I´ve wanted to write a blog post about this topic for a while, as I believe it´s important. But, because it´s not urgent, I´ve been pushing it out... Which is exactly the crux of the matter.
This is what´s called Eisenhower matrix, and if you´ve been into personal development stuff for some time, I´m sure you´ll be familiar with it already. It is featured in many books and articles on "time management" (which, in reality, should be called "priority management", because we can´t manage time as such; what we can manage is what we use time for).
It´s a simple proposal: first, acknowledge that we´re always going to have more things to do than time to do them; and therefore we need to prioritize. And second, evaluate the level of urgency and importance of each task, and based on that, decide what to do first, what to do next and what not to do.
- Tasks that are urgent and important require immediate action, so it makes sense that they´re the highest priority. This is a type of work we could categorize as "putting out fires": we must do it as soon as possible so that it can be finished on time, because if it´s not, there are clear negative consequences.
- The Important and not urgent tasks get us closer to our goals without having a specific deadline. This is related to strategic work, and the key here is to plan for it: schedule time on the calendar and dedicate time intentionally; otherwise, there´s a risk of postponing it for too long or never getting around to it.
- The urgent and not important ones are tasks that keep us busy but don´t give us much value in the sense that they don´t help us achieve our goals; they actually tend to get us off track. Paperwork, interruptions, requests from others... Ideally, we want to delegate or automate these as much as possible to avoid them being too time-consuming.
- And lastly, the not urgent and not important tasks are all those distractions we often fall in and get no value out of; they´re true "time sinks", and the best we can do is eliminate them. (Note: here, I´m referring to a million different ways we humans procrastinate and look for a hollow and superficial escape from reality. Not to be confused with taking time to truly rest, practice hobbies, connect with ourselves, look after our relationships, etc., which would fall into category number 2.)
What do you think of this system? If you´ve never used it, or if you haven´t used it for a while, I encourage you to find out how much time you typically spend in each of these quadrants, especially if you´re watching the days and months go by and you´re not making progress towards where you want to be. Do you spend all day putting out fires? Or performing tasks for others when they could be handled differently? Or maybe wasting time with distractions that don´t truly fulfil you?
I myself am currently in the process of adjusting a few things; I badly need it...
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