One of the Greatest tips: Effective Time Management, Live in the Second Quadrant

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I was inspired to write this blog post after reading Berny's recent article here in WA: Please Stop Wasting Your Time in WA...! It was about time management.

Some people are more effective in it, others less but we all can learn to be more efficient when using our valuable hours and minutes.

I really struggled to manage my time when I started blogging. As a newbie I did not really know what was most important things to do. It was just overwhelming how much I had (and still have) to study and what I had to put into practice.

Looking other websites I felt like: "Look what he has done? Look what she has done?...I have to do these things too."

Everybody is teaching: do this, do that, do this, do that... This is absolute must... Without this you won't succeed... etc, etc.

Every day new and new blog posts in WA, in my email box, when I do my own research... The information load is just driving me crazy... I see how incomplete my website is... How many SOOOOOOOOOOOOO important things it is still lacking, AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Then panic starts to take over. You know the feeling when you have time for 1 or 2 things but you HAVE TO do 20 to 30 things. You desperately TRY to do everything at the same time? Have you ever felt the feeling? It's not nice, right?

And then you have your life disruptions (disturbing or sick kids or whatever problems you have) and you feel desperate - I cannot do it. Where do I get time do these things, write my blog posts? When do I build my social presence, engage with people, share something interesting...

What I did, I tried to answer my emails in the morning, then I started to with my blog post. But in the middle of the process I built my social presence, then read some news, did research again, engaged in social again, like that.

Yet I found that if I did not focus on writing my blog posts in the first place, I failed to finish them on time. Because I am not native English speaker, it takes more time for me to write them. 2 days writing may easily turn into 3 or 4 and then there is a weekend and I have only one post published (my goal is at least 2 posts per week).

Solution?

Have you ever heard about 2nd Quadrant Time management. Stephen Covey teaches about it. You sketch a graph like that:

Stephen Covey says that highly efficient people live in the second quadrant. What does it mean?

1. 3rd and 4th quadrant are both unimportant things. So they never live there. If you are able to come out from those 2 last quadrants, you already save considerable amount of time. Don't spend your time on things that are not important to you.

2. When you begin with your time managament, you still have many things in the 1st quadrant - things that are urgent AND important. Because they are important, you cannot reject them. Because they are urgent, you have to deal with them fast. You have to do fire fighting.

3. But the aim is to move your life into 2nd quadrant where you don’t have to deal with constant fire fighting. Living in the first quadrant is stressful.

This is what I have learned - to live in the 2nd quadrant. Reject things that are not important and deal with things that are important and NOT YET urgent.

How do I apply it?

1. What is most important? Content. Quality content. Consistently published blog posts. Without content I am not able to rank anywhere. So no 1 priority is to write a blog post. Once this is finished, I use remaining of my time to design and improve my website, learn new things, build my social engagement, etc.

Before I did the opposite. I did all these important things first and left my blog posts last. Then I had to do fire fighting because I had landed in the 1st quadrant. I had to deliver but I did not have time to deliver.

I have learned from my mistakes and I can tell you - Once I have published my post, I am much more relaxed to build my social presence and do other things. Because I don’t have a pressure on my shoulders to finish my blog post.

So take from here this advice:

Live in the 2nd quadrant. You have more time and you are way more relaxed too.

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Recent Comments

8

Thanks for this post - as a relative newbie in WA I have found it to be very helpful.......Leigh

Totally agree. See my blog 'Purely Prudent Quadrant Planning'. ^_~

I feel every word and have live/lived in that same fear everyday. Some days the I have to catch up to the rest is not the way to go. I had to step back and create a plan of attack to get everything under control. I just discovered this about a month ago. You really have to sit down and plan out what your going to do and how you will do it. Thanks for this post. I think you will have helped a few people on this.

Good advice. Thank you so much!

Great knowledge to apply it to ones timesystem. Information overload is one of our modern evel.

Excellent Post Egon. In this age of increasing pace and communication, time management becomes a priority and yet way back when all we had to do was go out and hunt game and gather nuts and berries there was always plenty of time. It was seasonal then. The information load these days is anything but natural and it is any wonder that people new to this environment often feel stressed out. Your solution is very good and should be adopted by anyone, like myself, who needs an easy way to remember how to prioritizing their time.

Yes, time management is very important. I have seen lots of people who come onto WA and write lots of posts then they complain they are not making any money. But they can't figure out why!

Spend a short time reading and writing blogs on WA, help people but do not try to help everybody, it is impossible, but listen up people - you must learn to spend the most time on your website or you will never get anywhere with it.

Right. I think many feel the pressure to rank higher in WA. But this ranking does not bring bread to your table. I have learned to prioritize writing content in the first place. Other things after that.

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