The key to effective management, is allocating energy through the lens of importance rather than urgency. E.g, ask yourself what one thing could you do that if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life? Lemme guess, it’s important, but not urgent so you’re not doing it. These are my insights based on the 7 habits Chapter 3.
- Quadrants of Important and Urgent
- The power of independent will
- Planning
- Delegation - increasing P AND PC
- Books
Quadrants of Important and Urgent
Axis | Urgent | Not Urgent |
---|---|---|
Important | l11 | l12 |
Not Important | l13 | l14 |
Axis | Urgent | Not Urgent |
---|---|---|
Important | The procrastinator | The prioritizor |
Not Important | The yes man | The slacker |
- l11
- I:Urgent and Important
- The procrastinator
- Some stuff, must be important and urgent, unavoidable. a sick kid
- Some stuff, avoidable if you did first things first.
- Not starting task early, now a tight deadline
- Not taking care of your health, now a health issue.
- Not taking care of your car, now car breaks
- Not getting to airport early, now super stressed.
- Driven by deadlines.
- Fire fighting + Crisis
- Root Canal
- Production Outages
- Deadline driven
- l12
- II:Not Urgent and Important
- Avoid Cramming
- Renew yourself, say not to stuff.
- Fill up early
- Say no with a smile on expected checkin.
- Resist peer pressure, eventual respect from others.
- The prioritizor
- Planning ahead.
- Since not urgent, hard to do.
- Prevention, Production Capacity
- Relationships and long term results
- Planning
- Finding new opportunities
- l13
- III:Urgent and Not Important
- The Yes Man
- Dunno key to success, but failure is trying to help everone.
- Fickle, blow the wrong way
- Lcak of discipline, feel like door mat.
- Often things urgent and important for others, but not to you
- Ringing phone, text messages. Stop for others not getting stuff done
- Feeling bad saying no to others
- FOMO
- The news, checking feeds
- Pressing Matters
- Live sports
- Interruptions, Text, Chat
- Checking market/analytics multiple times a day
- l14
- IV:Not Urgent and not Important
- The Slacker; Anything in excess
- Too much video games, the web, TikTok
- Sleeping for ever
- Several comic books a week
- Problem in Excess
- One TV show OK, the second - fourth, turns relaxing into wasted.
- Guilt and Flakiness
- Procrastination
- Addiction
Keep your self in quadrant II
- Get rid of Quad 1 - Get stuff done early to avoid the chris
- Get rid of Quad 3 - Stop trying to please others, saying no, is saying yes to most important
- Get rid of Quad 4 - relaxation is Quad 2, but excess in Quad 4
Urgent
Urgent matters are visible. They are usually in our face, popular with others, and pressing on us. We react to them which removes the need for discipline or proactivity.
The more time we spend in Quadrant 1, on problems and crisis, the more time we’ll need there - problems will multiply. The only relief will be found by hiding in the distraction of Quadrants III and IV.
The way to shrink Quadrant I, is spending time in Quadrant II, essentially being proactive on things that avoid crisis.
The power of independent will
Lack of discipline? No, lack of purpose
(Using the switch model - Motivate the elephant don’t use the rider.)
It’s easy to think the reason you’re not going to the gym is the lack of discipiline. But, if you look harder, it’s probably a lack of purpose. If you reframe “going to the gym” as “staying healthy so I don’t have a heart attack so I can see my daughters wedding”, I bet you’ll find lots of discipline.
What it takes to say “NO”
When you say yes to a request, you are saying no to something else. Essentialism has a great tool, either have a “hell yes”, or it’s a no. It also describes several tools for saying no in a way that doesn’t damage the relationship.
Planning
Schedule your goals, not your meetings
Your calendar probably already has the standing things, meetings, gym, etc. For each role, set goals, and then get those on the calendar. Then fill in the rest with meetings as desired.
Plan Weekly
Planning weekly lets you see the big picture, it lets you see your investments across your roles, and responsibilities. And gives you the flexibility to respond to relationships with the time required.
Not meant to be your master, but a tool to live your life
adapt ddaily, adapt as day. Most stuff needs to wiggle. It’s ok, do as much as possible. If you get a third done, better then nothing.
The freedom comes from safegaurds - astronauts need to rehearse everything so regardless of proglem lots of brain power to handle
School no fence between school and road, everyone scared, with fence kids can run free.
You need balance
You can’t make up for a loss of your health by doing a great job at work. Nor can your family make up for the fact you skipped your health and had a heart attack.
Focus on rocks and boulders
Daily planning too narrow, monthly too broad.
- Step #1 identify the rocks. Mini goals.
- Step #2 Split by roles, do goals by rock. Plan by role, stay balanced.
- Role - Me, recharge me.
- No more then 10-15 rocks.
- Step #3 - Schedule Rocks
- Step #4 - Schedule Pebbles
Don’t let fear block your most important things
- Easy to skip scary stuff
- gotta do uncomfortable stuff as well.
- Only place to reach your full potential
Get up every time you fail.
- Fall 7 times and get up 8.
- Don’t listen to the resistance
- Focus on chances we miss when don’t try.
Delegation - increasing P AND PC
Stewardship delegation
From Stewardship Delegation:
At some point you need to scale out, and that’s called delegation! Stewardship delegation is a form of delegation where the responsibility for the delegated task is transferred to the delegatee. Stewardship delegation requires upfront effort, but the long term effectiveness it creates is second to none. Stewardship delegation has five parts you need to get a shared agreement on. The desired results, the operating parameters, the available resources, the measurement system and the consequences of their stewardship.
Books
- Essentialisim
- Checklist manifesto
- Getting Things Done
- Upstream
- Eat that frog
- Discipline of execution