Jahnvi is bridging the gap between her present self and her seasoned future self by learning everything she could about being a leader to her team. On her journey, she has covered the requisites of becoming a first-time manager, her values, locus of control, setting goals and achieving them, her learnings from The Strangest Secret, how to handle the missed goals, an overview of feedback, the gateway to discovering the blind spot, frameworks of feedback, the concepts of feedforward, the overview of the interpersonal skills, the techniques to enhance interpersonal skills, better team management using people reading guide, techniques to effectively manage a team, and overview of time management.
In the last article, she learned what and why of time management, and now she is set to learn about some techniques to make the most of her time.
Jahnvi learned that time management has the ability to plan and prioritize tasks to reach the desired goals. It is a matter of developing the right mindset and adopting productive behaviors to be successful in the things she does. However, she has to practice diligently to attain outstanding performance results in both her personal and professional spheres of life.
Now that she has understood time management and its importance in her life, she wants to understand different ways to manage her time well. While she was browsing through the different aspects of time management, she chanced upon some convincing statistics and research findings that can persuade anyone towards the importance of time management.
This is how we all spend our lives, or so to say, our time on.
- Adults in the United States sleep an average of 6.8 hours per night (Gallup).
- A full-time employee in the United States works 8.5 hours a day on average during the standard workweek (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
- Women in the United States spend approximately 2.5 hours per day on domestic duties, while males spend 1.9 hours (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
- Sports, socializing, reading, TV, and other leisure activities use approximately 5.2 hours per day in the lives of US adults (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
- Internet users worldwide spend around 144 minutes per day on social networking (Statista).
Jahnvi was astonished to see the facts about wasting our valuable time occasionally. She was taken aback by these results and how unknowingly we pour our time into doing nevertheless important things. She walked backward and realized that she was also doing the same, sailing on two boats at the same time and they took her nowhere by the end of the day.
She was impelled to find the reason and solution to such a huge problem. She wants to learn ways and techniques to manage her time well and teach that to her team as well. When she looked up the symptoms, the solution she found was the Time Management Matrix.
What Is The Time Management Matrix?
The time management matrix was developed by Dwight D. Eisenhower and Stephen Covey. Dwight felt that priority is tied to both the importance and the urgency of a work. The higher the priority allocated, the more attention and time it deserves.
Stephen Covey, who popularized and expanded Eisenhower’s matrix, came to the conclusion that effective management tactics are not about managing time. They are more concerned with how to focus attention and prioritize.
Any task, activity, or obligation is assigned a segment in Covey’s time management matrix that has four quadrants. The following are the prerequisites for doing so:
- Urgency: What requires immediate attention; Importance: What is the most important or valuable task that requires immediate attention?
- Importance: Instead of addressing the most pressing issues first, emphasis is placed on raising awareness of worth and importance. By separating jobs in this manner, it should be clear which tasks should come first.
Each quadrant in Covey’s time management matrix is the consequence of a mix of important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent.
- Quadrant I – Critical activities: Important and urgent
- Quadrant II – Investment activities: Important but not urgent
- Quadrant III – Compulsion activities: Not important but urgent
- Quadrant IV – Waste activities: Not important and not urgent
Critical activities
These entail critical commitments or activities that require prompt attention. Things in this quadrant may be stressed due to their importance and urgency. Thus, being aware of these activities and properly categorizing them will ensure that you devote the necessary time and effort to them.
They are necessary and beneficial to the manager’s goals. These activities are the ones that should be the main focus of a manager’s time. Only tasks and duties that require your immediate attention should be included in the first quadrant. This area is reserved for emergencies and critical deadlines. Other duties will have to be postponed if a significant crisis occurs. Highly effective people start their days with these activities.
- Pressing problems
- Last-minute preparations
- Emergencies
- Projects that are deadline-driven
- Crises
Investment activities
They are activities that will not only contribute to the manager’s goals but will also help the manager improve their skills and knowledge. By using the Time Management Matrix, managers can better prioritize their activities and allocate their time more effectively. By focusing on critical and investment activities, they can ensure that their time is being used efficiently and effectively.
These critical duties should, ideally, be prioritized and given significant attention. These are the most important strategic activities. Working on these will strengthen your business and contribute to personal growth and development. They will assist you in developing a sense of discipline and determination, as well as identifying and working on things over which you have control. Something big contributes to your mission, values, and top priorities.
- Preparing
- Planning
- Exercise, health, and recreation
- Training
Compulsion activities
It consists of actions that are urgent but unimportant in the long run. These are things that are prominent in our minds yet primarily function as distractions. Furthermore, they are frequently regarded as enjoyable or simple and hence are prioritized. They may be removed from the work schedule after a thorough examination.
It’s probably impossible to get rid of all of these tasks. Nonetheless, it is critical to minimize their numbers as much as possible. Delegating them is one approach to accomplish this. Another option is to group and accomplish many of these smaller jobs.
Some people spend a lot of time on “urgent but not important,” mistakenly believing they are “urgent and important.” They spend most of their time reacting to emergencies, feeling that they are also necessary. However, the prominence of these challenges is typically dictated by others’ priorities and expectations. It is more productive to set aside one hour each day to answer emails than to answer them individually throughout the day. Do not be distracted by the word “urgent” in the subject line.
- Interruptions
- Small talk
- Meetings
Waste activities
These are the activities that drain your energy and make you feel completely sapped, and you can’t put your finger on anything you accomplished of real significance. They don’t contribute anything beneficial to the manager’s goals. They may be activities that are simply not necessary or activities that are a distraction from the manager’s true priorities.
It is crucial to decide which items belong in this quadrant so that you can prioritize which actions. The risk is that you spend too much time on them, losing valuable time. This type of activity should be kept to a minimum.
- Social media
- Watching TV for hours
- Surfing the Internet without the purpose
- Trivia
Effective people avoid Quadrants III and IV since they aren’t important, whether urgent or not. They also shrink Quadrant I by spending more time in Quadrant II. You require a tool that promotes, motivates, and truly aids you in devoting the necessary time in Quadrant II to prevention rather than a disaster. According to Stephen Covey, the simplest way to accomplish this is to organize your life on a weekly basis.
There will undoubtedly be times during the week when your integrity will be put to the test. The popularity of responding to other people’s urgent but insignificant priorities in Quadrant III, or the excitement of fleeing to Quadrant IV, will threaten to overwhelm the critical Quadrant II activities you have planned. Your core center, self-awareness, and conscience may provide you with a high level of internal stability, direction, and wisdom, allowing you to exercise your autonomy while being faithful to what is necessary.
Jahnvi registered the quadrants in her head and she felt the urge to categorize her activities based on these quadrants. Once she did that, she wanted to know how to successfully harness the power of this matrix.
What Differentiates Important And Urgent Tasks?
The term “important” refers to its contribution to long-term objectives. Completing these tasks may be important for future growth and development. These activities require immediate and consistent attention. They do not always require quick attention. However, if they are not prioritized, they may become urgent issues.
Urgent tasks necessitate prompt attention. They necessitate quick attention as soon as they arise. Their significance is primarily in the now, and they might distract from critical activities and long-term goals.
What Are The Payoffs Of The Time Management Matrix?
It can assist a person in analyzing their activities and priorities. Analyzing a typical person’s professional or personal life reveals that the majority of activities fall into the urgent categories (Q-I and Q-III). Q-II (important but not urgent) is a frequently overlooked Covey quadrant.
This is where the temporal matrix’s power rests. The significance of Q-II should not be overlooked. This quadrant’s activities represent the strategic side of your business or personal life. Ignoring this may result in a loss of personal development and ultimate goals. This area must be covered in time management that is both balanced and efficient. Q-II is thus critically essential.
There are ample payoffs when it comes to using the matrix in the workplace:
Self-Discipline: It is the conscious regulation of one’s actions. This sort of constraint aids in the substitution of positive activities for negative ones. It is the outcome of prioritization, organization, and the avoidance of distractions.
Learn to let go: Get rid of distractions. Giving time-wasters (Quadrant IV) less priority allows you to achieve more, both in quantity and quality. The Covey matrix provides a framework and the confidence to assign responsibilities when appropriate and to decline new tasks.
Enhanced productivity: This strategy aids in the organization and categorization of operations. Assigning a task to any one of the quadrants determines whether it should be prioritized, removed, or planned. It increases efficiency and focuses attention on what is most important. Making a focused list can help you get more done.
Improve your planning abilities: You can identify your immediate objectives and ultimate goals by being able to prioritize tasks. When priorities are established in this manner, reasonable time frames can be assigned to these activities.
Clear your habits: Categorizing activities can help to clarify specific behavioral patterns. It aids in assessing someone’s behavior. The identification of patterns provides insights as to where to make adjustments, which habits to cultivate, and what to focus on.
Jahnvi was able to comprehend the importance of the matrix in her routine and promised to bring it into her practice moving forward. She was able to find a new perspective and was sure that she will be able to differentiate between the tasks and that she will walk her team through the importance and payoffs of the matrix on their work style.
Now that she understands the matrix, she will learn about using it in real-time. She prefers to sink into the depths of every topic to emerge with the treasure it beholds.
http://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/2015/stephen-coveys-time-management-matrix-explained/https://timeular.com/blog/time-management-matrix/
https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/time-management.html
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/top-20-time-wasters-and-top-5-worthwhile-activities.html
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Written By: Jimmy Jain
Edited By: Afreen Fatima
Society of Design Thinking Professionals
