Grading yourself on the Covey Quadrant.
In his book First Things First, Stephen R. Covey used a diagram that has become famous in time management circles:
You should spend your time in Quadrant II, working on the valuable projects that are important but not urgent. Quadrant I is for genuine emergencies — the house is on fire — and Quadrant IV should be avoided at all costs.
The real source of poison, in Covey’s model, is Quadrant III, which is tempting to enter because the things in it are urgent, but which ought never be entered at all, since they are unimportant.
Maybe later we can discuss more of the implications of this, and ways that the model can be deepened. For now, a couple of questions for you:
- How does your working time divide among the quadrants?
- How does your organization’s time divide among the quadrants?
For myself, I spend too much time “below the line” in unimportant-land; my intellectual appetites tend to lead me toward what’s interesting, without regard to whether they move the needle. As for Quadrant II? Sheesh — maybe 15% of my time?
What about you?
Category: Executives,Management,ProductivityIf you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed so you can receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.
2 Comments so far
Leave A Comment
[...] Moving yourself and your team into Covey’s Quadrant II. (It would follow up on this.) [...]
Now this is something that we should all look at, never thought or looked at it this way but it makes such a lot of sense, living this way can really control ones stress levels and show what is important at that moment.
Great post interesting.