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So, this is how we can visualize this. We want to prioritize our life, understanding that the big rocks are those that are important and urgent, we call them quadrant one, big rocks. And then quadrant two are the important, not urgent. They are the pebbles; they are medium sized. Then quantum three are not important, and yet seem to be urgent. That's the sand. And then quadrant four, not important, not urgent. That will be the water. So, if you look at this jar as an example, we ended up putting the not important, urgent first. So, the sand took a lot of space, and then the pebbles, and then these important and urgent big rocks ended up having no room to fit into our life, not a good idea. So, with the definition of these four quadrants, let's see, how do we want to put it into practice?
So, let's look at some examples of what's important and urgent in quadrant run. For example, crisis, urgent problem that are important to be solved. Immediate deadline for your boss or for tax filing, for example. Fire drills from your senior leadership. They say, sorry, last minute got this request from the CEO we need to do them immediately, ASAP. High priority project plan and it’s due or even health needs. So, these are important and urgent, we do need to take care of them. And to be honest in our life, we have this 80/20 rule. About 20 % of what we do that are important, actually contribute to 80 % of our value and our result. So, let's be sure to understand what are those 20 % that's important and prioritize them and get the 80 % results.
So, on the upper right, important, not urgent is my favorite. Quadrant two are things that are proactive improvement, such as training, exercise, really improving the environment, the productivity, that you're planning ahead, being proactive, predictive, and preventive. So, these are all good, healthy effort. Prevention is better than cure. So, you are ahead of the game. Relationship building are in quadrant two, important, may not seem urgent and yet don't procrastinate, don't delay until it's too late. Explore new opportunity, time for innovation, for new ideas. Personal development, setting goals as an example that we talked about last time. Those are important to set apart, as important may not be urgent. And yet when you do those, you are grounded, you are prioritized, you know exactly where you are going. Begin with the end in mind. And then all types of self-care, we're gonna spend a future topic and self-care, a very important secret weapon for me, that how I take care of myself, so I can take care of other people. So, take care of my body, mind, and spirit.
Then going to the lower left corner is the not important and seem urgent, quadrant three. Such as many of these unexpected visitors that we may not even want to see. And for example, people who knock on your door selling things to you or marketing calls, multiple interruptions. So, to avoid those, you can close the door and block out your calendar, so people know you're focused on your important things right now. Or some of the not so important topics or so-called popular activities, but not that important. And then some calls, some email, report, or meetings.
Now, how about quadrant four. Not important, not urgent. We know we don't want to spend too much time on those. The trivial tasks or excessive, having too much fun. Having some fun is fine but having too much fun is not. And then addiction to online, net addiction or media addiction, tv or even wasting a lot of time in shopping. Going to malls for no purpose, not really buying anything, aimlessly walking, time wasters, right? And then some calls, emails, and social media maybe not important, not urgent. Those are quadrant four.
Now that we understand examples of these four quadrant. Let's look at how we should manage our priorities in our life. So, I define self-discipline as doing more quadrant two, important not urgent, and quadrant one, important and urgent. So, the important things I need to do more. And they become my healthy habits. So that's good, self-discipline. Look at this cartoon, the children, the exercise is an example, things that improve your productivity.
Now, on the right, look at that cartoon. On the other hand, it's self-control. We want to do less selfish desires like what these two teenagers are doing, watching a lot of tv and eating a ton of snacks that are not healthy. So, less selfish desires, and less quadrant four, not important not urgent, and quadrant three, seems urgent but not important. So, we need both self-discipline and self-control to better prioritize our life.
So, our goal in our life is to be effective in managing our time, and our goals, and our priorities in our life. What does that look like? So, your result should be efficient. To be efficient, how do you do that? You wanna do the things in the right way. Then you want to be effective. How? By doing the right things that are aligned to your priorities that we just talked about, Q1 and Q2, and aligned to your goals, begin with any mind. And then, thirdly, your result wants to be significant that you're leaving a legacy. How do you do that? You do life together. That way, you really investing in people's lives. Life changing life. That is the most significant and meaningful way of effective time management and your goal management. And that would set your priority properly and feel it feeding your life jar, how to feed this jar with the most meaningful way.
So, what are the principle for time allocation? So, you look at upper left, quadrant one, urgent and important, you do need to do them now. If they are important and urgent, do them now. And quadrant two, not urgent but very important, then we need to decide to do them, schedule time to do them, put into your calendar, to read your bible, to exercise, to eat healthy, to take care of, your body, mind and spirit, to spend time with your family, building relationship, to set time up for education, for learning more, and set time up to plan your schedule, to define your goals that we talked about last time.
Then Q3, that's not important but urgent. You can delegate those, someone else can do them, find the right people to help you with those. Finally, quadrant four, not important, not urgent, of course, delete them, do not do them. That way, you can feed your life jar in the efficient way with effectiveness and living a significant life. So that way, you have a fulfilling life that gives you significance because you're investing lives. And you want to be efficient and also effective. You want to be excellent in self-discipline, and self-control that we talked about, we need both of them. And then do the right things and doing them the right way. So that is the best way and the wise way to feed this life jar with a satisfaction and with a fulfilling life.
So, what is the principle? And what time allocation percentage should we look at, for time management? You look at this with your whole pie of 100 % of your time, our goal is to have the most time spend in Q2, important and not urgent, that you decide and plan to do. This is where you want to spend 65 to 80% of your time that you are proactive, preventive, and predictive, and you are ahead of the game, and you're not under stress. Because when you are in the quadrant two, important and not urgent, when you don't procrastinate, low pressure, quality work, you’ll do a good job. And yet if you procrastinate, what's in Q2 then become Q1. If you procrastinate when it’s due next month and you keep waiting and delaying, then now is due tomorrow. It becomes from Q2 to Q1 and become very important and urgent, then you're working under stress, under pressure. And some people claim that they’re good at working under pressure, and I can be focused, efficient, effective. And I tend to do that at times, and yet I learned in a painful way, because you tend to sacrifice the quality of the work. And then you live under high stress, not good, not healthy.
So, for important, urgent, yes, we need to do them, so let's try to contain them within 20-25% of our total time. And then when you look at Q3, not important and urgent, we try to delegate. Let's contain them to 15% only. And then Q4 not important, not urgent, we should delete those, it should go as low as 1%. And then some of my students did an inventory of their time. Turns out that their pie may look flip flop, may end up spending more time on Q3 and Q4. And then they work very diligently, and they actually improve the Q2 time for 40% to 80% and their whole life, and their mindset and the quality of life improved a whole lot, very proud of them.
So, knowing the Q1 to Q4, and the importance and urgency. How would you fit these into your schedule throughout the day? Say if you're a morning person, this is a typical workday schedule, and the y-axis is your work performance, how well can you perform, your efficiency and your effectiveness. So, for a morning person, their peak performance could be 11 o'clock in the morning. That's when you want to work on what's very urgent and important. So that's your daily resolution on urgent and difficult and important task. At 11 o'clock early, do them quick so that you can do a good job.
And then afternoon after lunch, when you have low energy, what do you do? You do those that are not so important. After lunch, low performance, low energy, we do the Q3 and Q4. And then later, another peak performance time in the afternoon, that's when you can also do more Q2, that's important, not urgent, because you have time, it's crunch time. Then throughout the day, do you see that you continue to do Q2 as much as you can, all the healthy habits? And then toward the end of the day, your energy level drop. So that's an example of how we can prioritize and fill our life with meaningful and relevant goals in the proper priorities. That's all we cover today. See you next time.
Reflections:
1. What did you spend the most time doing in the past week? according to the four-quadrant classification, which quadrant does this matter belong to? Is it worth spending so much time on it?
2. In the next few weeks, I suggest you record your time usage and see how much time you spend on Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. Is there room for improvement？
3. Take some time to pray and think quietly, find out the most important things in your life, and arrange them in your daily schedule.