Origins
Dwight D. Eisenhower, US President, in a 1954 speech in Evanston quoted a former college president: he had two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important; the urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent. Building on this, Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989, habit 3: “Put first things first”) described a time management matrix now known as the Eisenhower matrix.
Four quadrants
| Urgent | Not urgent | |
|---|---|---|
| Important | I. Crises - do now (emergencies, deadlines) | II. Growth - schedule (relationships, formation, planning, prevention, rest) |
| Not important | III. Interruptions - delegate or limit (some calls, emails, meetings) | IV. Time-wasters - eliminate |
The key: Quadrant II
Covey stressed that effective people focus on Quadrant II - important but not urgent things. These are the ones most often neglected because nothing forces them: prayer, time with family, leader formation, preparing successors, planning the year. Neglecting Quadrant II leads to ever more crises in Quadrant I.
Use for a community leader
- List your tasks for the coming week.
- Assign them to quadrants.
- Block regular time in your calendar for Quadrant II - “big rocks” first.
- Consider what from Quadrant III can be delegated.
- At the end of the week, check where your time really went.
See self-leadership, leader ecology, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Sources
D. D. Eisenhower, Address at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Evanston, Illinois, 19 August 1954 S. R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press 1989 S. R. Covey, A. R. Merrill, R. R. Merrill, First Things First, Simon & Schuster 1994