What's up, everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.

Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,

the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,

a team, or a new product. So we're doing things a little bit differently this week. We dropped

our third-ever mini-series, which means you got two episodes Monday, two episodes Wednesday,

and two episodes today. You're listening to the fifth episode in the series,

a Founders Journal classic, and be sure to check out today's second episode on the power of leverage,

as well as both of Monday and Wednesday's episodes. This week's theme is mental models. We're going

to talk about some of the most powerful tools you can use to sharpen your thinking,

prioritizing, and decision-making. Many of these tools have been made famous by leaders like

Elon Musk and Dwight Eisenhower. And in today's classic episode, originally published on August 16th,

2021, I talk about how to prioritize. Let's hop into it.

I have this weird thing where I love studying great workers. Just yesterday I was reading this article

by First Round Capital about the CEO of levels who tracked how he spent his time for the first two

years of building his business, and I found it fascinating how he thought about allocating his time

across a week. Maybe it's because I have my own insecurities about the way in which I work,

or maybe it's because I realize how time truly is our scarceest resource, and I have an

appreciation for other people's abilities to maximize the value of their time. But what always

impresses me most about them is their ability to juggle a dozen things gracefully while pushing

forward the most important projects in a high quality way. So I'm going to be honest with you.

I got selfish this episode. I wanted to better understand how the best workers prioritized their

work so effectively in hopes that I could become a better prioritizer myself. This led me down a

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