One of the most influential books that I have learned from is the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. This exercise gives us some great insights and focus on how to manage your priorities and by doing this it will lead you to business success !
At the start of every week, write a two-by-two matrix on a blank sheet of paper where one side of the matrix says “urgent” and “not urgent” and the other side of the matrix says “important” and “not important.” Then, write all the things you want to do that week.
Let’s think of each quadrant:
Quadrant 1: Urgent-Important. These are the most pressing of tasks we’ll likely get to this week. These are the crises that erupt. The most pressing meetings or deadlines fall into this category. When we do fire-fighting, it’s all relating to stuff in this quadrant.
Quadrant 2: Not Urgent – Important. These are the things that matter in the long-term but will yield no tangible benefits this week or even this year. They are things we know we need to get to but probably will push off. It’s having a lunch with an important contact or client. Relationship-building. Some long-term planning. It could be attending a conference to learn about some new area that you’ve heard a little bit about and which sounds promising but might not pan out into anything.
Quadrant 3: Urgent – Not Important. These tasks are the biggest reason we’re not more successful in the long-term. They clog up our time today but, when we look back at these things at the end of the week, we’ll have to admit they were a waste of time. These are interruptions that happen, such as phone calls. These are poorly thought-out meetings that soak up our time, but which we have to attend because we already accepted the invite. These are other activities which we tell ourselves in the moment that we must do but — if we stopped ourselves to really think about — we’d realize they aren’t that important.
Quadrant 4: Not Urgent – Not Important. These things we do because we feel like we’re tired and need a break. It’s watching a mindless TV show at the end of the day. It’s checking and rechecking Facebook and Twitter during the day, because we think we might miss something. It mind be mindlessly eating potato chips, even though we’re not hungry. We prioritize these things in the moment and obviously derive some pleasure from them, but they are really not urgent or important. Yet, we’d be amazed how much time we waste in a given week on these tasks.
