The Best Way to Prioritize Your Time

Why is it that some successful people always have time to live awesome lives and you can’t fit in your son’s baseball game? How come some entrepreneurs are running multiple companies and you don’t have the time to get one business moving in the right direction? Is time your biggest hinderance from having the success you desire?

The reality is that all people…every one…no matter who they are, where they live, or what they are doing…have the exact same 24 hours in each day. So why are you struggling with having enough time?

Here’s a revelation that I had a couple of years ago, and it’s been absolute game changer for me. I don’t have a TIME problem, I have a PRIORITY problem! I realized that I was prioritizing my time completely wrong. Then I started to research HOW to prioritize my time more effectively. Since, I have learned the BEST way to prioritize my time. I was able to “find the time” necessary to start making progress in my business and live the life I’ve wanted.

To be honest, there are still days that get away. There are still days where I miss something that I wish I could do. But, in general things are moving forward much better.

In this article, I share the simple method I have found and use every day to help get you moving in the right direction. This is another article in the series based on the topic Focus on what YOU Can Control.

Some Home/Side Business Scenarios

Let’s consider several hypothetical situations that might arise for the side and home business entrepreneur:

You have been offered an opportunity to take part in a conference as a speaker. The topic of your talk will be based on the field in which you have your business. In addition, you will be offered the opportunity to setup a display and market your products.
You receive an invitation to lunch at 10am. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour. But the inviter is someone with whom you have or are trying to have a business relationship.
As above, you receive an invitation to lunch at 10am. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour. This time the inviter is a friend who wants to hang out and have a drink.
The school nurse’s office calls you to tell you that your 5th grade son is sitting in the office due to sickness.
You are working on your next blog article in your home office and feeling a bit stuck. A text comes in from your 16 year old son asking if you could quickly run to the store and deliver a new notebook to the school by 11:15. He desperately needs it to avoid a 0 on an assignment.
You are in your office developing some new marketing material. Suddenly you get a text message from your friend Jill asking if you saw what Melissa has posted on Facebook.
You are in the middle of following up with several potential customers. You receive a message from your team member Bill asking you to jump on a call with him and a customer.
As above, you are in the middle of following up with several potential customers. This time, the text from your team member Bill is asking you to look at the post that he just put up on Facebook.

The Importance of Time Management

One of the most critical skills that is required for achievement is time management. The problem is that most of us are terrible at it. The side business entrepreneur’s most precious resource is usually his/her time. You are juggling a day job, family, and the entrepreneurial pursuit. Time is usually more important than money in most circumstances.

Investment in overhauling your time management skills is usually one of the best investments that you can make.

PROPER PRIORITIZATION is one the most important time management skills for having a successful day, week, month, and year. It is one that I have had to invest in myself, and have gotten much better at since I discovered how to prioritize my time. It’s been a journey for sure.

Prioritization

Let’s start with the definition of prioritize because I think there is some gold to mine there:

prioritize: verb

designate or treat (something) as more important than other things: prioritize your credit card debt.
determine the order for dealing with (a series of items or tasks) according to their relative importance: age affects the way people prioritize their goals

Prioritization of your time is about managing the order of tasks to which you apply yourself. You must prioritize according to what’s most IMPORTANT. The higher the priority of a task, the closer to the top of our list it should be.

You may be thinking, “Duh, of course!” The problem is that life continuously throws us stuff from another category: URGENT. Urgency and importance are NOT always the same thing. When you learn how to manage the URGENT vs. the IMPORTANT is when you start making progress.

A Closer Look at Important and Urgent

Important: The activities and tasks that lead to us achieving our goals. These goals can be either personal or group oriented, and private or professional.
Urgent: The activities and tasks that demand immediate attention. The problem is that “demanding immediate attention” can be defined by ourself, the current circumstances, or someone else entirely. These urgent tasks do not always relate to your own goals. Many times, urgent tasks are defined for us by others, and therefore, are really the achievement of someone else’s goals.

Urgent and important are NOT the same thing, but there is crossover, right?

So how do we coalesce these two categories of tasks, and prioritize correctly to achieve our goals? Here’s a great method…

The Eisenhower Principle

In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which was being held at Northwestern University, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made public a useful principle by which he is said to have prioritized his time. He said,

“I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.“

He actually attributed that statement to a “former college president”, so did not claim it as his own. But this principle became known as the “Eisenhower Principle”. Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People popularized the concept for the masses.

The Best Way to Prioritize

The principle can be visualized in a diagram, and then utilized easily for prioritization.

Let’s look at each of these quadrants and how you should use them to prioritize your tasks, and hence, spend your very valuable time. To illustrate this concept, let’s assume the following simplistic goal and a task associated with this goal. The task is what you are trying to prioritize:

Goal: Electricity can be used in the house.

Task: Pay the electric bill.

Q1: Urgent and Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…The payment is required in the collection office today by 5pm or the electricity to the house will be shut off.

What: Crises, emergencies, and deadlines.

Strategy: Manage + Do

You MUST do these items, that’s why they are here. You will need to spend some time in this quadrant, and maybe somedays lots of time. Your goal, however, is to MINIMIZE your TIME spent here. There are two types of tasks in this quadrant:

Those that are foreseen

Those that are unforeseen

For those that are foreseen, procrastination is the likely cuplrit. You have likely put yourself in this position. You can minimize your time here in the futureby planning ahead and spending time in Q2 on those tasks.

Unforeseen crises or emergencies come up, and they are impossible to plan. One strategy is to leave time in each day to handle these. But in my opinion, that’s like planning for emergencies, and our goal is to eliminate them as much as possible. The reality is that when these situations arise, you deal with them as they come. When unforeseen emergencies pop up, you just take care of them. Another strategy is to use your management skills and delegate when possible.

Q2: Not Urgent and Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…Today is the first of the month, and the payment is due on the 25th.

What: Strategic, opportunities, investment, diet and exercise, relationship building

Strategy: Plan + Focus

This is the category in which you should STRIVE to spend MOST of our TIME. Here is where you make progress on your overarching goals. You achieve these goals by planning the tasks that lead to them, and then giving them the proper focus in your schedule. You have the most prioritization and schedule flexibility in this quadrant. You can move tasks around to accommodate particular schedules and motivations.

In the example, you make sure that you prioritize the sending of the payment so that it arrives by the 25th. You do not have to send the payment today. However, if you have some time, or if you’ve scheduled a block of time for paying several bills today, then you may wish to.

Q3: Urgent and Not Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…Today is the 10th, and the bill is due on the 25th. A billing agent from the electric company called and asked for payment today because he gets a bonus for having his allotted processing done by today.

What: Most notifications and interruptions, some meetings, most requests that start with “I need you to…”

Strategy: Avoid/Pushback/Delegate

This is the category in which you should strive to spend NONE of your TIME. There is no benefit to your overarching goals by spending any time here.

In the example, the billing agent has tried to make his problem your problem. Paying that bill today is NOT required, regardless of the billing agent’s request. If you don’t have free time, don’t do it…push back on it. If you have empathy for the agent’s situation (maybe he’s your brother-in-law), delegate it if you can. You don’t HAVE to redirect your day or a period of time in order to deal with this person’s request.

This quadrant is the biggest TIME SUCKER and PRODUCTIVITY KILLER for most people. AWARENESS is the key skill for staying out of Q3. You must be aware of whether the requested task is actually important, or just urgent.

Q4: Not Urgent and Not Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…Never.

What: Distractions, entertainment, social media, organizing old records

Strategy: Limit

Simply limit your time spent in this quadrant. You need down time, as does everybody. Entertainment and work around the house can be very productive down time. However, scrolling through Facebook every 5 minutes is not productive. With your down time, you should seek to have “productively unproductive” time. Only you can determine what that is for yourself.

The task of paying the bill does require completion, so it doesn’t actually apply here.

This quadrant is a huge time sucker and productivity killer for many people. That is because they ALLOW themselves to get sucked in. Most people are self-aware enough to know that scrolling through Facebook every 5 minutes is not productive. Staying out of Q4 requires self DISCIPLINE.

Applying the Principle to the Home/Side Business Scenarios

Returning to the hypothetical situations posed in the first section…what do you do with each?

Question 1:

You have been offered an opportunity to take part in a conference as a speaker, and the topic of your talk will be based on the field in which you have your business. The conference is in 3 months. In addition, you will be offered the opportunity to setup a display and market your products.

Which Quadrant: Q2 (Important and Not Urgent)

Strategy: Say “Yes!” Now you can create a plan to develop your talk and start working the plan

Question 2:

At 10am, you receive an invitation to lunch. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour, but the inviter is someone with whom you have or are trying to have a business relationship.

Which Quadrant: Q1 (Important and Urgent)

Strategy: This is not a no-brainer, but you should be inclined to say “Yes.” In prioritization, and time management in general, we must remember that WE OWN OUR TIME, and we must be the master of it. If you respect your time, others will as well. This is a change in plans, but likely a good one because the person asking you is someone whom is important to your business and relationship building is key. There is another strategy that could be used here: you could discuss another meeting time or day with the requestor. If that’s not good (i.e., maybe the person is only in town today), then go to lunch. Move the workout to later in the day if that is possible.

Question 3:

As above, at 10am you receive an invitation to lunch. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour, but the inviter is a friend who wants to hang out and have a drink.

Which Quadrant: Q3 (Not Important and Urgent)

Strategy: This is also not a no-brainer, but you should be inclined to say “No.” This is a change in plans that may not be important enough to cause you to change your plans. If the friend has a particular reason (i.e., they are in need, or have an opportunity to share, etc), then maybe its a good change. The workout and healthy food intake is by definition a Q2 activity. It’s important, so don’t just jump at the lunch opportunity. Definitely employ the strategy of discussing another day to get together.

Question 4:

Your 5th grade son is sitting in the school nurse’s office due to sickness, and you have just received that call.

Which Quadrant: Q1 (Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Go pickup your son, or have your spouse pick him up. It needs to be done, so either do it, or delegate it to a person of trust and authority.

Question 5:

You are working on your next blog article in your home office, feeling a bit stuck, and you get a text from your 16 year old son asking if you could quickly run to the store and deliver a new notebook to the school by 11:15 because he needs it.

Which Quadrant: Q3 (Not Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Don’t fall for it! OK, maybe its a bit simplistic to categorize this as Q3, and it very well may be a Q1 activity, but this is precisely why staying out of Q3 requires awareness to properly determine if its actually important or not.

In this case (believe me, I’ve been there), it’s more than likely that there are no detrimental outcomes from your son not having a new notebook at 11:15 this morning. He can use an old one, he can borrow, he can use loose paper, he can ask the teacher, etc. There are many ways for HIM to solve HIS problem that doesn’t involve you blowing your entire morning of progress on Q2 activities (regardless of your present mental state). Even if the teacher docks points for him not having his notebook, it’s not the end of the world, nor will this minor transgression affect his ability to get into college. It’s a good lesson.

Question 6:

You are out to coffee with a potential business partner when suddenly you get a text message from your friend Jill asking if you saw what Melissa has posted on Facebook.

Which Quadrant: Q3 (Not Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Don’t look, don’t answer the text, and don’t get sucked in! Unless that post is a picture of your house on fire, you don’t care. Honestly, you don’t. Do NOT allow yourself to be sucked in by what Jill thinks is urgent, or by the likely gossip that is behind it all. You must have the discipline to stay locked on the task at hand, which is the person sitting right in front of you.

Question 7:

You are in the middle of following up with several potential customers and you receive a message from your team member Bill asking for you to jump on a call with him and a customer.

Which Quadrant: Q1 (Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Get on that call…but, it is perfectly appropriate to ask Bill if you can take that call in 30 minutes or an hour from now. Own your time. It may not be possible, but it may be. If not, you get on the call then. I am assuming that Bill is respectful enough of your time to only invite you when it is indeed important. Your team members contribute to your business and life, and you do to theirs. It is critical to support them.

Question 8:

You are in the middle of following up with several potential customers and you receive a message from your team member Bill asking for you to look at the post that he just put up on Facebook.

Which Quadrant: Q2 (Important and Not Urgent)

Strategy: You absolutely help them out…but, on your time. So wait until you are finished with your current tasks. Like with the scenario above, you definitely want to help your team mates, but in this case, its likely that you can provide necessary feedback later after your focus time is complete.

Conclusion

Prioritization is one of the most important skills for time management, and consequently productivity. The side business entrepreneur desperately needs to maximize his/her time. I have found that the Eisenhower Principle is the best way to prioritize for me. It does take some discipline, and practice. You must find the ability to recognize the actual importance and urgency of a request or task. When you get the hang of this, your productivity and your mental health start improve greatly.

The Best Method for Time Management

The Best Way to Prioritize Your Time

Some Home/Side Business Scenarios

The Importance of Time Management