First Things First, Stephen Covey
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"Stephen Covey, in his book First Things First, notes that those who accomplish very little are probably spending a large amount of their 16 hours in the Quadrant of Deception and the Quadrant of Waste.
In his book he highlights four quadrants where one can spend their time:
1) Quadrant of Necessity
- The Stress Quadrant
- The strategy: Do It Now!
- It needs to be done, and it needs to be done fast!
2) Quadrant of Quality & Personal Leadership,
- The Value Quadrant
- The strategy: Schedule time.
- It needs to be done, plan time to do it before it gets urgent.
3) Quadrant of Deception,
- The strategy: Delegate.
- It needs to be done fast, but are you the one that needs to do it?
4) Quadrant of Waste.
- The Regret Quadrant
- The strategy: Eliminate
- Why am I doing this again?
We all have a choice as to how we allocate our time between these quadrants. The trick is to manage your time effectively by:
1) Manage the Quadrant of Necessity as best you can.
2) Focus on the Quadrant of Quality and Personal Leadership for it makes the Quadrant of Necessity more manageable and helps you achieve your goals faster.
3) Be Careful of the Quadrant of Deception because activities in this quadrant may appear urgent when in fact they are not. Too much time here will slow your progress towards reaching your goals.
4) Avoid the Quadrant of Waste as much as possible. Too much time here and you will not achieve your goals at all. "