Put First Things First

In other words, make priorities and don’t get distracted.

Time management issues have always left me discouraged. It seems that I never can complete a checklist. Covey recognizes this and talks about managing yourself instead of managing time.

This is where his famous Time Management Matrix comes in. He has two columns: Urgent and Not Urgent. He has two rows: Important and Not important. Then it becomes logical to concentrate on the first row and then move on down to the second one. Spending more time on the Not Urgent/Important quadrant will shrink the Urgent/Important one.