May 18 is coming faster than you know! How are you doing on your 100 day commitment?
I don’t know about you but I’m finding it incredibly easy to fill my time with minutia. You know…cleaning the desk, moving the computer moniter, grabbing a coffee.
At times like this, I find Stephen Covey’s concept of Q2 time management very helpful. Here’s some of what’s on Wikipedia.com.
In the book, Covey describes a framework for prioritizing work that is aimed at long-term goals, at the expense of tasks that appear to be urgent, but are in fact less important. This is his 2×2 matrix: classifying tasks as urgent and non-urgent on one axis, and important or non-important on the other axis. His Quadrant II has the items that are non-urgent and are important. These are the ones he believes we are likely to neglect; but, should focus on to achieve effectiveness.
Q1 is where a crisis lives: things with deadlines, urgencies, fires that need to be put out. Q1 will always be with us.
Q4 is a total waste of time and we know we shouldn’t be doing it.
Q3 is where we can make real changes. These are urgent but not important things: the person standing at your door, the mail on your desk, etc. Their presence makes them urgent, but their issues aren’t truly important. It’s the old “lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Covey says the goal is to move our time from Q3 activities to Q2. For example, as we do the non-urgent but important tasks, we are preventing Q1 crises. We’re putting out fires before they happen.
Determining your 33 top prospects is definitely Q2. Do you know who yours are? If not, why not block out the rest of the day to determining them?
Click here to read the original 100 Day Post.
