In the classic book, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Stephen R Covey describes a simple & classic guide to making a priority your top things. Before getting this simple guide, think of the answer to the following two questions.

• What thing can create a positive difference if you do it on a regular basis?

• What one thing in your business and personal life will give similar results?

Moreover, putting things first and prioritizing them depends on their importance and urgency. To describe this way for the learner, Stephen Covey organized four quadrants for the upcoming generation.

Urgent & Important Quadrant

Any task that is on an urgent basis and you can't resist doing should be fixed in this quadrant. For instance, if you are having a project meeting tomorrow or have to visit a friend who got injured, come to this quadrant.

Not Urgent but Important Tasks

Make a goal for your exercises, relationships, and relaxation. Remember, these goals are important but not as urgent as the above tasks. So, prioritize them after urgent tasks but do them because they are important for your successful life. Whether you are thinking of planning some more projects, meetings, and more goals of your life, these all will come under the important but not urgent quadrant.

Not Important, but You Say "Yes"

If you are facing some issues that are not directly linked to you but are involved in solving, come under this category. Unimportant phone calls, peer pressure, and other problems only cause interruptions in your major tasks. So, never prioritize such unimportant tasks.

The Slacker & Unimportant

Keep your leisure activities at the end of your management plan. For instance, watching too much TV, excessive computer games, and use of social media are unimportant and cause distractions, so keep these all for your leisure time.

 

This article is part of our Business Coaching blog series. At Dataczar we talk to a lot of small businesses. We’ve found a few books that we keep recommending time and again. To better help our customers, we’ve added a Reading List for Small Businesses to our website. We encourage every small business owner to read and keep these timeless business books on their office shelf.

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