Business Transition Consulting LLC

For articulating the two factors that define an activity, urgent and important, and using that concept to create the time management matrix containing four quadrants, I recommend the tried and true The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Understanding these quadrants provides a basis for time allocation that is easily applied and rewarding.

Quadrant I contains activities that are important and urgent – these activities create their own priority. Quadrant II activities are important and not urgent – this is the difficult category of activities, the ones that get postponed or ignored. Quadrant III activities are urgent but not important – because we tend to react to that which captures our attention these events are seductive users of most of our time. Quadrant IV activities being not important and not urgent also create their own priority. Time management then is not efficiency analysis or keeping logs of activity, but is the task of allocating time from Quadrant III activities to Quadrant II activities.

This analysis explains why we find it so difficult to take time to plan or execute difficult long term tasks. Simply saying no to Quadrant III activities and accomplishing some of the important activities in Quadrant II can change a life pattern. What a wonderful feeling it is to have the book written or the business plan completed, not to mention the very real rewards for those accomplishments.