“Simplify Your Workday in 7 Days”

How to spend the rest of your workday

4 types of tasks

All of the time for our tasks, projects, etc. in any area of life can be divided into 4 segments. Anything we do will fall in some of these 4 segments:

1. Important and Urgent
2. Important and Not Urgent
3. Not Important and Urgent
4. Not Important and Not Urgent

This method is said to have been used by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower for making decisions and allocating time. Later on, Steven R. Covey popularized it in his bestseller 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Q1: Important and Urgent

This is our “crisis and fire fighting” segment, when we need to put out fires, manage crises, act immediately.

Examples for Q1: crises, deadlines, some meetings, projects, client problems, boss’s requests

We MUST do these actions. No excuses. They are important, because they help us move closer to our goals, but they are often unplanned or unwanted.

Q2: Important and Not Urgent

This is our “prevention and growth” segment.

Examples for Q2: planning, preparation process, creating preventive systems, building relationships, personal growth, relaxation. Your most important task from previous Lessons falls into this category. Taking this course is in this segment too.

Eventually, we need to spend most of our time here. This requires a change in mindset – thinking long-term and preventively. We often neglect these important tasks and issues, because they’re not urgent (yet!) and we tend to spend more time on things that require our immediate attention.

We need to schedule important things intentionally and do them while they’re not urgent, and develop systems and processes to prevent things from becoming urgent.

Q3: Not Important and Urgent

This is your “illusion of importance” segment.

Examples for Q3: Interruptions by colleagues, some phone calls, some emails, some requests from partners, certain meetings

These activities cannot be scheduled ahead of time. They come without warning and are hard to ignore, since urgency demands our attention. But these activities are rarely really important and they rarely help us to progress toward our goals and highest priorities.

We need to find a quick way to deal with distractions.

Q4: Not Important and Not Urgent

This is our “procrastination and waste of time” segment. Sometimes it’s because we don’t want to tackle a complex or unpleasant task, or we don’t have the motivation to do what’s important.

Examples for Q4: time wasters and time killers, social media, games, watching TV, surfing the Internet, coffee breaks.

Don’t spend any time here at all, unless:

• Your daily work is closely connected to social media.
• You have a break between finishing an important tasks and starting another one, and you use these activities as a reward :). In that case, they become part of your Q2 activities.

Where to spend your time

The majority of people, especially in the corporate world, spend most of their time in Q1, Q3, and Q4, for different reasons. But you’re in a different position now and can change that in your situation. Your ultimate aim – spend at least 70% of time in Q2, 20% in Q1 and 10% in Q3.

You achieve this aim in 2 leaps:

1. You need to start focusing on tasks in Q1 and Q2 by getting rid of Q4 and resolving Q3 activities and tasks quickly.
2. After that, your main focus will be to spend the majority of your time in Q2, moving from “fire fighting” (Q1) toward creating preventive actions and systems (Q2).

Doing this will enable you to avoid stress and spend less time at work, while dramatically increasing your effectiveness and productivity. Don’t try to do everything at once – follow incremental steps. And you already got started by completing previous lessons and allocating time block for your most important task as early in a day as possible. That’s a huge step!

This task might take longer than 30 minutes of your time, but it’s worth it.

1) Have your most important goal/-s in front of you to guide your in your decisions.

2) Take your list from Lesson 2 (everything that requires your attention for the next 1-3 months, related to the most important goal). You can update it with other tasks that you did not list.

3) Define the level of importance for each task

For each task, ask the following questions:

• Is this task really important?
• Does it contribute to overall success and to reaching the most important goals?
• How did this task make the “requires my attention” list?

Sometimes, we’re moving at a fast pace through our days and don’t have time to think about what we’re doing and why.

Continue to the 4th step only with those tasks about which you can answer in the affirmative to these questions above for “important” tasks.

Don’t give any attention at this point to those tasks about which you cannot give affirmative answers. It’s not their time yet.

4) Define Urgency

• How urgent is this task or activity?
• Do I have a strict deadline for this particular task or step, or strict deadlines for the next related tasks or steps?
• Does this particular task fall into any of these categories:
  • a genuine crisis
  • critical issues and problems related to customer service
  • important meetings or presentations that cannot be moved. Sometimes they are scheduled by other parties and you absolutely must be present, but many meetings can be rescheduled (even if the meeting is with your boss)
  • a task coming directly from your boss that needs to be done now

Remember – it’s your situation, you have a unique understanding of it and there is no “right” or “wrong” here.

Andrey.

https://www.facebook.com/Omina-Peters-1823964887865340/