TIME MANAGEMENT MATRIX

Do you put your first things first? Putting first things first means doing to the most important things in life. It means being clear about your priorities and acting on them.

That sounds pretty easy and intuitive, but many people unconsciously fall into the trap of getting caught up in non-important things. They neglect the larger life priorities until it becomes too late to act on them. To become a master of your time, you need to first be aware of your priorities in the larger context of your life. The framework which I will be sharing Time Management Matrix - (from Covey’s book) is tremendously valuable in helping you achieve that. It will help you structure out your daily activities in accordance of importance and urgency and deal with them accordingly.

The Time Management Matrix is actually the fourth generation in the series of time management systems developed to give us more control of our lives. Each system builds on the one before it to move us towards greater control.

4th Generation – Quality and Personal Leadership

The fourth generation system addresses this gap – It focuses us on developing deeper value tasks and accomplishing results. This is done via using Covey’s framework to first classify our daily activities, then dealing with them in a certain way based on which quadrant they fall in.

Time Management Matrix: The 4 Quadrants

Our daily activities can be broken down into 4 quadrants, by urgency and importance:

Try adopting this model for a few months and see how it works for you. The next time you do something, evaluate which quadrant it falls under. Is it Q-1, Q-2, Q-3 or Q-4? Are you adopting the right mode of action for a task of this quadrant? What are the Q-2 tasks you are neglecting in your life? Start working on them today and in time to come, you will find yourself reaping the fruits of your labour.

LOURDES SALAMEH

(http://celestinechua.com/blog/put-first-things-first)