Have you wasted your time using a variation of the 2x2 time management matrix hoping it will save you time and make you efficient? For how long?
How many of you have benefitted from any Time Management workshop based on these four or similar factors and their suggested courses of action? Honestly?
How many you have wasted money and time buying planners that you have never used after the first week? Please raise your hands!
When I ask these questions in any of my workshops nearly 70% raise their hands. Almost every executive leader I have coached unconsciously believes in this four-point matrix combining Importance and Urgent to manage time and to prioritize. They have problems managing time and prioritizing. Good for management gurus who complicate simple issues and offer complex solutions, which when they do not work can be blamed on the user.
Welcome to Coacharya 2 column Unplanner!
My first question to anyone who uses this kind of a matrix is this. How can anything become urgent if it is not important?
They all struggle and then remember what they learnt from planning seminars. Brightly they say, ‘interruptions, meetings, keeping busy…’. When I ask ‘So?’, they come up with ‘what can I say if my boss tells me to do something that is not what I consider important?’. Some smart guy would say, ‘what about when my wife tells me to run an errand?’ Or a woman ‘when my baby cries and I am on the laptop?’
I agree. When your boss or wife tells you to do something, or your child needs it, you better do it, simply because the people are important, even if the issue may not be. Their importance makes the issue urgent as well. So, they are important and urgent.
What about the hundred times you help out a colleague because you cannot say no? You know that person is using you and yet you oblige and immediately. What about when you clear your email folders, when you have a deadline tomorrow? You are not ready to tackle what is in front of you and seek refuge in a pointless activity.
This is the biggest issue in time management, inability to say no to people and not ready to face difficult tasks. Management gurus suggest you delegate such urgent and unimportant issues. To whom, and why? To waste other people’s time? I suggest you say ‘NO’ resoundingly whenever you need to and tackle what seems toughest in front of you first. Life is not a multiple choice test to tackle easy issues first and go back to the tough ones when you have time.
Take a look at the Coacharya 2 column Unplanner, with only the two boxes in green letters.
Step 1: From the 2x2 matrix you have wasted your time on, ruthlessly trash the two lower boxes in red letters that represent ‘important & not urgent’ and ‘not important & not urgent’. Reduce the 2x2 matrix to a 2 column table. Your life will suddenly light up!
Step 2: Make sure that Important & Urgent issues comprise only 20% of your time space. Nothing should be I & U unless it is an accident or an act of God, positive or negative. Everything else can be and should be planned ahead. Before you say, no, but’ take a few deep breaths and think. Why not and what do you lose?
Step 3: Get ready for 2 hours a day that you will now have free. Put your feet up on your table and envision what more you can do in future. You can in fact create your future.
Hundreds of my clients and their colleagues use this approach. They have time to put their feet up and think about the future.
Trash your planner and Unplan NOW!