Lifehacker in Chief: Slate

Quoted via Slate:

Last July, Barack Obama had a private conversation with the leader of England's Tory Party, David Cameron, that accidentally took place in front of an open microphone. Their talk provided a major league window into the difficulties politicians face in finding time to think critically about the things that presumably attracted them to politics in the first place: the issues.

"Should we be successful," Obama tells Cameron, paraphrasing something he heard from a former White House staffer, "the most important thing ... is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you're doing is thinking." Both men then agree such chunks of time are rare. Cameron tells Obama he refers to the stream of meetings he faces daily as "the dentist waiting room" and that his staff stuffs his agenda full of appointments.

"And that's when," replies Obama, "you start making mistakes or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of; I think you lose a feel ..." "Your feeling," Cameron interrupts. "And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions." more