seven habits of highly effective people quadrants

Seven habits of highly effective people quadrants how to#
Seven habits of highly effective people quadrants professional#
Seven habits of highly effective people quadrants free#

Evaluate how effectively you spent your time and whether your process needs to be reorganized. When all of the grids are full, combine the Monday-Friday data onto your sixth summary grid and calculate how much time you spent in each grid, then break those numbers down into percentages. To do this, make six copies of a blank grid, and use one grid per day, listing the tasks you accomplished or the activities you did, and the time spent on each thing. To see if you are spending the bulk of your time in the first two quadrants, do a one-week assessment.

Seven habits of highly effective people quadrants how to#

How to Use the Eisenhower Matrix to See If You Are Procrastinating If something more urgent comes your way, like a phone call or even just a favor for a co-worker, these are likely to take precedence in your mind, but end up being just another form of procrastination.

It is easy to procrastinate on quadrant 2 tasks because, while they are important, they do not need to be done right away. Without doing this and addressing the matter, you are likely to spend a lot of time on quadrant 3 and quadrant 4 tasks that don't really matter. Part of procrastination is figuring out why you are procrastinating. Maybe you have a list of things you have to do that seem equally urgent and important, but can’t seem to get them all done. Sometimes it is easy to mistake the differences between your tasks. Procrastination and the Eisenhower Matrix The challenge here is to spend most of your time in quadrant 2, and just enough time in quadrant 4 to get by.

Seven habits of highly effective people quadrants professional#

Having a balance between your professional and personal life is important, and downtime helps you regain your energy. Some examples of quadrant 4 tasks are playing video games, watching television shows that you have already seen, or mindless web browsing.ĭoes that mean nothing in quadrant 4 should be a part of your life? No.

Seven habits of highly effective people quadrants free#

If you are able to identify and eliminate all of your quadrant 4 tasks, you will free up some much-needed time to invest in your quadrant 2 tasks. These tasks are simply a waste of your time, and they should be eliminated. Honestly, you want to avoid quadrant 4 tasks. It may seem urgent at the time while it is happening, but these little things can be handled by other people. So, you can delegate this task to someone else. If you are in the middle of working on a project and the phone rings, it is not important for you to answer it. You may think it is urgent at the moment, so you stop what you are doing to tend to the matter. This may include constantly checking your email or phone, or responding to people as soon as they try to contact you. When you think something is urgent but it actually is not, it is usually an outside source of distraction. For quadrant 3 tasks, it is important to learn and remember how to delegate certain things. This common mistake often occurs when someone asks you to do something that does not directly benefit you or get you closer to achieving your goals. Quadrant 3: Delegate Itĭo you ever feel that you put too much importance on a task that in hindsight was not very important? Or think something has to be done right away, and it actually doesn't? Because your goals will stay constant, anything that will be beneficial to you in the long term will fall into the second quadrant. People often associate urgent matters with being important, which is not always true.

Also, just because these tasks are not urgent does not mean that they are not important. It is important to remember here that everyone has different goals and objectives, so just because something falls into quadrant 2 for you, it may not for the next person. These things are important to your career, but they do not need to be done immediately. When it comes to your career, it may benefit you to obtain another degree or get a certificate of some sort. It is also important to spend time with your family, but again, that can be aligned with your schedule.

What are some examples of these tasks? Well, exercising is important to your health, but you can decide when that can be done. Quadrant 2 tasks are in line with your long-term goals. This is where you want to invest the majority of your time. The tasks in quadrant 2 are important, but not urgent. An example of a quadrant 1 task in your personal life may be a crying baby, a medical emergency, or something burning in the oven. This matrix can also be used in your personal life. It is important to be able to manage the tasks that are in quadrant 1.Īn example of a quadrant 1 task in your career may be answering a time-sensitive email from a client. These are the tasks that need to be done in order to avoid negative consequences. You want to get these tasks done as soon as possible. These are “do first” tasks because they are critical for your life or career in some way and need to be finished right away. Quadrant 1 contains tasks that are both urgent and important.