The Right Way To Prioritize

When I am conducting time management workshop, one of the tools that I like to share with my learners are the Urgent Important Matrix. This tool is made famous in the classic book by Stephen R Covey titled "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". It is also known as the Eisenhower Matrix.

The main idea in the tool is that we can categorize our activities by urgency (needs to be done now or suffer serious consequences) or importance. By drawing each axis, we have four categories as shown below.

Next, we categorize our activities into each boxes and start tackling them one by one. Start with activities in the urgent-important category first. As for activities in the not-urgent-important box, we need to allocate time for them in our timetable. Activities in the other two boxes can be ignored, delegated or abandoned altogether.

Give it a try and see your productivity improve today.