In First Things First, Steven Covey devotes a chapter to “The Urgency Addiction” and addresses time management via two variables: importance and urgency.
I) Important, Urgent II) Important, Not Urgent III) Not Important, Urgent IV) Not Important, Not Urgent
Of the four possibilities, we are most efficient if we focus our time on important tasks that are not urgent. Too often, we respond to urgent tasks first, whether or not they are important.
Time Management in the Workplace
Consider these distractions:
If your team has pop-up email enabled to receive an auto preview of every incoming message:
How often do they stop working on an important task to read a routine e-mail message?
Worse, do they set aside the important task to respond to these urgent e-mails?
Blackberrys and IPods are the ultimate in pop-up e-mails:
How often do you find colleagues focused on these devices during meetings?
How often do the miss important information because their focus is on the device causing others to repeat themselves?
