7 Tips to Time Management: Focusing on What Matters Most

Most people wish for more time, I don’t know about you, but I definitely can use more hours in the day to do all that I want to do. Most days, I have lots of ideas and thoughts running through my mind. Often in my dreams, I get inspired by content to write about. Once I wake up from the dream, it has all gone, and I do not recall the content that was inspired in my dream. I know it sounds weird. Anyway, moving along, call it a “blogger zone or crazy” truth is inspiration is everywhere in this case, even in a dream.

 

In reality, a system is needed that lets you organize your time effectively to do all the stuff that matters the most and help you balance and maintain your goals while progressing and dealing with fires that may come up in your day.

 

I believe most of you are familiar with Franklin Covey’s time matrix method; it can help you visualize your time, assess how you are spending your time, and become proactive about how you will need to spend your time if you want more critical work done.

 

Let us explore this time matrix a bit more.

1. The time matrix can be used to focus the bulk of your time on essential tasks/work. Break your work/tasks into four quadrants, such as:

• Important
  • Urgent (Necessity Q1)
  • Not Urgent (Effectiveness Q2)

 

Map out your tasks and activities into the quadrants considering necessary tasks such as pressing problems, deadlines for high-impact goals, last-minute tasks hitting roadblocks that need to be removed for your manager, colleagues, peers, etc. For effectiveness tasks such as process improvements, creative thinking, innovation, communication, strategic relationship building, planning for high-impact goals, etc.

 

• Not Important
  • Urgent (Distractions Q3)
  • Not Urgent (Waste Q4)

 

Distractions are irrelevant meetings, comfortable tasks others can do (you can delegate those tasks to your team members), responding to low-priority questions, emails, or requests.

 

The waste category is what I refer to as bad habits to break from, such as aimless checking emails, procrastination from tasks you tend to drag your feet on all week in doing or putting off to the last minute, busywork, and reports nobody reads.

 

The whole idea about breaking your tasks or work into four quadrants is to help allocate time to higher priorities and better plan and maintain a focused schedule in the long run. Granted, some tasks don’t quite fit neatly into the quadrants, and sometimes it is hard to figure out in advance where they belong.

For example, attending a meeting you thought was essential, only to find out that you didn’t need to be there halfway through. Determine through the time matrix to assist in making better decisions about how best to spend your time.

 

2. Ask questions that will help you determine what’s important and what’s urgent. Asking yourself questions such as am I the best or the only person to do this? And how much will doing this help me, my team, or the company meet an important goal?

 

3. Make your well-being and development one of your top priorities (e.g., healthy food, meditation, exercise, a routine performed daily to help you be successful

 

 

4. Plan your day, week, or month far in advance with the most critical activities that need to get done. It may sound counterintuitive to spend more time planning and scheduling if you are so busy you can’t even get your most important work done. However, suppose you are an executive here. In that case, you can rely on your trusted assistant to help plan your schedule and block time according to your high priorities, provided you have looped the assistant on your priorities and deadlines. Also, it’s an opportunity to delegate some of those tasks to your assistant to handle.

 

5. Talk about your top priorities with others; you will discover that the goals you have may become better aligned with colleagues when you share what your priorities are at the moment. Inevitably, you will feel more responsible and accountable for the key critical work you have spoken out loud, so it’s on you now to deliver.

 

6. Learn to say no to requests that aren’t a good use of your time. If you are saying yes too often, how are you accomplishing the important goals you have set time to complete? There are plenty of ways to saying no without coming across as rude or unhelpful; you can explain the impact the request will have on you and your team, provide another solution if you can, or when you feel tempted to say yes, ask for time to think it through.

 

7. Assess your time management system frequently. Life is constantly changing. Whether in the world or your organization’s business, priorities are continually evolving at a rapid pace. What matters the most is highly dynamic and needs to be continuously evaluated.

 

 

Food for Thought:

 

• Activities representing your mission, roles, values, and higher priority goals will always fall in the essential but mostly likely non-urgent category.
• A practice that will balance your life and increase your productivity more than any other is to plan your week before it begins.
• If you stay reactive, you will realize that you are flooding your week with “quick win” tasks that won’t win you much of anything in the long run. Or you may favor a project that leverages your existing skills while avoiding other responsibilities that would force you to stretch yourself. By asking the right questions and being intentional, you make the highest value decisions to accomplish what matters most.
• Re-energize and reinvigorate your attitude and creative juice by stepping away from your work to give your brain time and space to recharge. (so, schedule that vacation or day off, look away from emails for an hour)
• The researcher suggests that if the important stuff gets weekly and daily planned, scheduled, and tracked is more likely to get done; thereby, allowing you to fill the rest of the time in your calendar with updated meetings and one-off requests, blocking time for emails and other tasks.
• Stephen R. Covey says, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.”
• We can’t just go on the “I have a busy life” autopilot and response in today’s world and expect to end up where we need to be.
• If you’re continually giving energy to your job without replenishing it, you run the risk of complete burnout; you will end up depleted and ineffective.
• While useful technologies can help us in the battle, the Q2 mindset (Effectiveness) will help you win.

 

Lastly, use the steps above to recalibrate what’s important now and what’s not essential going forward—in your long-term planning, weekly and daily, utilizing the time matrix process to discern consistently. Practice it until it becomes as habitual as brushing your teeth.