How I Prioritize Work With The Momentum Matrix [WRAP 219]

I hope my fellow Americans had a great July 4th holiday 🇺🇸

I spent the weekend at my old summer camp and had an amazing time. My son was there for the first time, but they let the rest of us hang around for fireworks and DANG was it a good show 🎇

Honestly, it was just the break I needed. With 4 kids and running the business, I haven’t taken a whole lot of time off the past couple years. And even when I do—like the week in the mountains—I’m still taking care of clients and staying on top of the most important tasks.

But one of the things I’ve been journaling about recently was how there’s a difference between maintenance work and momentum work. Because for those days in the mountains I realized I could do most of my client work in just a few hours a day spend the rest of the day helping at camp and having fun with the other kids.

I kept tinkering with the idea and came up with the concept of the Momentum Matrix—and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

💡 One Big Idea: The Momentum Matrix

So you’ve probably heard of the Eisenhower Matrix—a 2x2 grid that splits work into Urgent/Not and Important/Not. This is a helpful guide for task triage, deciding what is Urgent and Important then tackling those tasks first.

The problem is the Eisenhower Matrix isn’t great for understanding the direction your tasks were taking you in, or if they contributed to a larger project/goal. Personally, I started to get frustrated with this guide doing client work because everything felt (and usually was) urgent and important.

The more I did that work, the further I got from where my OMG Goals [1] and WRAP Reviews [2] kept telling me was important—making better YouTube videos and being a Creator, not just an Operator for other people.

See, Maintenance Work is what I need to do to keep the bills paid, clients and customers happy, and provide for my family. It’s good work for good money, but it’s not what I want to still be doing in 5-10 years.

Then I have Momentum Work. This includes consistent YouTube videos, figuring out Reels, writing newsletters, trying ads, and more. It’s not paying as well as client work (for now), but when I let it slide for too long I lose momentum.

There’s one risk and one big challenge with sticking to Maintenance Work—even if it’s comfortable and profitable.

The risk is that I’m staying busy and productive… but kinda stuck. The business grows a bit each year, but for it to really scale I need to hire and spend more time on business development. I did that 3 years ago and didn’t like it.

The challenge with Momentum Work is that it doesn’t demand anything from me. Maintenance Work does in the form of emails, Slack messages, launch dates, and deadlines. Momentum Work has to be prioritized, acted upon, and published without anyone pushing you to do it.

So that’s how I’m thinking about my work for the rest of the year. When I look at a task or project, I ask one question: is this keeping everything running (Maintenance), or building the life I actually want (Momentum)?

Both matter, but only one of them gets me closer to being a full-time Creator instead of an Operator. And that tells me whether I’m protecting [3] enough time for YouTube, newsletters, and the work that can eventually flip my business from client focused to content focused.

I’m working on a video about this to explain it in more detail. There’s a second half of the matrix—Tasks and Projects—that shows whether the work you’re doing is a one-off or building toward something bigger. That’s the part I’ll break down in the video. In the meantime, if you read this and something clicked for you—reply to this email and let me know.

📹 One Video to Watch: Pocket Notebook Setup

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My brother Mark has written before about his pocket notebook system, and this week Steven Foster put it to the test in his own video. It's a fun one to watch as I’ve helped Mark with his notebooks and newsletter—but Stephen's take on intention and keeping focus with simple analog tools stands on its own. If you want to get a different perspective on a system that lives in your pocket instead of another app, watch here.

📚 What I’m Reading

My favorite article of the past couple weeks is Trung Phan’s profile on Taylor Sheridan—the showrunner behind Yellowstone, 1883, Landman, Mayor of Kingstown, and Lioness, plus the writer of Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River.

What stood out to me is that Sheridan spent 15 years stuck in Maintenance work as an actor before betting everything on Momentum work at age 40.

Sheridan knew Momentum wouldn’t show up and present him with a great opportunity, so he manufactured the demands himself. He wrote Sicario without anyone asking him to. He bought a $350 million dollar ranch in Texas (and has to pay for it) when he could have just coasted on Yellowstone money the rest of his life.

If you want to see what happens when someone makes their Momentum work non-negotiable, read it [4].

I just finished Between Two Fires, a middle ages horror novel about the plague. Sounds fun, right? I’ll say it’s not too scary, think Stephen King in The Stand or The Eyes of the Dragon or a medieval zombie story.

It’s the story of an excommunicated knight who finds an orphan girl that talks to angels. They journey across France unmasking the devils who have come to Earth during the plague. The story has great pacing, I was rarely bored for more than a couple pages.

Thanks for reading the WRAP! Excited to share the Momentum Matrix video with you soon.

Later,

Matt

References

1. Learn more about OMG Goal Setting.
2. Learn more about WRAP Reviews.
3. Protecting is the “P” in the GAP Method.
4. If you want to go deeper on Sheridan, watch his appearances on the Bill Simmons Podcast, Joe Rogan, or read the Hollywood Reporter profile (it’s long!).