Remembering Your Time and How To Spend It

Today at work I spoke with my team about what we would discuss in the next week's meeting:  Scheduling and Prioritizing.

Maybe that sounds like a something you need to discuss.  Maybe you're rolling your eyes because you feel like it's all anyone every discusses.  Regardless, it's amazing how many people think they know how to manage their time and yet never seem to "get anything done".

I pull my information from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  If you haven't read it I highly recommend you do.  Not only is it fascinating but it's a great book that can be applied to every area of your life.  And what I also really liked about it was that it wasn't just saying "Be Positive" and "Think Happy Things" and your life will be better.  It actually took you down to the core factors and gave you a chance to think about them.

But I digress.  Really, the purpose of mentioning the book is that this is from where my information is retrieved.  It's about the different quadrants and how to understand the importance of differentiating between Urgent matters -vs Non-Urgent ones, and Important -vs- Unimportant matters.  If you can Imagine 4 boxes:

(1) IMPORTANT / URGENT             (2) UNIMPORTANT/URGENT
(3) IMPORTANT/ NOT URGENT     (4) UNIMPORTANT/NOT URGENT

These are basically the four areas that everything falls into.  Quadrant one is like your serious events - natural disasters, severe illness, deadlines that can't be moved, etc.  And while they are important, most activities do not fall into this category.  However, the trip up here is that most people actually believe the activities they're doing do fall into that category.

What are these 'other' activities that people deem important and/or urgent but aren't?  Emails, phone calls, impromptu interruptions.  These are items that fall in quadrant 3 and 4 and request your attention, demand that you be at their beck and call, but ultimately don't do much for you and the direction of your life.  These are items that, if you allow them to rule your day, your life, etc, you will discover that you are just 'participating' in your life and not really 'living' and 'directing' your life.  Often, you'll know if you've done these activities if you go "how did it get to be _________ already" but you haven't felt like you accomplished anything.  ....and it's the 'but' part of that sentence that's important.  Time takes life away from all of us, but if you're finding you say the second part of that sentence often, it's probably time to re-evaluate how you're spending your days.

So what's a (2) activity?  These are goals, ambitions, dreams, and things that require planning, preparation, effort, and focus.  These are not items that will just happen without a conscious effort on your part to make them so.  Think of planning and saving for a vacation, learning a language, scheduling your day and then sticking to it, saying 'no' to things so that you can say 'yes' to the bigger ones....playing an instrument, taking art or dance classes, building a business, paying off debt, .... and the list goes on.

Ultimately, it's about what you deem belongs in that quadrant 2 area that should ultimately drive you life, your months, your days, and even your hours.  Everyone has quadrant 3 and 4 activities.  We can't fully break away from them.  However, it's all about learning how to manage them, direct them, and force them into the time slots you allow them that will help you feel and gain back control to ultimately live your life.