The words seem so similar at first glance but they could not be farther apart. It’s vital to be able to distinguish Urgent vs. Important when you’re planning your daily life. Urgent things are the things that require your attention, right now; Important are the things that you don’t have to get to right away, but are crucial to your development, planning, and success.

THe Four Quadrant System

Stephen Covey put forth a four quadrant model in his book ‘The Seven Steps of Highly Effective People“, and I recommend reading it, if you haven’t. He built a model that looked like this:

Planning For Urgent Vs. Important

When I first started planning, I would literally use this grid as a guide to figure out how I wanted to spend my day (or week). The goal is to spend most of your time in Quadrant 2, however situations arise that pull our attention to the other quadrants and truth be told, I love a good TV show, or some video game time – but I want to limit that.

A good way to pull things from Q1 into Q2 is maintenance. By taking your car in for regular service, you can minimize emergency repairs. By making sure your home is in good shape; don’t wait for that leak to spring before doing the repair. A little bit of forethought goes a long way in this department and I completely realize that we don’t always have the luxury of taking care of these things preemptively. I just commit myself to doing the best that I can with the resources that I have at the time.

Boundaries

If you’re struggling with Q3, you might consider that your boundaries need some work. I have, over the years, made it very clear that I need a phone call first if you want to stop by and if I don’t answer, it means I’m not available. That took some work, but it definitely helps – and if my doorbell rings and I’m not expecting someone, chances are very good it will go unanswered. If that’s you, great! If you’re not willing to do that, that’s ok too. We have to do what’s right for us.

Not Urgent, Not Important

Q4 is a little tricky. I know that there are many times that I have mindlessly scrolled through Instagram or Facebook and realized that I wasted an hour and came away with nothing. On the other hand, my partner and I often jump on YouTube and wind up down a rabbit hole – which leads to hearing new music, getting ideas about things and it’s a fun way to have a very cheap date night (which would go into Q2).

As my planning has evolved, I know longer draw the grid, or label things (Q1, Q2, etc.), but I now inherently know which activities fall into which quadrant and plan accordingly.

So how about you? How do you prioritize your planning? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.