(^158) 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know
Important, but Not Urgent
Alex Miller
Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.
ThE PERSonAl PRoDUCTIvITy ClASSIC The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People, by Stephen Covey (Free Press), categorizes activities along a vertical
axis, importance, and a horizontal axis, urgency. We now have four possible
combinations:
- Important and Urgent: Velociraptor* attack.
- Important, but Not Urgent: Preparing future product strategy; reworking
a problematic part of the product. - Not Important, but Urgent: Neighbor calling to borrow some sugar.
- Not Important, and Not Urgent: YouTube; surfing the Web.
Let’s examine how to maximize our effectiveness.
Consider the Not Important, Not Urgent tasks (#4) first. Most of these activi-
ties (the ones you might categorize as “slacking off ”) can simply be dropped.
These activities are, by definition, not important (so why are you doing them?)
and not urgent (so they can surely wait). If category 4 activities are mandated
by your company, you should be asking your boss why you must do them.
Smart managers don’t want people doing unimportant work.
We should also strive to reduce the occurrence of Not Important, but Urgent
activities (#3). One technique is to ask the source of the event to contact you
in a way that lets you deal with the event at a time of your choosing. Another
technique is to alter your environment to avoid being interrupted. Phone calls
and email are often treated as urgent, regardless of their importance. Use voice
mail or email filters to reduce the urgency of these tools.
- Velociraptor: A small, carnivorous dinosaur characterized as a great threat to humans in Steven
Spielberg’s science fiction thriller Jurassic Park.