Hello Everyone,

Hope you all are doing well. As a part of the 7 Habits series, today I will talk about the 3^rd habit. So this habit deals with our time management and productivity. In my last post, I talked about what exactly are our goals, but we still don’t know how to incorporate some actions in our daily lives to achieve these goals. 3^rd habit will tell us about that only.

But before we talk about 3^rd habit, let’s talk about Habit 1 and Habit 2. Habit 1 says that you’re the creator of your life, you are in charge. Habit 2 is the first or the mental creation, first, you have to imagine your desired life. And then comes the Habit 3 which is the physical creation of your life, the fulfilment of Habit 1 and 2. If Habit 1 says “You’re the programmer” and Habit 2 says “Write the program” then Habit 3 says “Run the program,” “Live the program.”

So what is this 3^rd Habit? It is (drumrolls please) ‘Put first things first.’ By now, with the help of Habit 2 you must have lead yourself and have decided what is important for you, what are the things which actually matters to you and what are the things which should be kept first, now, it is the time for management, i.e. Habit 3 which will help you in keeping these important things first.

The chapter mentions an essay written by E.M Gray. E.M Gray wanted to know one thing which all successful people share. He found that this one thing is not hard work, good luck or any such thing, but is the thing that they do important tasks first. It can be true that they do not like doing this important task, say for example if you have to study for a very important exam, you have to study for it, and you have to keep it in your priority. Yes, you might not like studying for it. But you are not motivated by your likes or dislike, you are motivated by your vision, the vision of clearing this exam with good marks. So E.M Gray found that it is not likes or dislikes, but about discipline, about putting first things first.

Effective Time Management: How to prioritize your tasks?

Now, the question which arises is how to prioritize these tasks. Sometimes, we are so stuck in urgent tasks that we forget about important tasks. So the key is to prioritize important tasks too. How can we do that? Stephen R. Covey is telling about this exact thing in his 3^rd habit.

To understand it, first, look at this diagram closely.

These are the four quadrants of time management matrix.

According to the author, we spend our time in one of these four ways. As you can see, the tasks are categorized on the basis of two factors, ‘Urgent’ and ‘Importance.’

Urgent tasks act upon us, these are the tasks which we have to do, for example, some assignments, or making a presentation, even phone calls and emails, all these are important, but sometimes these urgent tasks are not very important.

Important tasks are the tasks which will take us closer to our visions. These tasks help us in achieving our high prioritized goals, will contribute to our mission, in our values.

Urgent tasks force us to act on them, but sometimes we have to be proactive to act on important tasks. For example, building a good relationship with your parents will never be an urgent task for you, but if it is important then you have to be proactive and take out time for them. It is only when you are proactive that these important tasks can be completed.

Before we decide on which quadrant we have to work on, let’s look at the results of working on each quadrant one by one.

If you keep your focus on the 1^st quadrant, then it will keep on getting bigger and bigger. You will manage to complete one task before deadline and then another urgent task will hit you. Your only focus is on tasks which are urgent and important. This will result in stress and burnout. You only get relief through tasks in the 4^th quadrant and then, again you start completing tasks from the 1^st quadrant.

Then there come some people who work on the 3^rd quadrant, they act upon tasks which are urgent thinking that they are important too, but the reality is that they are urgent because someone else is  pressing upon these tasks, which means that urgency and importance of these tasks are based on other people, not yours.

People who spend most of their time in Quadrant III and IV lead to an irresponsible life.

Then comes the II Quadrant. This is the heart of effective time management. This deals with tasks that are not urgent but are always important. The tasks which will help you in achieving your goals which you must have made while reading about Habit 2. This quadrant includes tasks like long term planning, building relationships, preparation, exercising etc.

Now that you know the result of working in each quadrant, you must have guessed the quadrant on which you should work to be effective and more productive. Yes, quadrant II, in fact, according to the author effective people stay out from quadrant III and IV. They also shrink down on the quadrant I, by spending more time on quadrant II.

How to move into Quadrant II.

Now the problem is we cannot just shift into Quadrant II, there will always be tasks which will be urgent and would need your attention, then the question is, how to do it? Stephen R.Covey is talking about some of the techniques which can help you in shifting to quadrat II. Let’s talk about these techniques:

1. Shrink your Quadrant III and IV task list- In the beginning, the time to spend in Quadrant II have to come from Quadrant III and IV. You cannot ignore the tasks in Quadrant I, as they are urgent and important. You have to have complete your presentation in time, otherwise, it might cost you your job. So what you have to cut upon is time spend on tasks which are important for others, but not you, activities which are time wasters etc. When you will continue to do work on Quadrant II, cutting your time down from Quadrant III and IV, you will realize that your Quadrant I have also shrunk. This is because you have worked on preventive measures, you are not waiting for deadlines, and you are working on things which are important for you.
2. Saying ‘no’ to some activities- This point is the extension of the first point. In order to say ‘yes’ to Quadrant II activities, you have to say ‘no’ to other activities, especially activities from Quadrant III and IV. This does not mean that these activities are not important, but you have to decide your highest priority and then have the courage to say ‘no’ and that too, pleasantly, smilingly and non-apologetically. Keep in mind that you are always saying ‘no’ to something, if not to these trivial urgent tasks, then to important tasks, so the decision is yours.

And that’s it, guys. Though in the book author have also talked about using this habit in managing teams in office too, but the post would have become too long if I would have added that. If you want to know more about it, then reading this book is highly recommended.

At last, I would like to say that, you might think this is what I always knew, this is what everyone has said, to cut back our time from trivial tasks and use it in more important tasks. But the point of this post was not just that, through this post I wanted you to reflect on how you spend your time. There are times when we know what we should do, but we still don’t do it, and the reason behind this is that our ‘Why’s’ are not very strong. We lose motivation to complete important tasks after some time, but if the reason ‘why you started it’ is strong enough it won’t let you get tired. The motive of this post was to help you in strengthening your ‘why’s’.

I will see you in the next post with Habit 4. Till then keep celebrating life.

With Love,

Komal

Tangled Tourista

Tangled Tourista is an online diary, which is about travel, food and books. Here you will read about book reviews and suggestions, tested travelling tips and about new cafes and restaurants around and their reviews.