Time Management

Time Management

One helpful tool for life management comes from the book First Things First (Merill, Merill, & Covey, 1999). These authors came up with a very simple matrix that shows how life management can be understood by looking at it through 4 different quadrants based on importance and urgency. Let�s discuss each of these quadrants.

Quadrant 1 - Important and Urgent - These items are time-sensitive and valuable. You have to do them. You don�t really have a choice. You want to make sure you leave time in your weekly schedule for these things to come up, because they will. If you have extra space, then you can focus on them without getting behind on other items.

Quadrant 1 example from my life - any kind of major, unexpected, problems that happen on 7 Cups. These require my full attention and cannot be ignored.

Quadrant 2 - Important, but not Urgent - This is where you want to spend most of your time in life. It keeps you on track to live a rewarding and meaningful life. For example, reading and actually thinking about this guide is a Quadrant II activity. It is very important that you do these items, but nobody is going to ask you to do them. They do not cry for attention, so it is very easy to continue to push them off and instead focus on more urgent, but less important items.

Quadrant 2 examples from my life – prioritizing problems, mapping out a plan to solve them, regular exercise, 1:1�s, mindfulness.

People that are very effective at 7 Cups, have mastery of life, and are happy and productive, spend most of their time in Quadrant II. People that are ineffective spend very little time in Quadrant II.

Quadrant 3 - Not Important, but Urgent - These items are urgent because they are important to someone else, but not important to you or the problems you are trying to solve. If you do not have a good handle on where you are going or what you are trying to accomplish, then it is very easy for people to slide items into your life that are urgent and important to them, but not at all in line with what you want in life. Emotion is contagious so if they act like it is urgent and important, then you can �catch� that feeling and make time for it. This Quadrant is sometimes called the Quadrant of Deception for this reason.

Quadrant 3 examples from my life - outside meetings that other people want to have with me, but they are not really important for what I want to accomplish and, often times, they seem important to the other person, but most times they are not.

Quadrant 4 - Not Important and Not Urgent - This is the Quadrant of Wasting Your Life. Sounds brutal, but it is true. This stuff adds nothing to you or the people you love. It just takes from you. You really want to work on minimizing the amount of time you spend in this Quadrant so you can spend more time in Quadrant II.

Quadrant 4 examples from my life - reading tech and political news. I tell myself that this is important and it�ll help me, but I�ve spent hundreds of hours reading this stuff and it hasn�t helped me 99% of the time.

Ideally, you want your time to look like the figure below. The vast majority of your time is in Quadrant II. You also spend a good deal of time in Quadrant I knocking out important items in crises. You spend as little time as possible on activities in Quadrant III, because they do not belong on your life track and, finally, you do not spend any time in Quadrant IV. The distraction systems we discussed in Chapter 2 live in Quadrants III and IV. You can kill them off by spending more time in Quadrant II.

Big Rocks and Little Rocks

If you are like most people, then you are nodding and agreeing with what is outlined above. All of that sounds great, but, really, how do you actually make it happen in real life and in your work at 7 Cups? Fortunately, it is not as challenging as it seems. The Big Rocks and Little Rocks metaphor can help. were two separate, equal, piles of sand, little rocks, and big rocks. The person that filled the jar on the left started with the sand. Then they put the little rocks in and then finally added the big rocks. The problem with this strategy was that there was not enough space to get all of the big rocks in. That is why you see them outside of the jar.

Now, look at the jar on the right. This person followed a different strategy. First, they put the big rocks in, then they put the little rocks in, and, finally, they poured the sand in. The little rocks and the sand fit around the big rocks. All of the sand, little rocks, and big rocks fit in the jar.

These jars are metaphors for different strategies you can take with your weekly schedule. The big rocks are your Quadrant II items. The really important things in your life like good relationships, planning, problem-solving, and exercise. The little rocks and the sand are the less important items in Quadrants III and IV.

If you look at your weekly schedule, it likely already feels way too full. However, if you take a step back and deliberately plan, you can see that if you start with the big rocks, and then put the little rocks around them, then you end up with enough time in your week to focus on the important things. This strategy, however, requires that you start with the big rocks first.