The Time Management Matrix
Pioneered by Stephen R. Covey in the critically-acclaimed The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the time management matrix is a proposed way to compartmentalize the various items in your life, based on its level of urgency and importance.
As seen above, the four quadrants are illustrated as follows:
- Important and Urgent (Q1) — Tasks reserved for immediate crises and emergencies, such as deadlines.
- Important but Not Urgent (Q2) — Items reserved for the pre-planning, improvement, and prevention of emerging problems and tasks.
- Not Important but Urgent (Q3) — Includes ongoing and busy tasks that are filled with occasional interruptions.
- Not Important and Not Urgent (G2) — Exclusively filled with time wasters.
As cognitive misers, it can be incredibly challenging to always prioritize the best use of our time. However, we often fall into the fallacy of living within the parameters of Quadrant 1 (Q1), where urgency takes precedence over everything. However, a person with good time management would be inclined to do something important ahead of time, regardless of the level of urgency, embodying Quadrant 2 (Q2). Thus, urgency is not the same as importance in this scenario.
