How we feel: When we spend a lot of time in this quadrant we become stressed and burned out.Īction: Minimise the time spent in this quadrant by prioritizing, planning and delegating ie. This can be anything from an overdue project or report to customer complaints, a severe bottleneck or broken business process right through to a burst pipe or a health issue like a toothache that hasn't been dealt with! What: Tasks that fall into this quadrant include deadlines, urgent meetings, pressing problems, crises and fire-fighting. Quadrant 1 - Crises or 'Important AND Urgent' Tasks So, let's take a more detailed look at the individual Urgent Important Matrix quadrants:

Important Tasks: lead us towards our overall mission or goals and these key actions often require planning, organization and initiative.

Urgent Tasks: cause us to react, we stop what we're currently doing and work on the urgent task instead.

What do we mean here by Important and Urgent?

Quadrant 4 - Distractions - NOT URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT.Quadrant 3 - Interruptions - URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT.Quadrant 2 - Goals and Planning - NON-URGENT and IMPORTANT.Quadrant 1 - Crises - URGENT and IMPORTANT.Using a simple grid, it defines tasks according to their importance and urgency: He is quoted as saying, 'What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.' It was Dr Stephen Covey (of 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' fame) who took these concepts mainstream, calling it The Urgent Important Matrix in his famous book. Well, Former US President Eisenhower used this so-called 'Eisenhower Principle' to organize his tasks. Wouldn't it be nice to ride the wave, rather than the other way around? It's also a great model to share with youth and anyone who is disorganized to help them be more focused - and it's a compelling experiential tool to use in a workshop or seminar. It's great for a wide spectrum of coaches from career, executive and business coaching to life and even spiritual coaching.

The Urgent Important Matrix is a powerful productivity and time management tool to help people manage their time more effectively.

4 box priority matrix