The scale of getting things done:
- Urgent and important.
- Urgent but not important.
- Not urgent but important.
- Not urgent and not important.
Or for a visual que let’s borrow one from Wikipedia:
While it took me a long time to learn about the connection to president Eisenhower, I’ve generally found this decision matrix a pretty good way for classifying things. It works really well. Because urgency controls attention, and importance determines making sure it happens, which leads to much doing.
And then there’s what I call The Class 5 Full Roaming Vapor–something that is not urgent, but is important, and that makes you feel like having a shot of whiskey in the mean time. These kinds of things: you can kinda picture smack dab in the middle of the chart, lol.