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The Leverage Audit: Are You Hunting Antelope or Chasing Mice?

June 19, 2025

The Leverage Audit: Are You Hunting Antelope or Chasing Mice?

🕒 Read time: 3 minutes

Welcome to The Pressure Zone, a weekly newsletter with tools and mental models for those who play life on hard mode.

Today’s Zone Brief

This week, I'll show you a simple 5-minute weekly audit to track where your efforts actually go.

The framework categorizes your time into three buckets: Antelope (high leverage), Field Mice (busy work), and Carcass Dragging (necessary grind). Most people are shocked to discover how little time they spend hunting antelope.

Words I Keep Coming Back To

I've been thinking about energy allocation lately, and this quote keeps hitting me.

A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelopes are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. … So ask yourself at the end of the day, ‘Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?'

— Newt Gingrich, from “Buck Up, Suck Up . . . and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets from the War Room” by James Carville and Paul Begala

Framework: The Leverage Audit

This metaphor inspired me to create a simple weekly audit to track where my energy actually goes.

At the end of each week, take 5 minutes to review your calendar from the past week and categorize your activities into three buckets:

Antelope (High Leverage)

These are the highest ROI activities you could be doing.

They have the potential to fundamentally change your trajectory, open new opportunities, or deliver outsized impact.

They are often uncomfortable because they involve risk, creativity, and going outside your comfort zone.

Examples include:

Writing and publishing that article you’ve been avoiding
Reaching out to your dream mentor
Launching a new product or service

Field Mice (Busy Work)

These activities may feel productive in the moment, but they deliver minimal long-term value relative to the time invested.

They give you the illusion of progress while keeping you safely in your comfort zone.

Examples include:

Checking email every 10 minutes
Reorganizing your files for the third time this week
Attending meetings where you are not essential

Carcass Dragging (Necessary Grind)

These are necessary maintenance activities that keep your world functioning but don’t create new value.

Unlike field mice, these are genuinely necessary, but they are not where breakthroughs happen.

Examples include:

Processing invoices and basic bookkeeping
Routine administrative tasks and maintenance work
Mandatory compliance work

The Audit: What percent of your time was spent in each bucket? Most people are shocked to discover how little time they spend on antelopes.

Once you know where your time went, here's what to do about it:

Antelope - prioritize and do now
Field mice - eliminate
Carcass dragging - delegate if possible, batch and schedule if not

The Pressure Test

Ask yourself: Did you spend this week hunting antelope or field mice?

Did you finally ship the thing that scares you?
Did you take a swing that could change your trajectory?
Or did you just answer emails, tweak slides, and reorganize your files?

What’s one antelope you’ve been avoiding?

Name it, then block 2 hours on your calendar this week to hunt it.

Bonus: From the Web

Here are a few links I've come across that you may find interesting. Please let me know if you’d like to see more of these!

📈 Turn Zoom Gloom Into Zoom Bloom With These 7 Productivity Tips (#4 is the hardest for me)

🙌 Secrets From Psychology That Make People Respect You (using Mad Men’s Don Draper as a case study)

I’d love to know how this newsletter is landing. What part of this week’s mental rep stuck with you, or what would you want me to explore more deeply next time?

Just hit reply. I read and respond to every message, and your feedback shapes the next issue.