A Tool to Help You Prioritize ‘Everything’
“At 6 o’clock in the evening,
sitting at my desk I am wondering.
Why is the time always running?
An unfinished list of tasks is never comforting!What did I do wrong?
Why is my to-do list still pending?”
Be it related to our technical projects or to those long shopping lists, I am sure same happens to most of us. When you have a large workload and actions coming at you left, right and center, it can be difficult to keep your cool and not panic! Despite putting our best efforts, some ‘to-do lists’ seem just impossible and we eventually pay the price physically and emotionally when the time is less and stress is too much.
Well the way to tackle a “to-do list” is not to whittle away at it, it’s more like running it through a processor and determining priorities and what really needs to be done and what just doesn’t. We often squeeze everything on our ‘To do list’, trust me everything is not always Urgent and Important.
Among the time management tools and concepts available to us, the urgent-important matrix (made famous by former president Eisenhower and Dr. Stephen Covey) is one of the most helpful one.
This matrix helps you to manage your time, organize your actions and complete everything on time without feeling stressed out.
As we can see the matrix consists of four quadrants. The trick is to write down the list of all of your actions, no matter how big or small. Then plot them on this matrix deciding what’s urgent and important, urgent and not important, not urgent but important or not urgent and not important. This certainly helps you get clear about your values and priorities. You’ll realize that some of what you thought was urgent actually isn’t, and that “importance” requires some serious self-reflection.
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
The above image should help understand all the quadrants better, following is a little description to help further:
- Urgent and important actions: actions that are time sensitive and important. These are actions that need to be completed at the soonest possible moment. Not completing them will have significant negative consequences, so make them your priority.
- Urgent and not important actions: actions that are time sensitive but of low importance. Set a time/day in your diary to take care of them en mass.
- Not urgent but important actions: actions such as planning, preparation, goal setting. In other words: actions that are important for a long-term goal that aren’t urgent but that are important.
- Not urgent and not important actions: low priority actions such as non-essential meetings and minor issues. Delegate or eliminate as many of these actions as possible.
Using the description decide what each of your actions are and plot them on the matrix.
This matrix has helped me several times & I believe it will really help you to manage your time and ensure you’re on the ball!
References:
