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Stephen Covey discusses in his 1994 book 'First Things First', that understanding the relationship between urgency and importance lies at the heart of effective time management. Many of us fall into the trap of living in the realm of 'urgency'. This is often referred to as crisis mode. We jump from crisis to crisis and in doing so let urgency control our life.
Operating in crisis mode ultimately is a self-destructive behaviour. Sure it often provides an artificial sense of self-worth as you extinguish fire after fire, and it certainly creates the illusion that you are a significant and busy person. But operating in the realm of urgency forces you to be reactive and does not allow you to be proactive. It forces you to focus on whatever 'crops up', whatever is at the top of the 'to do' list. Those of us who are reactive are not in control; instead we are being controlled by outside events.
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 2x2 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 but important. These are the ones he believes we are likely to neglect; but, should focus on to achieve effectiveness. Too often, we get caught operating in Quadrant III, prioritising tasks which are urgent but not important.
Our challenge as leaders is to be able to discriminate between the important and the urgent, delegating effectively to ensure that those Quadrant II tasks do get done. It is these Quadrant II tasks which you need to move towards as often they do not come to you - until they have been neglected so long that they then become a Quadrant I crisis!
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