One well-known tool that allows you to use your time effectively and efficiently and avoid spending too much time doing unnecessary or unimportant tasks is the Time Management Matrix, which helps you prioritize your tasks and activities in a very clear way.
Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix is simply a grid that allows you to decide which are most important and which are urgent by classifying your tasks into 4 categories:
- Urgent and important.
- Urgent, but not important.
- Not urgent, but important.
- Neither urgent nor important.
The aim is to re-evaluate tasks that need to be done and free up time to focus on priorities.
By writing down all of your daily or weekly tasks and then having a go at placing them in the grid according to the 4 categories, you will be able to re-order tasks and delegate tasks to others in order to improve your time management skills.
Time Management Matrix