BRX Pro Tip: Important vs. Urgent
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I’ve been blessed in a lot of ways, not the least of which is the opportunity to study under, work with a number of just marvelous mentors. And I think each and every one of them, at some time or another, tried to impress upon me this distinction between important versus urgent. I’d love it if you’d take a swing at it too.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:00] Sure. This is the Stephen Covey’s matrix using important as urgent as the axis. And that’s supposed to help you focus on where should you be spending your time. And, obviously, one quadrant has urgent and important, one quadrant has not urgent but important, one quadrant has urgent but not important, and one quadrant has not urgent and not important. It’s important to understand why each of those quadrants are important.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:00] A lot of people spend the bulk of their time in that quadrant four of not urgent and not important, and that’s the quadrant you should get rid of. I like to look at things in terms of dollar in our work. You’re spending negative money in that quadrant. There’s nothing good happening there. And so, you shouldn’t spend any time there really during your workday.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:26] But the quadrant that gets neglected is that not urgent but important planning quadrant in quadrant two. And that, to me, is your thousand-dollar-an-hour work. That’s the place where the big thinking happens, the deep thinking happens, and that’s really what’s going to move the needle in your business, and that’s where you should be making sure you’re investing some time each week in that quadrant because that’s where you’re going to grow. That’s where going to come up with the ideas that are going to take your business to the next level.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:58] But sadly, most people focus on the $10-an-hour quadrants of doing work that it seems urgent, but it’s not really important. And that’s where most people get bogged down. So, that’s the kind of work. You got to delegate. You got to find somebody else to be doing that kind of work, so you can focus on the more important work. And that happens in quadrant two of not urgent but important.
