With the time management method, you must first know what are the important and unimportant tasks and/or plans to do right now. For the important things, you must make a plan on how to do things now, and what you plan to do next. For the unimportant things, these are the things that you reject diplomatically, and you resist and cease the plans of these kinds.
You can divide your time into four quadrants. In the first quadrant, these are the "DO NOW" plans. In the second quadrant, these are the "PLAN TO DO". In the third quadrant, these are the thing you should "REJECT" diplomatically. On the fourth quadrant, these are the plans that you "RESIST AND CEASE". The first and second quadrants are your important plans and they need to be your priorities. Therefore, they must stay on top in everything when it comes to how you spend your time. The third and fourth quadrants are the unimportant plans that you can do later or get rid off.
Quadrant 1: DO NOW- Real major emergencies and crisis issues
- Significant demands for information from superiors or customers
- Project work with imminent deadline
- Meetings and appointments
- Reports and other submissions
- Staff issues or needs
- Problem resolution, fire-fighting, fixes
- Serious urgent complaints
For Q-1: Prioritize tasks that fall into this category according to their relative urgency. If two or more tasks appear equally urgent, discuss and probe the actual requirements and deadlines with the task originators or with the people dependent on the task outcomes. Help the originators of these demands to re-assess the real urgency and priority of these tasks.
Quadrant 2: PLAN TO DO- Planning and preparation
- Project planning and scheduling
- Research and investigation
- Networking relationship building
- Thinking and creating
- Modeling, designing, testing
- Systems and process development
- Anticipative, preventative activities or communication
- Identifying need for change and new direction
- Developing strategy
For Q-2: These tasks are most critical to success, and yet commonly are the most neglected. These activities include planning, strategic thinking, deciding direction and aims, etc., all crucial for success and development. You must plan time-slots for doing these tasks, and if necessary plan where you will do them free from interruptions, or 'urgent' matters from quadrant 1 and 3 will take precedence.
Quadrant 3: REJECT (DIPLOMATICALLY)- Trivial and 'off-loaded' requests from others
- Apparent emergencies
- Ad-hoc interruptions
- Misunderstandings appearing as complaints
- Irrelevant distractions
- Pointless routines or activities
- Dealing with accumulated unresolved trivia
- Duplicated effort
- Unnecessary double-checking
- Boss's whims or tantrums
For Q-3: Scrutinize these demands ruthlessly, and help originators - even your boss and your senior managers - to re-assess the real importance of these tasks. Practice and develop your ability to explain and justify to task originators why you cannot do these tasks.
Quadrant 4: RESIST AND CEASE- Unnecessary and unchallenged routines
- 'Comfort' activities; computer games, net surfing, excessive cigarette breaks
- Chat and gossip face-to-face and phone
- Social and domestic communications
- Silly emails and text messages
- Daydreaming and doodling
- Interrupting others
- Reading nonsense or irrelevant material
- Unnecessary adjusting, tidying, updating equipment, systems, screensavers, etc.
- Over-long breaks, canteen, kitchen visits
- Embellishment and over-production
- Passive world-watching, TV
- Drink and drug abuse
- Aimless travel and driving
- Shopping or buying for no purpose
For Q-4: These activities are not tasks; they are habitual comforters which provide a refuge from the effort of discipline and proactivity. These activities affirm the same 'comfort-seeking' tendencies in other people; a group or whole department all doing a lot of this quadrant 4 activity creates a non-productive and ineffective organizational culture.
These activities have no positive outcomes, and are therefore de-motivating. Often they may be stress-related, so consider why you do these things and if there's a deeper root cause address it.
