Though Stephen Covey has made the notion of the four quadrants time analysis famous in his books and seminars, the idea really originated with Time Design, a time management products and consulting group. Regardless of the source, it s a concept that no manager can afford to forget, particularly one who may be new to the job.
Here s how it looks:
................................Important
......................................!
......................................!
......................................!
......................................!
Urgent ___________________________________ Not Urgent
......................................!
......................................!
......................................!
......................................!
..............................Not Important
So where do most of us spend our time? In the urgent quadrants, of course, because that s when somebody is breathing down our necks. In an ideal world, no manager would ever spend even a minute on not important tasks. But when trivia has been procrastinated for too long, there comes a moment when it just has to be done, because we didn t speak up and delegate or sidestep it in a timely fashion. And so a tremendous amount of time is wasted because we didn t prioritize and take appropriate action soon enough.
None of us should spend a minute in the Not Important/Not Urgent quadrant, because frivolous time-wasters fall into that category, and there is still the opportunity to hand them off or say, “No.”
Unfortunately, the much neglected and most important is the Important/Not Urgent quadrant, the place where we take time to ponder, research and collaborate about strategies for pulling off our most important projects. This is the area for our best thinking, and almost all of us let urgent stuff, some important and some truly irrelevant, steal the time we desperately need to be giving to this quadrant.
Therefore, when allotting your precious time to tasks and projects for the week, here s an assignment you must not ignore: Set aside at least one hour per day, a minimum of five for the week, for strategizing about projects and tasks that are important, but not urgent. If you do that for even a month, you ll begin to see real progress in terms of clearer thinking, stronger results and better feedback from the folks above and below you on the ladder.
