The Time Management Matrix

The time management matrix is a concept I encountered for the first time while reading the 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen R. Covey. The idea is that you can classify every activity you do into one of the four quadrants.

You can see from the picture that the quadrants are simply a cartesian representation where the vertical axis is for importance and the horizontal is for urgency.

Quadrant 1
Quadrant 1 is for activities that are both important and urgent. It includes things like finishing the report for your boss at the last minute, going to the doctor for health problems related to bad habits, etc. This is where we usually spend most of our time when we are working. The advantages of quadrant 1 are that you can be assured you are doing something important that must be done right now. The disadvantages of quadrant 1 are that if you don’t want to do an activity, you’ll be faced with a major consequence. Another disadvantage is that what you are doing is based on urgency and you can’t apply long term vision.

Quadrant 2
Quadrant 2 is for activities that are important but not urgent, where nothing would happen if you don’t do them right now. It include things like exercising, giving up smoking and junk food, setting up passive incomes, etc. Clearly, these things are important and we all know that we should done them, but for some reasons -often related to time scarcity- we don’t do especially because they don’t give us an immediate feedback.

Quadrant 3
Quadrant 3 is for activities that are urgent but not important. It includes things like phone calls, watching football results, managing external interruptions, etc. You can spend an entire day doing quadrant 3 activities and feel as if you had a productive day, which is false, because you really did low value activities. For example answering the phone every time it rings may seem important at the moment, but probably it would not add any value to your high level priorities.

Quadrant 4
Quadrants 4 is for activities that are neither urgent nor important. It includes things like drinking coffee, updating facebook, browsing the internet wondering what to do, etc. All of us know that we should never do these kind of activities, but often, due to procrastination, we spend a lot of time here.

Putting it all together
Most people spend most of their time in quadrant 1 and quadrant 4. In fact they are either procrastinating, or fixing the result of their procrastination habit. A successful person instead focuses most of his time in quadrant 2 and tries to minimize quadrant 1 activities as much as he can, so that he can always have a long term vision of what he is doing.

Quadrant 2 activities are important because they gives you the highest return rate in the long time. They usually require a tiny amount of time every day, but the results after months or years are phenomenal.

A challenge for you
Take a sheet of paper and draw 4 columns in it. Each column correspond to one of the four quadrants. For one week, try to record every activity you do and write it down in the corresponding column. You should also track the amount of time required to do the action. For example if I’d go to the coffee machine during my work, I would add an entry coffee break – 8 mins.

For this exercise to work, you must track every single activity, from when you wake up, till when you go to bed. This challenge is not easy, but it is a solid first step toward success in life. After finished, chances are that you will find out that you have plenty of free time to do your quadrant 2 activities by giving up low value activities of quadrant 4.

Posted on July 15 2009

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