What if you could accomplish way more each day than you are now?

Efficiency has always been one of my strong suits. My husband will never let me forget how I bored him on our first date with a never-ending story about how I was the quickest dishwasher-unloader in the Rick's College cafeteria. I was literally the only person who could unload the conveyer-belt dishwasher and stow all the dishes without a single plate getting to the end of the conveyer belt and triggering it to shut off. But what if I could be more efficient? What really stood out to me in Steven R. Covey's classic, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was the quadrant principle. He wrote of four quadrants for the tasks in our daily lives:

1) Important & Urgent

2) Important Non-Urgent

3) Urgent, Not important

4) Not Urgent or Important

He said the goal is to focus on Quadrant 2, as this is where we tend to be most focused and efficient. The non-urgent tasks in Quadrant 2 are less stressful and allow us to be more efficient with our energy. If we can accomplish important, non-urgent tasks, we can actually avoid them becoming urgent and therefore more stressful. For example, my homework is near the top of my "important list". If I choose to finish it two days early, it will never become urgent. However, if I wait until Saturday night to write this journal entry, it is now important and urgent, thus reducing my efficiency and the quality of my work. 

Quadrants 3 and 4 should be avoided as much as possible. Social media would definitely fall into this category! The best relationship I every had with FaceBook was when I created "CrackBook Wednesday". I had recognized that I was spending too much time on FaceBook, so I committed to only checking it on Wednesdays. I also set a limit that I would only check it on our desktop computer--which was much less convenient than other devices, and lost its appeal pretty quickly. If I compare that period of time to now, I could safely say I spent three fewer hours each day on FaceBook--which equates to 21 hours a week!!! I practically gave myself an extra day every week! I'm going to go ahead and start doing that again... Because I use FaceBook for my business, it is important for me to check it every day. However, I could commit to setting a timer for 15 minutes and checking it only in the morning and at night. Goal: set.

Ultimately, it is up to me to be intentional about how I spend my time. Taking an inventory of my time and creating a "time budget" will help me avoid squandering hours of my time every day on things that really don't matter so I can have the time to accomplish the things that really DO matter!