The Eisenhower Matrix--Q3: Urgent and Not Important

  Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of things on your plate?  Ever feel like they all have to be done at once?  Sometimes the urgency of our professional or personal lives can seem all-consuming.  This is the challenge of Q3: to decide how much of the urgent actually is important!    Urgent things come at us from many directions…co-workers want to talk, family things need attention, the inbox just keeps filling, and many of these things have the illusion of being important.  Everyone expects that their urgent times become your urgent times, that their Q1 becomes your Q1.   The truth is that it’s just not so; not everyone else’s urgent needs to be yours too.

  The other challenge for people trying to sort Q3 is that people often feel that “I alone can fix this,” and so they take on responsibilities which are not necessarily theirs alone.

  Q3 tasks don’t need to be done right this minute by you. Q3 items can often be delegated, or scheduled into your day.  Some emails have to be returned immediately, no doubt.  They are in Q1.  But the rest of them can wait until you have dealt with the truly urgent and important items of your day.  And spent some time in Q2, working beyond the end of your nose, to make a long-term difference in your organization and your life.

  The other uncomfortable truth about Q3 is that many of us like the feeling of being needed, so we lean toward anything that feels urgent because we feel valued when we solve the urgent problem.  Usually, this feeling is short-lived, however, because it can also cause us to feel like we’re caught on the hamster wheel, running for our lives and getting nowhere.

  Recognizing what belongs in Q3 takes some personal discipline…this is the place where the “Tyranny of the Urgent” will threaten to take over your day.  Define whether this urgent task is important to you; if it is, act immediately.  If it’s not, delegate it, avoid it, or assign a future time to deal with on your terms.  The key is to spend as little time in Q3 activity as possible.

Next time: Q4: Not Urgent and not Important: the time waster’s black hole