A few years ago I became very interested in personal development and as a result became a fan of Stephen Covey, he is one of the great contributors of the field. I’ve read his book the seven habits of highly effective people quite a number of times and find his chapter on habit 3; put first things first, one of the most useful. I particularly draw a lot from his time management matrix which utilises four quadrants in which you can categorise any task / chunk of time.
The matrix outlines that we spend our time in one of these four quadrants:
- Quadrant 1 is important and urgent
- Quadrant 2 is important and not urgent
- Quadrant 3 is not important and urgent
- Quadrant 4 is not important and not urgent
Quadrant 1 obviously will always take precedent and usually emergencies and crisis’s fall into this category. What the book advocates though is that Quadrant 2 is where you should be spending most of your time, and if spent correctly a lot of Quadrant 2 activities will result in limiting Quadrant 1 emergencies from occurring (and urgent quadrant 3 issues cropping up). For instance exercise is a quadrant 2 activity, if we spend time consistently exercising we will be more healthy and hopefully reduce the risk of emergencies and crisis’s that are health related. Planning, relationship building and preparation are also quadrant 2 activities for the same reason, if you spend time on the things that are important, the other quadrants won’t grow and need your attention/ consume you.
People who spend their time in the other quadrants are fire fighting and need to make time for the quadrant 2 tasks and activities because if they don’t they’ll simply never find the time too. Generally the way to do this would be to first identify what is important to you personally (your quadrant 1 and 2 activities), then to learn to say no to everything that doesn’t fall into those two quadrants (eliminating quadrant 3 and 4 tasks).
Once you have a clear vision and you can achieve this you will start to live a much more balanced life.