Are you always finding out that when you come to the end of the day, you only see that you haven’t gotten anything done that you wanted to do? Have you spent all day trying to meet the demands of life and it didn’t turn out the way that you planned and isn’t the way you wanted to spend your time. That is definitely not away to live if you end up always chasing your plans, being always behind and never reaching your goals. There is away to get more done with your time and that is being able to figure out what you spend time on and setting priorities accordingly.
Urgent vs. Important
Knowing the difference between what is urgent and what is important in life is being able to manage your time more effectively and more aware of where you are wasting your time. So what is the difference between what is urgent and what is important? Something that is urgent is something that is time restricted or demand. On the other hand some that is important is something that is valued to you.
Now let’s look at the chart below which shows you the four quadrants and then I can take you through each of the four different quadrants in more detail
I like to call each of the quadrants names that are easy to remember.
- Urgent & Important – Firefighting – Firefighting is anything that is both urgent and important and are things that demand your time and energy right now and everything else have to be put off till later. There are two types of emergencies: type 1 – emergencies outside of your control. These are emergencies such as an illness, or family emergency. You should be aware that these things can happen and accepting them will help you in your time management. The second type is forgotten tasks/ project emergencies. The things that fit into this category are deadlines that you have hit, a school play that needs a costume today, and a bill that needs to be paid. These are the tasks/projects that should have been planned out, with enough time to do them but somehow got lost along the way and now are critical.
- Not Urgent and Important – Growing – These task/project/goals are important but not urgent. An example of growing is personal development, progressing in your career, getting fit, eating well, home maintance, accomplishing a goal. This is where all of your work and life tasks should be. These should be put on your to do list and if you don’t manage your to do list and schedule these things regularly, they will gradually move from this section to quadrant one firefighting. For example, if your water tank breaks down and needs immediate attention, this would be where you would have to use your to do list o schedule a regular maintance appointment with a plumber that your water tank is always working.
- Urgent But Not Important – Draining: Tasks that are urgent but not important go under this section. These are the things that have a time frame to be done by but they are not really important. Who really wants a ton of tasks that drain them? I know I don’t. An example of some urgent but not important tasks can be junk mail, endless phone calls, people always demanding your time and energy on things that are not that important. Try to look at one of your typical days and write down how much of your time is being drained by some of the things I mentioned above. You will be amazed at how much time is being wasted by draining tasks.
- Not Urgent and Not Important – Wasting: This is the worst one of them all. In this section these are the tasks that aren’t important and not urgent either. An example of this would be endless internet searching, playing games on facebook, excessive TV.
So what is the solution to balancing urgent vs important things? In an ideal perfect life of an adult with ADHD , you would want every task you do to be in the growing section, where you are always learning and striving toward finishing a task without no distractions. This is not realistic, as things do happen in life and we can always spend time in way that don’t help us achieve what we set out to do.
Over the next week, when you write out your to do list, look at where your tasks fall into these four catergories. If you find you are spending a hudge amount of time in urgent and not important and not urgent and not important, you may want to ask yourself is this due to your lack of time skills or are you taking on more responsibility of the things that you really can do.. If you are spending a time in the growing section, then keep on what you are doing and well done.