“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
(Pablo Picasso)
Imagine that you have the perfect 24 hours to plan (money no object) – where and how would you choose to spend that time? Would you be waking to watch the sun rise over a tropical island or would you open your eyes to see a roaring fire in a mountain lodge? How would the rest of your day unfold?
If you haven’t already, spend a moment or two thinking about how you’d use those 24 hours.
When you have done that imagine that the one person you’d love to spend some time with has un-expectantly given you a call and said that they had an hour spare that day and would love to spend it with you – what do you do? You have already got your 24 hours planned out – do you say thanks but no thanks I already have plans or do you drop something else out of your perfect day?
After all there is only 24 hours in a day, that’s 1440 minutes – no more, no less. I came across some research a while back from the David Allen company that claimed that if you were to stop now and only work on the things that are on your radar of things to do on average you would have 300-500 hours worth of stuff to do.
So how to decide what to do now or leave until tomorrow? There are lots of different time management theories and techniques. Perhaps one of the most well known being Roger and Rebecca Merrill “time quadrants” made famous by Stephen R Covey including it in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
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This week I invite you to play with their time quadrants and see how it works for you. If you haven’t already, grab a piece of paper and pen.
1. Divide the paper into 4 quarters.
2. Label the quarter that is top left, quadrant 1 – Urgent and important
3. Label the quarter that is top right, quadrant 2 – Important and not urgent.
4. Label the quarter that is bottom left, quadrant 3, – Urgent but not important
5. Label the quarter that is bottom right, quadrant 4 – not urgent and not important.
The Merrill’s theory is that truly effective time management happens when you work on things that fall into quadrant 2, important and not urgent.
Which may seem counter intuitive – after all surely it’s the urgent and important stuff that really needs to be done. And sometimes it feels like everything that you have on a “to do” list may feel that it fits into quarter 1 and not quarter 2.
There are a couple of things that I’ll say if you feel that most of your things fall into quarter 1 – firstly if you take a moment to take a breath and step back go through each task and check if it really does fit there or if you’ve just been telling yourself a scary story to motivate yourself to do something? (If so does it work to motivate you? Or does that lead to more stress?)
Are there actually any real world consequences if you don’t do that task today? If not then it really doesn’t belong in the urgent quadrant.
The second thing I’ll say is that you can use these quadrants as a tool to prioritise and choose what you want to focus upon and what action to take. You may find that when you first use this that you have more things fall in quarter 1 than you will have if you carry on using the quadrants.
To begin with, to enable you to start prioritising items in the 2nd quadrant, see how you can choose to do less from quadrants 3 and 4 (the not important ones.)
Let’s use this with an example from your own life:
6. What one thing could you do in your life (personally and/or professionally) that would make a tremendous positive difference if you did it consistently?
It’s your answer and it’ll be unique to you – maybe it’s going for a walk, perhaps it’s building a relationship with potential customers. The important thing is that if you choose to prioritise this, it would make a positive difference.
Your answer to that question is a perfect example of what fits in quadrant 2 – important and not urgent.
7. What is one thing that you do that would fit into the not important and not urgent quadrant? Perhaps it’s watching TV or checking your email every 15 minutes.
One word of caution here – look at the results that each item produces. If there is something that you have in the “not important” categories, but as a direct result your energy and well being benefits, then you may want to reconsider if it really is not important.
For example, if after a your morning session at the gym, or a 10 minute quiet time you are much more effective then the days when you don’t do that, consider how important that really is for you.
8. Just for fun this week take just 15 minutes a day (or whatever time frame feels right for you) and commit to replacing that time from an activity from quadrant 4 (or 3 if you prefer) with you answer to 6. (What one thing could you do in your life (personally and/or professionally) that would make a tremendous positive difference if you did it consistently?)
9. I invite you to play with the Merrill’s time quadrants this week and see the difference it makes for you. Remember this is not about doing the things you think you “should”, it’s about using methods to make a positive difference for your life.
Have a week full of time that you choose to spend
Love
Jen
This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com