How to Stop Procrastinating: a simple Guide to Mastering Difficult Tasks and Breaking the Procrastination Habit

Quadrant 4 (Q4): Not Important and not Urgent
Quadrant 4 (Q4) tasks are the “delete it” tasks, because they are the
activities you should avoid at all costs. They are simply a complete waste
of your time. If you are able to identify and eliminate all of your Q4 tasks,
then you can free up much-needed time that can be reinvested in Q2
tasks.
Some examples of Q4 tasks are playing video games, watching television
shows, mindlessly browsing the web, or fulfilling obligations that are
other people’s priorities.
Does that mean nothing in Q4 should be a part of your life?
The short answer is no.
Having a balance between your professional and personal life is
important, and downtime helps you regain your energy. The challenge
here is to spend most of your time in Q2 and just enough time in Q4 to
relax.
How to Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Overcome
Procrastination
To get started with the Eisenhower Matrix, I recommend a simple
exercise:
Print out the list that’s included
in the companion website
or create
one on your own that’s divided into the four sections previously
described.
Make seven copies of a blank grid for each week.
Each day, write down the tasks that you’d like to accomplish,
putting them in the appropriate quadrant.
Whenever something new pops up, take a minute or two to think

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about the nature of the task and put it in the appropriate quadrant.
At the end of the week, when all of the grids are full, evaluate how
effectively you spent your time and whether your process needs to
be reorganized. Keep adjusting your schedule until you’re spending
as much time as possible completing Q1 and Q2 activities.
Don’t worry if at first you find that most of your time is spent in “reaction
mode,” with you mostly focusing on urgent activities in Q1 and Q3.
It’s normal to get fixated on the stuff that has a definitive deadline. But if
you keep tracking your tasks using this matrix, asking yourself why you
do each activity, and then redesigning your schedule, you’ll discover it’s
not that hard to structure each day on the tasks that have the biggest
impact on your long-term success.