Prioritizing
Most of us would know people who spend their entire day in crisis mode. Every task is both urgent and important. They are unable to prioritise because it all needed to be done yesterday! We call this fire-fighting because they spend their whole day constantly putting out spot fires.
Urgent and Important?
We can break our tasks into different priorities using the criteria of importance and urgency. Is a job important or not important, urgent or not urgent? Using the following model, you can place your tasks in one of the four quadrants. Using this, you can easily create an overview of what we actually need to be spending our time on to achieve our goals. From a time management perspective, the overall goal is to maximise time spent on items in the top two quadrants and minimise time spent on items in the bottom two quadrants.
* The Important/Urgent model was first developed by Alan Lakein and later adapted by Stephen Covey.
Avoiding firefighting
To avoid firefighting or crisis-management behaviour, it is vital that you allocate some time every day or every week to important but non-urgent tasks. In October, end-of-year budgets might be quite important, but they are definitely not urgent. However, in December, if they are not completed, they are not only important, they are so urgent that they have become a crisis.
Anything in the top right quadrant that is not achieved will sooner or later make its way into the top left quadrant, and then you are in fire-fighting mode!
Use three levels of priority: High / Normal / Low
By using these priority levels, you
can group your tasks on your daily task pad into the different quadrants.
Quadrant 1 - High - Important and
Urgent
Quadrant 2 - Normal - Important but
not Urgent
Quadrant 3 - Urgent but not Important
Quadrant 4 - Low priority. We suggest
that you avoid Quadrant 4 tasks, use them only as notes for tasks that are
irrelevant for now, or reassess them. If you do have to do them, they must
be either important or urgent to someone.
How to use quadrants in the Practical Manager
You can follow your tasks in the four quadrants in “My Focus” view of the Key Areas. This view will help you determine how you use your time and refocus to gain balance and control to finish your elephant tasks and achieve your objectives.
Q1: Key Area and Don’t Forget! items with missed deadlines and due dates and/or marked with high priority.Q2: Key Area items with normal priority and within current deadlines and due datesQ3: Don’t Forget! items with normal priority and within current deadlines and due dates.Q4: Key Area and Don’t Forget! Items that are within deadlines and have a low priority.
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Booklet: Practical Manager
Download your copy of the Practical Manager booklet. Contents: - What is Employeeship - Initial setup in Practical Manager - Key areas and their use - Goals - Calendar and working with the calendar - Setting priorities - Giving recognition and ...