steal the time
from your
dreams?
No more!
Steal it back!
Eisenhower Matrix
not important, not urgent tasks
LIMIT
Eisenhower Mattrix's not-important-not-urgent tasks are things you don’t need to do and don’t want to do. These make you feel worse afterwards even if they give you instant gratification (such as browsing social media and excessive shopping). Basically these are time wasters. These can be done in moderation, if done intentionally. Because everyone knows the taste of forbidden fruit - your mind immediately starts wanting to do what it should not. If, however, you plan some time into your days for this quadrant, it is easier to limit the amount of time you use here.
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A study in the Journal of Applied psychology found that if a person spent their off-job leisure time by engaging in self-mastery activities (exercise, volunteering) they were more motivated the next day. Also those who relaxed with music, meditation or yoga, were calmer the next day. Those who engaged in distractions to avoid problems (like excessive TV-watching) first showed increased positivity, but in the long run their mood and motivation worsened systematically. These are distractions that steal large chunks of your time - time wasters. Avoid these. If these are activities others are demanding of you, learn to say no. Explain you do not have the time. If they ask what could be so important you cannot help them, simply tell your calendar is full. |
No need to explain more, they should respect that. If you do this consistently, they will soon start asking someone else. Sure they may say you are not a nice person anymore, but you don’t need to please everyone. Especially not if this pleasing means that you have to sacrifice your own goals, the ones that are important to you.
If you do not want to eliminate these tasks altogether, push them to a “maybe one day” -list. But eliminating these will feel good and give you time for everything else on your list. Which will make you feel even better. Being able to delete a task from your to-do list completely, releases a lot of energy. You get rid of feeling guilty of lost time.
Use a timer to see how much time you spend here an to identify your biggest time wasters. Do you forget yourself not only surfing on social media (which is planned to keep you hooked), reading unnecessary emails (sign off from mailing lists that won’t take you closer to reaching your goal), gaming too long, binge-watching TV?
Avoidance activities that give you that false feeling of being busy and effective belong here (sorting and organising emails instead of answering them, constantly tweaking your calendar to make you feel on top of things). This illusion of being busy may lure you to think these activities are in the important / urgent category.
Do you know why you do the avoidance activities? Is it to push unwanted things into the future because you feel uncomfortable doing them? We are wired to search for gratification and comfort, and prefer instant gratification. Pushing a necessary task into the future and doing something else instead may give you just that - instant gratification. But guess what - if you let yourself be immersed in these not important and not urgent things, you will find those tasks one day in the #1 category. And then it will be even more unpleasant to do them when you are facing a tight deadline.
Tiny Steps
If this is you, have a good look at the unpleasant task you are avoiding by spending your time here. Think of all the tiniest steps you need to take to finish the task.
And I mean the very tiniest: if you need to write an email you would not want to write, you may start by first searching the email address. Do this one day and give yourself a virtual at on the back for doing this. The next day you might gather all the material you need to have at hand when writing the email. Again congratulate yourself for doing this. The next day, write a list of things to say. Congratulate yourself. The next day write a few sentences of the first thing on the list. Congratulate yourself. The next day, take another thing. Congratulate yourself. And so, you will have a draft in a few days. And I think writing that email will be that much easier, when you write the final version.
Also doing these small steps and congratulating yourself for doing the steps takes away the feeling of guilt for being inefficient and feeds your mind with the feeling of success.
All the quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix:#1 Tasks that are both important and urgent #2 Tasks that are important but not urgent |