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The Eisenhower Urgent/Important principle to use time effectively


sjoti

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Next to my planning method I have some more methods that I can use whenever I need some structure in life. Sometimes a lot of tasks need to be done, sometimes it feels like there's just too much to do and it just keeps your brain spinning without actually clearing anything up. 

Whenever that happens I draw up a simple grid. This grid divides your tasks into 4 categories, where every task is either important or not important and urgent or not urgent. 

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Dwight D. Eisenhower said: "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.".

How do we define important? Important tasks are tasks that make us achieve or get us closer to achieving our goals, whether they are personal or professional. 
And how do we define urgent? Urgent tasks are tasks that have direct consequences if you do them or not do them.

Now let's combine those two. 

1. Important and urgent: Your highest priority. In this area are the tasks that can only get here because of two reasons. The first reason being procrastination, the second reason being that it is an activity you could not have foreseen. You can eliminate the first reason by planning ahead. Also known as critical tasks. This can, for example, be a deadline for a project, or an opportunity for you career that pops up out of nowhere because someone quit. 

2. Important and not urgent: In this area are the tasks with a chance to do them ahead of time. Maybe you want to learn how to program to improve yourself and give yourself a chance of a better future. This can be an example of a long-term goal focussed on personal gains. Professional can be the focus on a career. 

3. Not important but urgent: In this area, you can usually find things that are caused by others. Goals where other people need you, where you do not gain anything towards your goals. Preventing these tasks usually requires you to say no to people, which is a whole topic on its own. 

4. Not important and not urgent: The last area. This area is where gaming comes in. These are the activities you can spend time on that do not give you anything in return. 

List your activities, the things you want to take care of. Think what you want to reach and categorize things based on whether they aid you in reaching those goals. Let this be a guideline on what you are going to do or how you are going to fill in your planning. If you take care of your activities well enough then it should be possible to get rid of anything in the first area completely, with the exception of unforeseen tasks. 

 

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