Time management is much more than writing a series of tasks in a notebook and crossing them out as you complete them. Time management is a philosophy of life. If you adopt this philosophy you will realize that time is elastic.
You can do much more with it than you do right now. One of the world's most recognized authors in time management is Stephen Covey.
Covey has developed a very famous tool called "The 4 quadrants of time management". It is simply a matrix divided into 4 quadrants.
Next I will go on to explain the content of each of these quadrants.
This quadrant is made up of all those things that are important and urgent.
They are tasks that cannot be postponed due to the urgency of their nature..
They are tasks that you have to solve as soon as possible, leaving aside whatever else you were doing at that time.
As an example, we have practically any accident or domestic task: the refrigerator stops working, the key remains in the lock, etc..
It is made up of those things that are not urgent but important.
Here we find planning, health, well-being etc. They are tasks that are not urgent in the short term but they do have great importance in the long term.
Establishing a study plan in the absence of 4 months for the exams is not something of extreme urgency. However, it should be done as soon as possible since it is of great importance.
In the same way, it is not a matter of life or death to practice some sport today, however, acquiring the habit of exercising has great long-term importance.
Here we find those things that are not important but urgent.
Both interruptions and unexpected calls are part of this quadrant.
We also find any of the superfluous tasks that your boss decides to entrust to you rather than perform them himself. You will surely find multiple examples.
Everything that is not important and is not urgent.
Stephen Covey argues that this is the useless quadrant. There is nothing important here, otherwise it would be part of Quadrant 2.
Such as watching TV, wasting time on Facebook, checking email every 10 minutes, etc..
If you organize your schedule using these quadrants you will see that there is a tendency to put everything in the 1st and 3rd quadrants. That is, everything is important and urgent or it is not important but urgent. This being so, it seems that we have a predisposition to consider that everything that happens to us is urgent.
As a consequence we suffer from stress and fatigue. We also focus on the short term without the possibility of planning a more structured long term. When we can no longer go to the 4th quadrant in search of distraction.
We spend our lives jumping between the 1st, 3rd and 4th quadrant with hardly any time for the 2nd quadrant. It is in this quadrant where happiness hides.
If for a moment we sit down and think carefully about each of our tasks, surely we will be able to make a more equitable distribution between the 4 quadrants. In this way we will find more time to invest within the 2nd quadrant..
If we focus on the 2nd quadrant we will see a large increase in our productivity. In addition, we will also see a decrease in the tasks that are part of quadrant 1.
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