Day 45: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Today, I've decided to share some of the concepts of the time management ideas contained in the smash hit bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. He puts it like this. You can divide a page of paper into four quadrants and then write in the following.

Quadrant 1:
IMPORTANT/URGENT
Activities:
Crises
Pressing problems
Deadline-driven projects

Quadrant 2:
IMPORTANT/NOT URGENT
Activities:
Prevention, production capability activities*
Relationship building
Recognizing new opportunities
Planning, recreation

Quadrant 3:
NOT IMPORTANT/URGENT
Activities:
Interruptions, some calls
Some mail, some reports
Some meetings
Proximate, pressing matters
Popular activities

Quadrant 4:
NOT IMPORTANT/NOT URGENT
Activities: Trivia, busy work
Some mail
Some phone calls
Time wasters
Pleasant activities

Stephen talks about production capability activities as being those that help you prepare for production. Thus, doing what refreshes your creative powers as a writer can be termed a p/c activity, as can preventing problems from occurring by preparation and keeping the machines of production well-oiled.

To be highly effective people, he states, we can be aware of which quadrant we are spending our time in and create a balance between production (or doing) and production capability (keeping ourselves and/or our machinery able to function optimally). Thus, spending most of our time in the non-urgent yet important Quadrant 2 - which does include recreation - brings us the highest long-term efficiency.

Let me know whether this proves useful!