When you are newly promoted as a manager, there is no denying the fact that you are suddenly faced with a variety of responsibilities. There is always that push and pull and you are required to take a lot of decisions daily.
Most of the New Managers are not so successful in their careers and lives because they do not take the right decisions and are very much handling the crisis, dealing with interruptions, or doing trivia work.
Because of this, they are often distracted and take longer to get things done and do not perform well.
Every day you need to take a lot of decisions with so many changes happening around you.
Decisions require a lot of thinking and do cause a lot of fatigue. They can make you dead tired at the end of each day.
With so many things vying for your attention, It becomes hard to stay focused on your goals and priorities.
But there is a tool that can help you work magic.
In this blog post, I will be sharing a powerful and simple tool used by businessmen, and executives to stay focused and get things done faster, even in the face of many distractions.
This tool is the first one you need to organize your tasks after making your to-do list.
The Urgent and Important matrix is a powerful tool that helps you to prioritize your task and categorize them according to urgency and importance.
The best part of it is that this tool can be used as a powerful way to handle any situation in any organization and helps you to make decisions very quickly and effectively.
If you stick around till the end of the blog post then you will learn a powerful process to make decisions quickly and accurately, and I promise you will never work in the same way that you used to before.
Here are 3 things that you will learn after going through this blog post:
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The different categories of tasks based on Urgency and Importance .
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The Key Benefits Of Using The Urgent And Important Matrix.
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How to use the Urgent and Important Matrix to Make Decisions Quickly and Effectively .
THE TWO CATEGORIES OF TASKS BASED ON URGENCY AND IMPORTANCE
First let me help you get clear with the definition of the Urgent and the Important tasks
Former US president Dwight Eisenhower said –’’ What is important is seldom Urgent, what is Urgent is Seldom Important’’
Urgent Tasks –are those tasks that require our immediate attention. They become so compelling that we are forced to react, stop doing the important tasks at hand, and shift our attention towards doing them. Eg –Leaking Pipe, A sudden toothache.
Important tasks– are those which require planning, organizing, and taking action to move us forward towards our important goals and missions – Project task, goals task, clarifying values, building relationships.
Having cleared your conception of the urgent and important tasks, let me share some benefits that you will get by using this tool.
THE KEY BENEFITS OF USING THE URGENT AND IMPORTANT MATRIX :
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You have your priorities outlined clearly .
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You are more calm and organized.
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You can take decisions quickly.
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You are more effective with your time.
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You are more focused.
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You are more in control.
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You can work faster than you can even think of.
Do You Want To Use Your Time Effectively ? Get the FREE EISENHOWER MATRIX Here –
Now that you know the benefits of using this tool it time to start with the description of the tool and the different types of categories under which you need to classify your tasks.
HOW TO USE THE URGENT AND IMPORTANT MATRIX TO TAKE DECISIONS QUICKLY AND EFFECTIVELY ?
Look at the figure above. The Urgent and Important matrix is divided into 4 quadrants and defines the tasks into 4 different categories, based on the urgency and importance principle.
Using a simple grid, it defines tasks according to their importance and urgency:
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Quadrant 1 – Urgent And Important.
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Quadrant 2 – Important But Non Urgent.
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Quadrant 3 – – Urgent But Not Important.
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Quadrant 4 – – Not Urgent and Not Important.
Quadrant 1 – Crises or “Important And Urgent” Tasks.
Quadrant 1 Tasks are:
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Deadlines.
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Urgent meetings.
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Pressing problems.
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Crises and fire-fighting.
Examples from real life are handling customers complaints, pipe bursts, or sudden earaches, or an overdue project.
Spending a lot of time in this quadrant causes stress and burnout.
TIP –You can do one of the 4 things,
prioritize and schedule them, delegate, outsource or automate them—if they are a broken business system.
Quadrant 2 – Goals and Planning or “Important and Non-Urgent” Tasks.
This is also known as the Big Picture Quadrant, where you must be spending your maximum time. These actions move us towards our big-picture goals and projects.
Quadrant 2 Tasks are :
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Goals
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Planning
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Building relationships
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Getting clear on values
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Rest and recreation
By spending your time in this quadrant, you will be able to feel much calmer and in control.
Taking time to get clear on your goals and priorities and planning them, saves you from a lot of unnecessary stress, and prevents many issues from becoming a crisis.
The best thing you can do is to get clear with your goals, plan them, schedule the most important task and delegate some tasks to other people so that you are left with more time to think and take action on unforeseen issues and deal with them effectively.
TIP –Spend most of your time to get clear on your priorities and plan them so that you can be more balanced and calmer.
Look at the action priority tool to know a low effort and high impact actions which will give you better results for your time.
Quadrant 3 – “Urgent and Not Important” Tasks
Tasks in this quadrant slow down your efficiency and steal your focus. They prevent your progress.
Quadrant 3 Tasks are:
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Emails.
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Phone calls.
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Co-workers coming down for a chat.
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Solving other peoples issues.
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Unimportant meetings.
Spending a lot of time in this quadrant makes you feel stuck, frustrated, and stressed. It makes you feel you are not achieving much.
TIP – Make a note of the interruptions and the source of interruptions. Devise an effective strategy to deal with them without reacting to interrupters.
Prioritize your to-do list and focus on the high priority tasks first and say no to such things .
Quadrant 4 – “Not Urgent And Not Important” Tasks.
Tasks in this quadrant are distractions that are unnecessary and kill your focus. They cause you to not finish tasks on time, miss deadlines, make you tired, stressed and ineffective.
Quadrant 4 Tasks are:
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Unnecessary Phone calls.
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Emails.
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Trivia.
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Excessive sleeping, and relaxing.
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TV and Internet.
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Self-depreciating talk.
TIP –Get aware of where you spend your time by keeping a log of distractions and how much time you spend with each distraction.
Over a week sum up the score and come up with a plan to minimize them.
Use the time saved from distractions on more important goals and projects, building relationships and health.
Having understood the tool by now, you can use this tool every quarter, month, and week to categorize and prioritize your task lists and stay more organized. You don’t have to undergo decision-making fatigue all the time.
Using this tool regularly will help you prioritize and focus on the key priorities and be calmer and get more done in less time.
NOTE –How much time you spend on each quadrant will depend on many things including your personality, how excited you are about your job, your life, the type of role, your job, and even the boss you have.
You have to take stock of your situation and find the unique way that helps you create more progress, focus and balance.
And there you have it – a simple tool with an effective method for making decisions based on the urgency and importance principle there’s just one thing left for you to do: take action.
Use this tool to organize your task list, be more focused and work strategically to get things done faster.
What did you like about the tool? Please share your thoughts below.
If you’re curious about learning more about how to make decisions more effectively , I support managers at all levels with coaching specifically on this powerful topic. If this sounds like you and you’d like to explore how coaching can help, please schedule a
FREE DISCOVERY SESSION NOW
Babita Sharma
Leadership Coach
www.leadwithpassion.co.in
