Time Management: Eisenhower method
One of the things you may need to develop, and we probably all stand to improve it some, is time management. This is true even more so for small business owners. There are many methods or techniques to explore, and I plan on going through some of them with you, but today I want to show you the method I like best. It’s commonly referred to as the “Eisenhower method” after the President who used this technique.
It’s a simple method, and works well for managing many aspects. Divide everything up based on the above table into 1 of the 4 quadrants.
1: Important and Urgent – These are the fires! Put them out right away!
2: Important but Not Urgent – These are important, but don’t need addressing now. Schedule them for later.
3: Not Important but Urgent – Delegate these to someone else. Have them do them now.
4: Not Important and Not Important – Iif you can’t do everything, these are the ones not to do.
Your attention as a small business owner should be on the tasks in boxes 1 and 2 primarily, and sometimes on 3. The 4′s are the ones to ignore for now. They may be “nice to haves” or “nice to dos”, but the time they take is taking away from the more important and/or more urgent matters. Leave them on the list for a while, but don’t be afraid to let them go if need be.
Also realize that items can move from one quadrant to another, especially between 2 to 1, 4 to 3, and 4 to 2 . But they almost never go from a 4 to 1 directly. They almost always go over only 1 direction at a time, either between Urgent and Not, or between Important and Not. Often things move from one to the other because of being neglected, at which time they become either more important or more urgent, and rarely both.
So you may ask yourself, if I’m focusing on the 1s, why not just ignore the rest? Because almost no task can be completed in 1 session. Often you will find yourself blocked by some outside force that limits what you can work on and actually make progress. Don’t work on something that you’re not going to be able to move forward on, just because it’s a 1. If you can take care of a 2 or a few of them, you’ve moved forward more than working on a 1 and not going anyway with it.
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Robert Porter holds Oracle Certified Professional-Java 6, MCSE, A+, Net+, Project+, Security+, and multiple CIW certifications. He has been in the hosting industry for more than a decade and is founder of Lagniappe Internet L.L.C., a privately owned, completely debt free, hosting company based out of New Orleans. Robert's background includes 25+ years in programming, databases, networking and systems administration. |
