The basics of time management

The difference between urgent and important 

Many entrepreneurs are busy being busy.
You know the feeling, you look back at your day and you think you got a lot of work done.
And when push comes to shove, you discover that you haven’t been doing the right things.
And you were absorbed by last-minute urgencies.

Sounds familiar? I guess so.

1 of the basic models of Time Management that can help you with this, is the Eisenhower model, made famous by the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey. A must-read.

Covey divides tasks into 4 quadrants formed by 2 axes. The axis of importance and the axis of urgency.

So you have the following quadrants and tasks:

1. Tasks that are important and urgent.
An important customer is threatening to cancel his account unless you drop everything here and now and speak to him. This could be one such example. The intention, of course, is not to stay in that quadrant, and we can avoid it by planning and organizing well as much as possible. Can we avoid it altogether? No, but don’t stay in it too often because burnout and ulcers are lurking.

2. Tasks that are important and not urgent.
The well-organized entrepreneur finds himself mainly in this quadrant. These are the tasks that are important for the future of the entrepreneur and his business. Yet, due to good planning, they are not urgent.

3. Tasks that are not important but urgent.
These are mainly the “disturbers”. For example, certain mails. They may need to be answered urgently, but not by you. Or a phone call from your partner asking if he/she will do the shopping for tonight. You have to answer that now, but it may not be a world problem 😊

4. Tasks that are neither urgent nor important
These are the things that create distractions and are not good for anything. Spending an hour on Facebook looking at dog and cat videos is such an example. Get rid of these kinds of tasks. At least during working hours, and what does that mean to an entrepreneur “working hours”? 😉

And now to you… How do you make sure you stay busy efficiently and effectively? Do you have any tips for us? Share it here.