The Four Quadrants of Time Management

One thing I’ve found really helpful is The Four Quadrants of Time Management popularized by Stephen Covey in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” where you basically put a thing you’re going to work on into one grid of matrix.

Everything you do in life can be classified by it’s urgency (Urgent or Not Urgent) and by it’s importance (Important or Not Important). This creates the matrix illustrated above with four quadrants:

• Important and Urgent – Crises and Emergencies
• Important but Not Urgent – Prevention, Planning, and Improvement
• Not Important but Urgent – Interruptions and Busy Work
• Not Important and Not Urgent – Time Wasters

I collect things mostly in evernote:

There are some little tips using this matrix:

• Keep important and urgent things less.
• Spent most time in important but not urgent things
• Reduce not important but urgent things.
• Spending as less as possible time in doing not urgent and not important things.

It’s hard to be diligent at first, but you will get into it.