Tim and Jim were both tasked with cutting a tree down in a day. While Tim jumped to the task at hand, Jim spent the first couple of hours sharpening his axe. Jim ended up cutting the tree down faster and more efficiently. This story tells us that it is more important to do something right than to do it fast. It is also critical to keep your eyes focused on that long-term goal and work on the best strategy to achieve it. Efficiency expert and writer Stephen Covey says, "The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."
Instructions
Planning and Prioritizing
1. Planning and staying organized is the key to productivity. When you have a comprehensive plan, you are less likely to feel stressed and will be better able to achieve your goals. It is important to establish the goals you plan to achieve. Once you have the goals defined, you must then develop a strategy to achieve them. Although defining goals is an important task, it is only part of the planning and prioritizing process. A bigger challenge is figuring out where to start and proceed. To achieve this, make a list of all the steps that you must carry out to achieve a particular goal.
2. A comprehensive list of tasks can make your goal look all the more overwhelming, so it is essential to prioritize the tasks. Make a list of criteria for each task to help you gauge its urgency and importance. In his book "First Things First," Stephen Covey talks about a time matrix. With this method, you categorize your tasks to fall under one of four quadrants:
Quadrant 1: Urgent and important
Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent
Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important
Quadrant 4: Neither important nor urgent
Ideally, you should learn to manage your work so you seldom have tasks in the first quadrant. However, crises may arise and some amount of fire-fighting may be needed. These are the tasks you would address as the highest priority. Next in priority would be tasks in quadrant two. Staying on top of these would help prevent tasks from getting into quadrant one. Tasks that land in quadrant three indicate unpreparedness and an inability to prioritize. Quadrant four includes tasks that generally waste your time and should be avoided. Minimizing and/or avoiding tasks in quadrants three and four enable you to devote more time to tasks in quadrants one and two and thereby stay efficient.
3. Although most of us seem to be serious about our appointments and meetings, other tasks often just float around unscheduled. How do we avoid interruptions and other quadrant-three and -four activities to stay focused? The best solution is to book your time. Book time for all your high-priority tasks and keep some open time every day for networking activities. Again, these should be important but not urgent activities in quadrant two, such as mentoring and relationship-building.
Another effective method is to schedule some "do not disturb" time every day. Have your team work with you to slot out this time and use it to tackle critical tasks that need uninterrupted focus.
4. An effective means of time management is to efficiently manage the peak and nonpeak productivity times in a day. More often than not, high-productivity time is early in the day. Early afternoons during the after-lunch haze tend to be less productive. Schedule meetings at this time to effectively utilize your time. This way both the peak and nonpeak productivity hours are managed to reap the best benefits.
5. An important and crucial aspect of planning and prioritizing is learning when and say no effectively. Although it is tempting to respond to the phone call from your friend, letting it ring while you tackle your priorities might be the smarter thing to do. However difficult it is to say "no" to an unnecessary meeting, that time is better spent on more critical tasks at hand. Learn to appreciate your time as well as get others to do the same.
Tags: your time, critical tasks, cutting tree, cutting tree down, goals important, important Quadrant
