How to Flex Your Quadrant II Muscle

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

SHARE
Request to reuse this
Add to my favorites
Topics: Career Development, Schedule Management, Scheduling

Way back when I was with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), our senior management became very interested in Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Every partner and manager attended an intensive five-day seminar on the seven habits and how to practically implement them into our daily lives.

Now, I have attended many seminars that I honestly got nothing out of. Not this one. This was when I experienced my first 360 evaluation. It was also during this seminar that one of the key concepts left a lasting impression: Habit 3, “Put first things first.” In this habit, Covey introduces the four quadrants of time management, as follows:

• Quadrant I: Urgent and important tasks (e.g., crises, emergency meetings)
• Quadrant II: Not urgent, but important tasks (e.g., proactive goals, planning and prevention)
• Quadrant III: Urgent, but not important tasks (e.g., irrelevant meetings, unimportant emails/messages)
• Quadrant IV: Not urgent and not important tasks (e.g., avoidance activities, time wasters)

As I looked at how I spent my own time, I was conditioned to live in a Quadrant I world: get a task with a due date, work your tail off to hit the date with acceptable quality, then move on to the next one.

Much of my Quadrant III tasks slowed down Quadrant I tasks, which I tried to minimize…but not always successfully.

…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.