There's a saying in life that goes something like this: "Time is money." And if there's one thing that I've learned throughout my college career, that phrase might be it. Trying to find the time for school, work, friends, exercise - just to name a few - seems almost impossible to do. No matter what, there never seems to be enough time to do everything we want. So what does this have to do with cost effectiveness? Well, if time is money, then cost effectiveness is, in a certain sense, the same basic principle as time effectiveness. Which brings me to my point: the ability to effectively use and manage your time is something that is becoming increasingly important when trying to live a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
While reading up on time management, I came across a certain blog post that referenced Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This particular post referred to a concept within the book that separated time into four different quadrants
"Quadrant I: Urgent and important matters. Crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects. We all have these things; we've all got to do them.
Quadrant II: Non-urgent but important matters. Relationship building, planning, recognising new opportunities, improvements to your workplace, exercise, recreation. Things we know we should do but don't because they're not urgent.
Quadrant III: Urgent but not important things like phone calls, email, interruptions, popular matters, some meetings. This is visible stuff on-hand at the moment that isn't really important. It's easy to get caught up in this quadrant!
Quadrant IV: The worst of the lot - non-urgent and non-important matters. This includes trivia, spam, time wasters, distractions, non-productive activities."
If there was one "time quadrant" that you could chose to spend the most time with, what would it be? Unless you're insane, I would assume that you would chose quadrant II. Without spending time on those activities, I would imagine that life would be rather shallow. So this is where time effectiveness and management come into play. The ability to juggle the time you have available is tremendously important in making room for the activities you really enjoy, while at the same time allowing for the completion of the urgent tasks at hand. And the better you are at managing your time, the easier it is to strike a balance between these four "quadrants" of time, which in the end, hopefully add up to a healthier and happier life.
This is so trueeeee. If I had to pick, it would definitely be quadrant II. I find that I do not have time for the important things...especially exercise! I've been thinking how excited I am to graduate just for that reason...I will be able to exercise!!! Also, although Quadrant IV is not important...I tend to spend a lot of my time on facebook and stupid websites (which I'd assume falls into that category).I guess I'll need to fix that in order to have good time management!
Yeah, you make some good points, quadrant 2 seems like the most fulfilling area to focus on. I think it's kind of funny to look at the work I am doing now and see how so many of these projects/jobs have become a member of quadrant 1(..a crisis seems like a fitting term) and how time management could've helped me lead a more relaxed, comfortable, and highly more productive last year or so of school
First off— I love that picture! It sucked me in.
Secondly— Good use of subheads and great writing. It looks likes you were listening on Tuesday, or you know your stuff and didn't need to :)
Thirdly— I'm glad you wrote about time management because it's such an important area that often gets overlooked. I don't know how everyone else feels... but it feels like I've just got the college-time-management-gig down, and now it's time to learn a whole new workplace-time-management-method.
I might have to pick up a copy of that book...
As nice as hanging out in Quadrant II all the time sounds, my preferences lean more toward a combination of quadrants I and II. Quadrant I activities sure are draining, as we all know – but there is also a lot of growth that happens while going through them. Talking to your office mates about the new espresso machine is fun – I'm not discounting that – but so is figuring out a really complex problem (design or otherwise).
In the end, I think everyone (myself included) could benefit from a time management audit of some sort.
You know Paul, I totally agree. I guess I kind of failed to mention this in my actual post, but I think time management is really all about striking a balance between your various activities, not about focusing on one area, and one area only. I would say I'm with you on this one: I would like to spend the majority of my time in quadrants I and II (after all I'm doing design work because I enjoy it), and even a little bit of quadrant IV (to say I don't enjoy playing Plants vs. Zombies would be a downright lie). So like I said, it's all about finding the right balance between everything that allows us to make the most of our time.
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