What Do You Want To Be True?
I had a blinding flash of the obvious the other day: I realized why I’d been falling behind on my commitments and feeling more stressed out the last few weeks.
I’d fallen for the lure of the urgent important and been chasing shiny trinkets of faux productivity. And it wasn’t because I didn’t have enough time, although that would have been a convenient - and irresponsible - excuse. It was because instead of leading my schedule, I’d let myself by led by it.
Ever feel like you’re caught up in doing, but not sure if you’re doing what you should be doing? It’s scary to think we could be throwing all our time and energy into climbing a ladder, only to find at the top it’s been leaning on the wrong wall.
Luckily for me, I have a method I’ve used throughout the years to help me get back on track - fast.
The Urgent Isn’t Always Important
Stephen Covey, in his must-read book First Things First, outlined these 4 Quadrants. If you find your life spiraling out of control, you need to know the 4 Quadrants and why they’re important.
Quadrant 1 are the things in your life that are both urgent and important. Matters like deadline-driven projects and crises. We all have Q1 activities in our lives, but if you’re feeling burnt out, chances are you live here.
Quadrant 2 is full of things that are urgent but not important which could range from spending quality time with your family to regular exercise. They won’t enact urgency on you like a deadline but they’re the foundations a quality life is built on.
The more time you spend in Q2, planning, building up your strength, preparing, the less time you spend and the more effective you become in Q1.
Quadrant 3 is where the urgent but not important matters lie. Some phone calls, meetings, last minute appointments that seem urgent but are actually not important fall into Q3.
Quadrant 4 are where the frivolous not urgent and not important stuff is. Stoning out in front of the TV, not learning and doing anything is a Q4 activity.
It’s obvious we should be spending most of our time in Q1 & 2. Spending too much time in Q3 and Q4 robs you of your time, gives you stress and saps your ability to perform in real Q1 and Q3 activities.
Which quadrant do you think you’re spending most of your time right now?
Think about the answer in the meantime. In my next post I’ll reveal how to make the 4 Quadrants an even more useful tool for leading your life.
Getting Your Life On Track Series
Getting Your Life On Track Part 1
Getting Your Life On Track Part 2
Getting Your Life On Track Part 3
Getting Your Life On Track Part 4
Recommended Reading
First Things First : To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy
March 25th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I’ve always enjoyed the Franklin Company’s quadrant illustration. It is interesting that modern technology always seems to make it easier to work in quadrants 1, 3, and 4. Mobile email, cell phones, etc. give us access to everything that is urgent and trivial, but usually do very little to help us focus on being prepared.
In fact sometimes, they encourage us to not be prepared.
March 26th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Alvin, I sure know what you mean about getting off track. I tend to get so busy I lose track of what I’m accomplishing. Someone once said (don’t remember who): don’t confuse busyness with productivity. It helped me to put some evaluation time into my routine.
March 26th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Thanks for sharing. It’s good to have some sort of piority about the things we do. The quadrant will certainly help in sorting out and setting priorities to our work. We may not notice it but we mostly do things that are not the priority.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I guees being able to identify the things we do and setting priorities is the main idea. That’s what we need to do with our lives. We tend to spend more time doing things that are not urgent and not even important. It only reduces our time needed for other important and urgent activities.
March 30th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Spotted typos.. haha~ in Quadrant 2 should be important but not urgent and in Quadrant 3 urgent but not important
Anyway, thanks for the article, it always helps to remind me about things that I know but stop practicing.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Hello and thanks for contributing this post to the Living by Design Blog Carnival - it will be published there tomorrow.
with best wishes
Ananga Sivyer
November 4th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Hello, very nice site, keep up good job!
Admin good, very good.