I want you to imagine for a minute, a life where you are consistently living in alignment with who you want to be. Imagine a life where you are consistently investing in the things that matter. Imagine a life where you are consistently doing the things that will truly move the needle in your life…the activities that get you closer to your goals.
Today, I want to help you gain clarity on what’s important to you and how to actually spend time on those things. I want to help you gain control over your schedule and your time and get you out of crisis management mode.
Almost any time that I ask someone how life has been going lately, the answer is almost always “busy,” “slammed,” “can’t seem to get caught up.”
Many men I’ve worked with have shared a consistent theme of feeling overwhelmed, like their schedules are out of control, with too much to do and a constant feeling of being behind. I’ve felt this way recently too, juggling various jobs and responsibilities. This year, I added the role of men’s director at a church to an already busy schedule, often ending the week feeling like I hadn’t made significant progress on the things that matter most.
Through my journey, I’ve discovered powerful strategies to organize and execute each week around the activities that truly matter and move the needle. I want to share some of these insights with you today.
But first, let’s start with a couple of questions:
What one thing could you do (something you aren’t doing now) that, if you did it regularly, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?
What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?
Take a moment to think about these questions. Got your answers? Great, we’ll come back to them later.
There are typically four ways in which we spend our time, defined by two factors: Urgency and Importance.
These are crises, pressing problems, and deadline-driven projects. They require immediate attention and are usually right in front of us, demanding our reaction.
These include planning, goal setting, nurturing relationships, and investing in health. These activities contribute significantly to our mission and goals but don’t require immediate action, so we need to be proactive about them.
These are interruptions like emails, phone calls, and meetings that feel urgent but don’t significantly impact our long-term goals.
These are distractions like social media, busywork, and other time-wasting activities that don’t contribute to our goals.
If you focus too much on Quadrant 1 activities, you’ll feel constantly stressed and burnt out, always putting out fires. Too much time in Quadrant 3 makes you feel busy but not productive, often leading to a sense of imbalance and shallow relationships. Spending time in Quadrant 4 leads to ineffectiveness and lack of purpose.
The key to a balanced, intentional life lies in focusing on Quadrant 2 activities. These important but non-urgent tasks are the ones that truly move the needle in our lives. They foster great relationships, align with our core values, and help us achieve our long-term goals.
By placing enough emphasis on Quadrant 2 activities, you can minimize the crises in Quadrant 1. Developing good systems and structures can prevent many fires from happening. Clarifying your personal mission, goals, and vision for your life can prevent many health, finance, and relationship issues.
Reflect on the questions I asked earlier. What Quadrant do those activities fall into? Most likely, they’re Quadrant 2 activities. These are the things that, if done consistently, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life.
We live in a world driven by instant gratification, which makes it difficult to focus on long-term planning, goal setting, and dreaming. But these activities are crucial for success. It’s easy to ignore our health, thinking we’ll get to it later, but if we don’t make time for it now, we won’t make time for it in the future. Relationships won’t improve magically; we must make time and effort for them now.
One common pattern among men is that we’re good at responding when things become urgent. When marriage is on the rocks, health issues arise, or business is failing, we finally start taking necessary actions. But this is not a sustainable way to live. We must prioritize important, non-urgent activities now to avoid constant crisis mode.
Don’t wait for a crisis to become intentional. Prioritize Quadrant 2 activities to avoid feeling perpetually behind, reduce stress, and achieve the life you want.
The only place to get time for Quadrant 2 activities is from Quadrants 3 and 4. You can’t ignore Quadrant 1 activities, but you must fight to spend more time on Quadrant 2 activities, which will ultimately reduce the number of urgent tasks.
To prioritize Quadrant 2 activities, you must say “no” to some things. Decide what your true priorities are and be willing to decline tasks that don’t align with them. Remember, every time you say “yes” to something, you’re saying “no” to something else.
Organize your life on a weekly basis. While you can adapt daily, planning your main roles, goals, and priorities weekly ensures you’re directing your time instead of reacting to it. A Sunday planning session is a great way to map out your week, including time for Quadrant 2 activities like relationships, health, reflection, prayer, and personal growth.
If these important activities aren’t on your calendar, they’ll get squeezed out by urgent tasks. Plan your week to include these vital activities, and you’ll see the number of fires diminish, feel more in control, and know you’re spending time on what truly matters.
I hope this training was helpful and encouraging. If you know someone who could benefit from it, please share it with them.
Thanks for being here! Live a life you’re proud of by living intentionally.
I want you to imagine for a minute, a life where you are consistently living in alignment with who you want to be. Imagine a life where you are consistently investing in the things that matter. Imagine a life where you are consistently doing the things that will truly move the needle in your life…the activities that get you closer to your goals.
Today, I want to help you gain clarity on what’s important to you and how to actually spend time on those things. I want to help you gain control over your schedule and your time and get you out of crisis management mode
Almost any time that I ask someone how life has been going lately, the answer is almost always “busy” “slammed” “can’t seem to get caught up.”
And with a lot of the guys that I have been working with lately, there has been a consistent theme of feeling overwhelmed, like their schedule is out of control, that there is too much to do and feelings of being behind.
I have felt like this a lot recently. I have been juggling a handful of different jobs and responsibilities lately. I have been working this year as the men’s director at a church and added that in to an already busy schedule.
When I first took on that job at the beginning of the year, I kept getting to the end of the week and feeling like I had not made significant progress on some of the things that were most important. So I have gone on an intense journey the last few months to figure out ways to organize and execute each week around the things that are most important and the things that are going to move the needle and I want to share some of that with you today.
But to get started, I want to ask you a couple of questions:
Question 1:
What one thing could you do (something you aren’t doing now) that, if you did it on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?
Question 2:
What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?
Feel free to pause this if you need a minute or two to think about it.
Alright you got your answer? Great, we will come back to those answers a little later.
There are typically four ways in which we spend our time..
And there are two factors that define activity…Urgent and Important
So the four ways we spend time would be
Urgent means it requires immediate attention. Urgent things usually act on us. These are things like the phone ringing, a slack message coming in, someone walking into your office and asking you to do something. They are usually right in front of us and so we usually act on it immediately. But they aren’t always important.
Importance has to do with results. It contributes to your mission, your values, your goals. These are the things that truly move the needle in our lives. They are the activities of biggest impact.
Where we typically react to the urgent matters, we usually have to act on the important things. We have to be proactive.
If you can picture a chart with 4 different squares, the top left, or Quadrant 1, is where your urgent and important tasks fall into.
These are things like major fires at work. Health complications that require immediate attention. Relational issues that have become extremely urgent. You get a call from your boss or a client with a super pressing issue…
We all have some of the things in our life. Some of them truly are unavoidable
Here’s the thing with Quadrant 1, if you only focus on the activities that are urgent and important, that quadrant tends to only get bigger and bigger until it completely controls you. Then when you do have a break, you usually retreat to the non-urgent and non-important activities because you are so burnt out.
If you spend too much time only working on Urgent Important matters, you are going to start to feel a lot of stress, burn out, that you are just in constant crisis management mode…always putting out fires and feeling constantly behind.
I’m sure you have had seasons where you feel like that. So that is Quadrant 1.
Then there are those who spend most of their time in Quadrant 3. This is where I find myself way too often. I think this is where most of us find ourselves a lot of time if we aren’t being proactive. This is where we spend the majority of our time on things that are urgent, but are not important. They feel important because they are urgent, but ultimately these activities don’t move the needle in our lives or line up with what we say is important to us.
Usually, these tasks are based on the priorities and expectations of other people.
If you spend too much time working on Urgent but Non-Important tasks, it is going to lead to a lot of crisis management, short-term focus, feelings of being out of control and stressed out. You are going to feel busy but not productive. You might have more shallow relationships and your life is going to feel out of balance.
Does any of that sound familiar? I’ve been there often! It is easy to fall into the area because we typically react to the urgent things in our life first, even if they aren’t actual important to our life mission or goals.
Then there is Quadrant 4. This is where you are spending time on things that aren’t urgent and aren’t important. This would be things like social media, the news, busywork at the office, other time wasting activities.
If you are spending a lot of time here, you are pretty much wasting your time on things that aren’t helping you in life at all. Too much time here will cause you to be ineffective, uninspired, passive, lack purpose or passion, dependent on others…you will very rarely hit your goals or have meaningful pursuits.
So those are three of the four quadrants. The last one, and one I want to really discuss today is Quadrant 2 which is Non-Urgent, but Important Activitie
These would be things like spending intentional time on your relationships, time planning, dreaming, and goal setting. Time developing processes and systems and structure that is going to help you in the future. Time investing in your health
These are all the things that we know we need to do, but we often actually never do because they are not urgent. But these are the things that truly move the needle in our lives. These are the things that give us the biggest results. These are the things that foster great relationships and help us live in alignment with our core values.
We will all have things in Quadrant 1 in our lives that we have to attend to, but if you place enough emphasis on Q2 activities, it will minimize and prevent things from appearing in Quadrant 1. If you take time to develop good systems, they can prevent some fires from happening. If you take the time to get clarity on your personal mission statement, your goals, and your vision for your life, you will minimize health issues, finance issues, and relationship issues.
Think back on questions that I asked you at the beginning…What one thing could you do that, if you did it on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?
And what one thing could you do in your career that would make a tremendous possible difference?
What quadrant does that activity fall into? Most likely, it falls in Quadrant 2 - Non-Urgent/Important…but you haven’t been doing it or haven’t been consistently doing it because it is not urgent.
The question asked what would make a tremendous difference in your life. If you would start to focus more on Quadrant 2 activities, it could have a profound impact on the different areas of your life.
We live in a world driven by instant gratification. We want results immediately from the things that we do…so it can be difficult to spend enough time on some of the things like planning, goal setting, and dreaming that don’t give instant results, but these activities are absolutely vital to your success.
It can be really easy to keep ignoring your health, thinking that you will get to it one day, but in reality, if you don’t make time for it now, you will not make time for it in the future.
That relationship that you know that you need to invest more time and energy in, it’s not going to magically get better. You must MAKE time for it now. You must devote energy for it now.
One of the things I see the most with the men that I work with, and honestly oftentimes in my life, is that we as men are pretty good at responding to things when they become urgent. When your marriage is on the rocks, you usually kick it into gear.
When your health becomes more of a serious issue, then we finally have the incentive to work out.
When you business is failing, you finally start doing the necessary things and making the necessary sacrifices it takes to turn things around.
But this is not a good way to live. We must find time to prioritize the important, but non-urgent things in our lives now so that we are not in constant crisis mode.
Don’t wait for your marriage to fall apart before you become intentional. Don’t wait for a health scare before you finally start getting better sleep and working out. Don’t wait until you feel like you have time to pursue your dream, start pursuing it now.
If you focus only on things that are urgent in your life, you are always going to feel behind. You are going to miss out on some of the most important things in your life. You are going to eventually burn out from stress. You must designate time in your schedule to work on the non-urgent but important things in your life. They will ultimately free you from a lot of the stress you are feeling. Help you avoid the fires. And help you pursue the life that you have wanted.
And The only place to get time for Quadrant II activities is from Quadrants 3 and 4. You can’t ignore the Quadrant 1 activities because they are urgent and important, but you must also fight to do more Quadrant 2 activities that will ultimately minimize how many activities you have in Quadrant 1
And in order to say “yes” to Quadrant 2 activities, you are going to have to say “no” to some things. You have to decide what your true priorities are and be able to say no to some things that don’t necessarily fall in line with those priorities.
Remember, every time you say “yes” to something, you are saying “no” to something else. We might think taking that one meeting isn’t a big deal, but ultimately you are saying no to time that could be spent on quadrant 2 things, so you have to decide if it’s worth the trade.
The best way to organize your life around Quadrant 2 activities is to organize your life on a weekly basis. You can still adapt and prioritize on a daily basis, but planning out your main roles, goals, and priorities on a weekly basis will make sure you are telling your time where to go instead of your time telling you where to go.
Oftentimes, if we only plan on a daily basis, we will usually fall into only planning the items in Quadrants 1 and 3. The urgent things will be top of mind and we will effectively plan those for the next day, but we will typically neglect the quadrant 2 items.
The key is not to prioritize what is on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities…so that is why we plan on a weekly basis.
If you are not already doing a Sunday Planning session where you take a look at your upcoming week and tell your time where to go, I would recommend that you start right away.
In another training, I will go into depth on this activity, but pretty much you need to set aside some time on Sunday or first thing Monday Morning to look at your schedule and plan out the week. Don’t just plan the work day. Plan strategic time for your Quadrant 2 activities - Relationships, Health, Reflection, God-Time, Prayer…Make sure you are planning in time with your family and friends. Make sure you are planning time for your personal growth and to invest in your health.
If these things don’t start out on your calendar, they will get squeezed out by the things that appear to be more urgent. But if you never attend to them now, there will come a time when they become urgent.
So my encouragement to you would be to think through more of those Non-Urgent but Important activities in your life. Identify some of the practices or habits that you want to implement and then get them on the schedule.
Make sure to do a weekly planning session that includes those activities you just identified.
As you spend time on them, you will see the fires start to lessen and you will feel much more in control of your life and you know you will be spending more time on the things that really matter.
I hope this training was helpful. I hope it was encouraging! If you know someone that this training could help, please share it with them.
Thanks for being here!
Live a life that you are proud of by living intentionally.
