This article is a mix bag of my favorite time management concepts, techniques and thoughts. Hope you enjoy!

The Time Management Matrix

Steven Covey's classic time management quadrants help you identify what you actually need to do and what might be holding you back from your potential.

Key Take Away

Our goal is to spend as much time as possible Quadrants 1 & 2; Handling important tasks, projects and activities, maintaining our health & relationships, and working toward a meaningful contribution. To do this, we need to reduce Quadrant 3 & eliminate quadrant 4 as much as possible.

Important - Responsibilities that contribute to the achievement of your goals.

Urgent - Responsibilities that require immediate attention.

Quadrant 1 - Urgent & Important - Important Deadlines with High Urgency

• Task List / Pressing Issues / Deadlines
• Unscheduled work / Last minute changes
• Crisis / Emergencies

These are things that are vitally important and must be done immediately.  This could be an actual medical emergency, last minute coverage for a team member, or completing a task or project on time. 

Activities in this quadrant can further be broken down into planned or unplanned.  You can do some work to prevent planned emergencies, such as completing projects / tasks well before they are do (aka not procrastinating), maintaining health, keeping up with vehicle / home maintenance, etc. 

Quadrant 2 - Important & Non Urgent - Long Term development & strategizing

• Self Care / Personal Development
• Preparation, planning, prevention
• Relationship building / Deep Connections
• Actual Recreation / Relaxation

These are the most important activities of every day and your life.  The more time we can spend in Quad 2, the higher quality life we will have.  These activities include maintaining physical, mental, & emotional health, running your household, working on meaningful projects that move you closer to your professional / personal goals, cultivating meaningful relationships, planning ahead to save money / increase effectiveness (such as meal plans), proactively preventing emergencies (getting new tires, saving for retirement), scheduling important appointments, taking classes / personal development, researching major purchases / decisions, etc.

Quadrant 3 - Urgent & Not Important - Distractions with high urgency

• Interruptions / Calls / Emails

These are activities that are ideally avoided, automated or delegated if possible, but sometimes can't be including answering calls/texts, attending to energy sucking individuals, busy work like responding to non-essential emails, paying bills, etc.

Quadrant 4 - Not Urgent & Not Important - Activities with little to no value

• Analysis Paralysis / Overthinking
• Excessive TV / web surfing
• Gossip / Idle speculation
• Self-indulgent perfectionism 
• Substance abuse

These activities are total time wasters and should be eliminated.  If you find yourself over doing any of these activities, you need to step back & re-assess where you are off.