could take fuel out of your wings.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to be dropping right over the airfield, so you don't need to carry as much fuel.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can just, you know, drop us and then spiral down with no fuel.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: I go, yeah, hey, man, it doesn't work that way.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: I said, we have rules and regulations that I have to live by, and this is one of those that I have to have a certain amount of fuel.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: And he starts kind of arguing with me.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, listen, man, let's pretend that I'm a professional and I know my job as well as you know yours.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: I said, if you want the next time when you show up to my airplane for a combat mission, if you want me to go through your kit piece by piece and find out why you've got three grenades when you probably only need one, or why you've got six magazines for your rifle when you probably only need two, you know, if you want me questioning that deeply, that's what you're doing to me right now.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so it really, you know, I tried to help them understand that I'm not doing this because I don't want to help you.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing this because I'm trying to operate as a professional in my area.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Not and you do yours, and we'll be fine because the two of us together will get the mission done.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: But you know how that goes over sometimes.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know exactly how that goes over sometimes.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the customer, they show up and like, well, you still got space back there.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have these three pallet positions that aren't full for the times that like you, the times that I did gross out.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: There were a number of times I remember specifically flying C-130s where we were carrying a bunch of ammo and heavy equipment parts.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And like, you guys still got space.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Yeah, that's true.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we've reached our max limit.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we don't have a lot here.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, your not a lot is gonna put me over my limit, so it's too much.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't understand that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I compare that to, you know, if we let other people fill our plate, and if we let other people do our load planning for us, we're often going to get stuff that is not important, that's thrown into our aircraft, that's thrown into our cargo bay, thrown into onto our schedule, because we're just trying to satisfy the customer and we're trying to make the mission work as they want it to work and not using our own expertise.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way that you explained that to that jumper.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the crazy piece about all of this is those limits are not set by me, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like I didn't come up with the limits for the aircraft.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Engineers came up with those limits for the aircraft based on, you know, the life of the airframe, the metals, so that you're not fatiguing the metal too much.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there are weight limits were set up primarily for, you know, accepting a hard landing and not crushing the gear.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So they're all set up from some kind of physical measurement.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: And most of the time, those measurements have a pretty wide safety buffer.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: They do that so that like the wings don't snap off your airplane when you're flying in the air and all these other things.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: The thing that I will say that, you know, to your point about other people filling up your cargo compartment, we as human beings have a really hard time understanding our own personal limits and what those stresses do to us over time.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: As a pilot, I totally understand why certain airframes are hour limited or certain airframes are landing limited, they'll tell you that we have to change the gear every number of landings because the stress that goes on them.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: And this is one of the things I tried to get across when I was a commander was if we understood the human perspective of how much stress, you know, sometimes it's not the stress that it's not just, oh, I'm gonna go over by five towns, so it shouldn't be a big deal.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: But that repeated stress of constantly landing.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: We had one airplane that some friends of mine were flying in and they landed and they landed just fine.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was all the accident investigation came out and showed that they had no fault to the pilots, but they happened to land a king air on a runway, and the left gear sheared off and they ended up spinning into the grass.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what they found out was the way we were landing these airplanes, the speeds we were landing them at were putting stress on one pin in the landing gear.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we were putting more stress than most landings in the civilian world.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And because of that, it was gonna break.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: It was a matter of when.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so we had to learn to service that strut that gear, that pin more often in order to land the airplane the way we're doing it.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that we have to do the same thing as human beings.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: We aren't as good at identifying those stress points because you can't physically like pull apart a person and figure out what their tensile strength is for the stress in their brains.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think it becomes more important as leaders to recognize how to put loads on people and how to put those important things in the cargo bay to make sure that we are maximizing our utility without risking a major break in something that we don't want to break.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great description.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings me back to something I know we've talked about in this show before, but I think is pretty critical when you are managing your time and managing your priorities, and that is the Eisenhower matrix.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got quadrant one, which is the important and the urgent.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those are things that have to happen, and they have to happen right now.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have quadrant two, which is the important things, but they don't have to happen right this instant.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have to find place in your schedule for them, but it doesn't have to be right now.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have quadrant three, that's the urgent, but not important.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's when your boss walks in and says, Can you solve this?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it may not be an important thing, but it's all of a sudden become an urgent thing because he wants it done right then.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or meetings, sometimes meetings are urgent.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: They have to happen right now, at least we think they do, but they're really not that important because we haven't thought through it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then quadrant four, that's sitting on your couch watching TV.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the not important and the non-urgent items that we have.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you have these four quadrants, and the best way to live your life is in quadrant two, where the majority of your time is focusing on the important, but you're doing it in such a way, in such a planned way, that it's not urgent.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have it done yesterday.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have it done right away.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, going back to the load analogy of putting it on aircraft, if I plan out, let's say that you know, I'm moving a unit, I'm moving an entire organization, I'm deploying into a combat zone, and I know that I'm gonna fill that if I do it properly, it's gonna fill about six aircraft.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say it's gonna fill six C-130s.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if I don't do my load plans properly, they're gonna show up in the combat zone and some of their important equipment's still gonna be sitting on the ramp back at home station because they didn't plan it out.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even though they did the math and they said this is gonna be six aircraft, and so they contracted for six aircraft to carry all this stuff.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't do the load plans properly, they're gonna show up in theater and they're not gonna have what they need to do the mission because they haven't thought it through.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's part of the urgent, or that's part of the important, but not urgent.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: If they haven't done those load plans and all of a sudden the aircraft are on the ramp, now you're staring at urgent and still important, but what's probably gonna get mixed up in that is the not important, but it's still urgent.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's the not important and not urgent, where people are just throwing in things.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've been on enough deployments where you get to the other side, I'm like, how did we find room in the load plan for those lounge chairs or for that television or whatever it is?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And those are nice things when you're deployed, but are they absolutely urgent for the mission?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm getting out the door in 72 hours, I probably don't need those right away.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are other things that I do need right away that are more important.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at the Eisenhower matrix, I think forces you to ask myself, okay, am I cubing out or am I grossing out?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Am I putting the right things on the right load plans and using those aircraft?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm using my time appropriately.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love the Eisenhower matrix.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: That was one of my big tools that I used as a squadron commander.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: I tried to get my unit, I wanted to, for my unit to, I think, run perfectly, it would live in Quadr two.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because Quadr one, the urgent and important stuff, you don't mind bouncing into quadrant one to answer a question, but if you've lived in quadrant two, you've done all the planning so that answer can be given rather quickly.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting, as we talk about at the outset of the show, that in smaller airplanes, you gross out before you cube out.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it's because that space and that weight is at such a premium, you actually have to really think about what you're gonna do and what you're gonna carry.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Where in a C5, it's not so much you just start throwing stuff in the airplane and you get what you get.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think if we think of ourselves as human beings, whether we're leaders and managers or we're just managing our own time, if we think of ourselves as the smaller airplanes, you know, we get overloaded a lot faster.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, our schedule gets filled out and overloaded with things that maybe aren't the best, maybe aren't the right way to move forward.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so if we are able to take that time to sit back and really plan and make our time worthwhile.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm trying to think, was it Ben Franklin who said that you know, something about time being of the essence, and so don't squander your time.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think about how much time I actually really spend in quarter four or three, especially these days, I spend quite a bit.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: But is that the best use of my time?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that as you think about these problems that we had in the airplanes and how those translate into somebody who's managing a group of people, you really have to ask yourself, you know, am I using the time and resources that I've been given?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: And really, your people's time is the biggest resource that they have.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: I started using my own version of the Eisenhower matrix when I was a a young captain in the Air Force.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was feeling overwhelmed with a tremendous number of things that were being asked of me as an aircraft commander and as a flight commander and some other things.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll never forget, because commanders generally think just like any other leader, a lot of commanders just say, Hey, you know, Rob, you need to get this done this week.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I had planned out my week in a block by block to get all the things done that needed to be done in a quadrant two type of way.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would tell my commander, he would say, Okay, Rob, this needs to be done by the end of the week.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say to him, Okay, sir, what do you want to push back now?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: What's not gonna get done this week that I originally planned on?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Well, nothing.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Everything has to get done.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, sir, it doesn't work that way.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I sat down with one particular squadron commander and walked him through my plan.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Here's my schedule for the week.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so what do you want?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: So finally, after about two months of working with him, he would come to me and go, Rob, I got a hot one for you.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta get this done by Friday.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: And this means that these two other projects you can push back the next week.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: All right, sir, sounds great.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: That fits what I needed to do, and that helped him understand that I, as a resource, was not unlimited.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Just like weight or space in an airplane, not unlimited.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that description you just gave, it makes me think of if we're task focused instead of vision focused, if we are focusing on the problems and the tasks that are staring us in the face, a lot of times we can get a lot of work done and never get closer to our vision, never get closer to where we want to go because we're just knocking things off our list and we're being very efficient at it, and yet we're not taking the time to say, did I really want that there?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, did I really need to do that?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Was that really the priority, or was it just something I wanted to put a check mark in that box on my to-do list so I could feel self-fulfilled and you know, self-actualized that I got that one thing done.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's not going to move us towards our vision.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of times, and I've lived off of to-do lists and planners and mission statements, really my entire adult life.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Every once in a while, I'll get fixated on the to-do list part of it.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then I catch myself and I step back and I say, I don't need a to-do list.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I need a vision.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I need that clear vision.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I have a clear vision, I actually almost don't need the granular to-do list because I know where I'm going.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I know things, and I may not be as efficient doing it that way, but I'm going to be more effective because I've got my eye on the target, I know where I'm going, and I'm working towards that.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm knocking off things and I'm taking care of things that are moving me towards that target.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, using the Eisenhower matrix, if I actually plan through with the vision in mind and say, how do I stay in quadrant two?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: What is most important to me?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do I fill my schedule with quadrant two?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'm going to be so much more, then I'm going to be not only effective, but efficient as I move things around and put them on my schedule.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So how often do we fill our schedule?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really a question for everybody who's listening, everybody who's joined us here, is how often do I fill my schedule with those tasks?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And how often do I fill my schedule with those events that when all is said and done, I'm like, well, that didn't do anything for me.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: That didn't help me one bit.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was just busy work.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was just me spinning my wheel so I could feel like I've accomplished something and yet not doing anything.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, you can equate it to how many times do we go to the gym?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I'm not sure really what I want to work on today, so I'm just gonna ride the bike for 30 minutes, and then I'm going to, I think I'll wander over and do some bench press or something like that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of having a disciplined approach to exercise, asking yourself, okay, I want a healthy body.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where are my shortcomings?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do I need to work on in order to do the activities in my life that I need to do?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then working towards those activities.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: All of us do it to some level or another where we have that busy list and we're constantly doing what we think we should be doing with stuff that sounds good, and yet it's not moving us in any way, shape, or form closer to our target.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and in that case, the question you've asked yourself is am I cubing out before I gross out?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Am I filling up my space and time with things that look great and makes it look like I'm doing a lot of work, but I'm really not moving the stuff that's most important.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the weightier matters, you know, to move that analogy a little bit more, focusing on the weightier matters.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's actually a cool feeling when I'm, because I've seen this before, I've had this before in a big aircraft when I've got this huge cargo bay and I've only got two pallet positions and I'm grossed out, I'm I've reached my max gross weight, and yet I still have cavernous room in that cargo compartment.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: The loadmaster loves that because it's less to tie down.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a form F, which is your weight and balance form.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a simpler form F that he has to work on because it's not six pallet positions or 18 pallet positions, just a couple of pallet positions.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so he checks those pallets, he makes sure they're tied down properly, he does the paperwork, and his life is easier.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he has all this space for thinking time.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: He has all this space for where it's not cluttered by stuff, by somebody's stuff that they're trying to take to a deployed area that really doesn't matter and doesn't contribute to the fight at all.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And for anyone who's deployed, we've all seen exactly that.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And for anyone who's looked at, who's worked in an office, I promise you, you've seen that kind of an environment where time is wasted and spaces filled because you feel like you have to fill that space.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And The end result is you don't have time to just kind of think through to reflect on where I am because you're taking care of the most important things in whatever it is that your mission is.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you're letting, more often than not, you're allowing other people to fill your schedule.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I would like the audience to ask themselves is are you cubing out before you gross out?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are you filling your life with stuff that may seem important but is not the most important before you focus on the important, the weightier matters?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are you scheduling and putting those weightier matters on the schedule first?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're grossing out your aircraft, you're, you know, putting your aircraft up to max gross weight because you're putting the most important things on first.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you just sticking stuff on the aircraft because it's sitting right next to you and somebody brought it to you and you're a pleaser, so you want to get it done, so you just take care of that.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not focusing on those weightier matters, then you're not in quadrant two.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not pre-planning those urgent issues so that when they are urgent, you've already thought it through and you've already got it planned out and you already know where it goes, then you're not living in quadrant two.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not gonna be able to live in quadrant two your entire life because your boss who supervises you, who writes your paycheck, and sometimes your boss is a three-year-old, is gonna show up and say, I need you to do this.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that three-year-old, your quadrant two plan may be get to get eight hours of sleep.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: That three-year-old is doing his best to make sure that never happens and making sure that your high priority item never happens.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you can hope that when he's a teenager or she's a teenager and sleeping until 10 o'clock, that you can find time to get that kind of sleep at that point when you're not worrying about having a teenager driving your car at that point.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So think about your life.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Am I cubing out or am I grossing out?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Am I focusing on what matters?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do that, you're gonna make better decisions, you're gonna make more timely decisions, and you're gonna live a more fulfilled life in whatever task it is that you're doing, whatever not task, but whatever role you're playing, you're gonna be better at it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna be more effective both for yourself and for those around you.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they say, wait a minute, I thought you said we could fit 10 guys on that aircraft, now you're telling me six.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're the expert, you're the expert of your own life, so focus on being the expert of your own life and focus on those important things, and you'll be better off.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us for another episode of Commander's Intent.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions for Rob and I about what in the world we were talking about, cube out versus gross out.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to talk more about airplanes, then go to AskDericnow.com and we'll have a further conversation about that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you want us to have a follow-on conversation about the Eisenhower matrix, about flying airplanes, about the things we loved, the things we didn't love about it, whatever it is, then we're happy to have that conversation.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, continue to join us.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, subscribe, and comment.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: It helps the show, it helps the algorithm, and it helps this show get to more people.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we would appreciate it if you do that.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And join us for upcoming shows so we can all become better decision makers for better results.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that's it for today's episode of Commander's Intent Podcast.
• 25:20
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• 25:25
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• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: So head on over to Commanders Intent Podcast.com and pick up a free copy of Derek's Leadership Guide and join us on the next episode.