- Important and Urgent (crises, deadline-driven projects)
- Important, Not Urgent (preparation, prevention, planning, relationships)
- Urgent, Not Important (interruptions, many pressing matters)
- Not Urgent, Not Important (trivia, time wasters)
Quadrant II is the hardest to master. It contains projects and tasks that you know are important, but it’s hard because the projects often have no clear deadlines or structures. It’s up to you to provide those and adhere to them, and that takes discipline (i.e., picking a time management system and using it daily).
Try taking your to do list and slotting each item into a quadrant section. If you don’t have any quadrant II items, that’s a red flag. Ditto if everything is in quadrants I and III. For the rest of the week, I’ll post about Covey’s complementary theory of rocks, pebbles, sand and water, which can help you decide how to balance your quadrants.
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» What Are Your Rocks? from ProductivityGoal
Last week I wrote about the Pickle Jar Theory of time management, which is a riff on Stephen Covey’s "Big Rocks" theory. It involves labeling all you have to do as a rock, a pebble, sand or water, the... [Read More]
Tracked on: May 16, 2006 10:36 AM | Permalink to Trackback