Quadrant 1 (Q1): Urgent and Important
Quadrant 1 (Q1) tasks are the “do first” tasks, because they are critical for
your life or career in some way and need to be finished right away. They
are the tasks that need to be done in order to avoid negative
consequences. It’s important to be able to manage the tasks that are in Q1
before anything else, so you want to get these tasks done as soon as
possible.
An example of a Q1 task in your career may be answering a time-sensitive
email from a client or finishing a report that’s due by the end of the day.
This matrix can also be used in your personal life. Examples of Q1 tasks in
your personal life may be a crying baby, a medical emergency, or
something burning in the oven.
Quadrant 2 (Q2): Important but not Urgent
Quadrant 2 (Q2) are the “decide when” tasks, because while they can
have an amazing impact on your life, they don’t seem immediately critical
like the Q1 tasks that need to be done right away.
Simply put, Q2 tasks usually relate to your long-term goals. In an ideal
world, this is where you want to invest most of your time. But
unfortunately, this is the area that’s the easiest to ignore because you’re
too focused on the priorities from the other quadrants.
What are some examples of these tasks? Well, exercising is important to
your health. So is spending time with your family or working on a
certificate that will improve your career path. Usually, nobody is pushing
you to complete Q2 activities, so it’s easy to let these tasks fall by the
wayside.
Quadrant 3 (Q3): Urgent but not Important
Quadrant 3 (Q3) tasks are the “delegate it” tasks, because while they seem
urgent, they can often be automated or passed off to someone who is
better qualified to handle them.
This is the quadrant for those tasks that, in hindsight, turned out to be
not very important. Taking on Q3 tasks often occurs when someone asks
you to do something that does not directly benefit you or get you closer to
achieving your goals. For Q3 tasks, it’s important to learn and remember
how to delegate certain things.
When you think something is urgent when it isn’t, it’s usually caused by
an outside source of distraction—like checking your email or phone or
responding to people as soon as they try to contact you. You may think it
is urgent at the moment, so you stop what you’re doing to tend to the
matter, but in retrospect, the task wasn’t that crucial.
If you’re in the middle of working on a project and the phone rings, it’s
not important for you to answer it. So, you can delegate this task to
someone else. It may seem urgent while it is ringing, but a task like this
can usually be handled by other people. (Don’t worry, we’ll talk about
how later in the book.)
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