Feeling Overwhelmed? Try This Utah Time Management Secret

School Year Busy Schedules

As the school year starts up you might be feeling the pressure of more demands for your time with ironically less free time to get it done. Some years my calendar looks like a Jackson Pollock painting—chaotic, colorful, and slightly accusatory. We all have the same amount of time in a day, but some people seem to be able to accomplish more with their allotted time (I swear my neighbor has a time turner).

Birth of a Powerful Time Management Tool

There are many effective time management strategies that can really help you squeeze the most out of your day like an overzealous orange juicer. One of them was born out of a comment from our former president and 5-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. He is quoted for having said, “What is urgent is seldom in important and what is important is seldom urgent”. This profound comment inspired our very own Steven R. Covey to develop this concept further into the Eisenhower Matrix.

How the Eisenhower Matrix works

You make a 4 box grid. I love these grids they are helpful in so many different processes. It should look something like this

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The vertical axis measures importance and the horizontal measures urgency. Now take your to do list, which by the way is another excellent time management tool and sort it according to importance and urgency.

Important + Urgent - Gets the highest priority.

Important + Not Urgent - Priority 2, schedule these.

Not Important + Urgent - Delegate these if you can. If not put them on priority 3.

Not important + Non urgent - Should take the bottom priority and maybe even avoided as a time waster if appropriate, like your 5th cat video.

There you go, the Eisenhower Matrix a simple tool to help you sort through the list of things you need to do today..

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