Urgent AND Important – Brian Tracy
This article is based on another fantastic Brian Tracy Podcast: “21 Great Ways To Double Your Productivity – Number 5.”
Everything you do throughout the day fits into one of four categories:
1. Urgent and Important Tasks
You have to complete these tasks immediately. These are in your face. These are things like phone calls and meetings. You can’t put them off without causing serious problems.
If you’re like a lot of people, you spend a lot of time working on these types of tasks. Some folks call this “putting out fires.”
2. Important but NOT Urgent Tasks
According to Brian Tracy, completing these tasks will have the greatest possible long-term benefits in your life.
The tasks in this category include personal renewal, physical fitness and exercise, updating your skills, and spending time with your family.
Don’t put these tasks off for another day. If you want to change your life for the better, work on these now.
Believe me, if you don’t do them now, they’ll become urgent sooner or later. These are things like a term paper at work; or a report for your boss.
3. Urgent BUT NOT Important Tasks
These are things like personal phone calls, shooting the breeze with coworkers, etc.
Brian Tracy says that these tasks will have negative effects on your success. Don’t delude yourself into thinking this type of work is important work.
In fact, these kinds of tasks are great time- and career-wasters. Stay away from tasks in this area.
But even these aren’t the biggest time-wasters. The biggest time-wasters are:
4. Neither Urgent Nor Important
Don’t spend any time on these tasks. They’ll produce no results for you. At work, don’t read the newspaper, don’t surf the internet, and don’t call home to chit-chat. You’ll be wasting your company’s money and your time.
To summarize…
Always work first on your Most Urgent and Important Tasks. Next complete the Important But Not Urgent Tasks. And most vital to increasing your productivity is to refuse to work on non-important tasks.
Finally, always ask yourself “What are the lasting consequences of completing this task?”
When you answer this question, you’ll know what to work on.