Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Time management

Chaffing in various gyaan on time management, what I’ve found most useful is simple realignment of priorities. Often times we work on wrong things because we either don’t know better or are simply lazy. There is no cure for laziness since as someone said laziness and impatience are cardinal sins from which all other sins originate. However putting all to-do items in the following matrix is best to force yourself to work on things that matter.

(2)
Important & Not Urgent
(1)
Important & Urgent
(3)
Not Important & Not Urgent
(4)
Not Important & Urgent

With this framework, it is very clear that we should work tasks from quadrants in order 1, 2, 4, 3 while we actually work in order 1, 4, 2, 3. Definition of important or unimportant is relative but you know difference in your heart. Studying or work is more important than reading or writing blogs, for example. Reading news is more important than reading movie reviews, and so on.

As with case with all words of wisdom, I wouldn’t not be writing this post if I were following my own rule. But then, as I’ve said earlier, you should not discount value of an idea from fallibility of its originator, for when did your poor sports record stopped you from criticizing Sachin?

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