ARE YOU DOING WHAT MATTERS?

Derek Hagen
7 hours ago
4 min read

Hand-drawn 2x2 grid of important versus doing, labeling four quadrants like doing important things and doing unimportant things.

❝The way you spend your days is the way you spend your life.❞ -Annie Dillard

Knowing what matters is only half the question. The other half is whether you're actually doing it.

Most people would say they know what matters to them. Ask them to describe a typical Tuesday and a different picture emerges.

I'm no different. I've thought about this enough to know where I stand.

I spend more on outdoor gear than a lot of people. I pay for a club membership because competing and moving my body matters to me. Neither of those feels like a sacrifice. They feel like alignment. These are the things that I'm doing that matter to me.

I don't think much about fashion. I rarely do expensive dinners. I don't care much about the car I drive. Those things genuinely don't matter to me, so I don't spend much time on them.

But, sometimes I spend time on things that don't actually matter. I monkey around on my phone more than I should. I'll spend twenty minutes on something that wasn't worth five. Everyone has a version of this. Mine is embarrassingly ordinary. I'm doing things that don't matter.

Then there are things that matter to me that I'm not doing enough of. Staying connected with friends is the honest answer. I value those relationships, but my calendar doesn't always show it.

VALUES AND PRIORITIES

Before you can close any gap, you have to define both edges of it: what matters and what you're actually doing.

Not everything that feels important actually is. Some of what we treat as important was handed to us by our parents, our culture, our peers, or the Joneses we've been unconsciously keeping up with. Separating genuine values from inherited ones is harder than it sounds, and more important than most people realize. The unimportant category is as clarifying as the important one.

Hand-drawn vertical line labeled important at top and not important at bottom, unlabeled otherwise.

The doing scale is the honest mirror. Not what you say you're doing, but what you're actually doing. The calendar doesn't lie. The bank statement doesn't lie. A typical Tuesday doesn't lie.

Hand-drawn crosshair with axes labeled important, not important, not doing, and doing, quadrants left blank.

Put the two together, and you get four quadrants:

Upper right: Important and Doing. This is where you want to be.

Lower left: Not Important and Not Doing. This is also good.

Hand-drawn crosshair with upper-right and lower-left quadrants shaded blue, labeled doing important things and not doing unimportant things.

The other quadrants are:

Upper left: Important and Not Doing. This is a problem.

Lower right: Not Important and Doing. This is also a problem.

Hand-drawn crosshair with upper-left and lower-right quadrants shaded orange, labeled not doing important things and doing unimportant things.

INTENTIONAL LIVING

A helpful exercise is to think about the things that are important to you and honestly assess how much you're doing them.

Start with the vertical axis. How important is this particular thing to you?

Then consider the horizontal axis. How much or how little are you actually doing it?

Place a dot for each thing you're evaluating.

Hand-drawn crosshair with blue, green, and red squares plotted at different points, labeled where you are.

Then overlay where you'd like to be for each one.

Hand-drawn crosshair with colored squares and circles plotted near each other, arrows labeled where you want to be.

Draw a line connecting where you are to where you want to be. The length of that line is the gap. Longer lines mean more distance between your current reality and your ideal. Shorter lines mean better alignment.

Hand-drawn crosshair with colored lines connecting squares to circles across all four quadrants, showing the size of each gap.

The visual makes it easy to see where the biggest opportunities are: which gaps are worth closing, which dots are already where you want them, and which things you're spending time on that don't belong on the grid at all.

Hand-drawn crosshair with the same connecting lines and an arrow-circled label reading close these gaps.

This questionnaire is an instrument that taps into ten valued domains of living. It assesses the perceived importance of each of these ten life domains and the degree to which you are living in accordance with this perceived importance.

ALIGN YOUR RESOURCES

Start by looking at where you're already doing well. Where are your dots in the upper right: things that are important to you and that you're actually doing?

Give yourself permission to stay there, spend more there, or use money to protect that time.

Hand-drawn crosshair with a circled label reading keep these in the upper-left and X marks in two other quadrants.

Then look at where improvement is possible. Are there areas where you're spending time and money on things that aren't actually important to you? Maybe you're doing what you think you're supposed to do. Maybe you haven't thought about it. And are there things you know matter to you that you haven't been doing? That's where the resources need to go.

Hand-drawn crosshair with red X marks and arrows pointing toward a circled label reading move these.

Most financial plans are built around saving and accumulating. Viewing your life through this lens asks a different question: not how much you have, but what you're using it for. Whether the accumulation itself is keeping you from doing the things that matter.

How you spend your days is how you spend your life.

You get one life; live intentionally.

Interested in more like this? Subscribe and get updates sent directly to you.

If you know someone else who would benefit from reading this, please share it with them. Spread the word, if you think there's a word to spread.

To share via text, social media, or email, simply copy and paste the following link:

meaningfulmoney.life/post/are-you-doing-what-matters