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Urgent
vs Important Priority settings
If there is only one "Top priority" setting
for your tasks, you will soon find your dashboard /
todo lists can turn into one big blur of "very
urgent" tasks that have not been completed.
When you create a task or event you will see two priority
levels on offer: Urgency and importance |
Below shows how the various settings will appear on your
dashboard
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- Allowing 2 settings, important
vs urgent makes things a lot clearer and easier
to get done.
- Please note: You do NOT have
to set a priority for either the urgent or important
values.
- You can use one, both or none
- You can change them at any time
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Why
Urgent vs Important?
Stephen Covey's Urgent
vs Important matrix
Dr
Stephen Covey is a world renowned teacher
on organization and time management. For Covey
the important vs urgent theory goes deeper
than just getting stuff done. Covey stresses
that we've become "addicted to
urgency" at the expense of what
is truly important.
Covey's framework aims to prioritise
work that is aimed at long-term goals, versus
tasks that appear to be urgent,
but are in fact less important.
His Urgent vs Important 2 x 2 matrix shown
right classifies tasks as urgent and non-urgent
on one axis, and important or non-important
on the other axis.
Quadrant 2 (see yellow
cell) shows the tasks that are non-urgent
but important. These are the ones Covey believes
we are likely to neglect; but, should focus
on to achieve true effectiveness |
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Covey's Urgent vs Important 2 x 2 matrix
Image
courtesy of wikipedia
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Background to the Urgent vs Important principle
While we do not subscribe to any one Time Management "ideology"
eg David Allen's Get Things
Done - which admittedly has some great ideas - we did
decide to follow the non-urgent vs important approach
to setting priorities.
Alec
Mackenzie and Pat Nickerson's The Time Trap (1972)
was the first to note the difference between importance and
urgency.
This was refined and further championed by Covey in his famous
book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
(1984) and First Things First (1994) by Stephen
Covey, A. Roger and Rebecca R. Merrill
- from which the above matrix is taken.
Further reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Things_First_%28book%29
With special thanks to Pamela Dodd
& Doug Sundheim
The 25
Best Time Management Tools & Techniques
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