Planning Ahead

I am trying to improve my ability of prioritizing one tool I have come across that I find particularly helpful is the importance/urgency matrix. It is a really simple concept. There are four quadrants based on importance and urgency. Every to-do item falls in one of the four baskets.

1. Important and Urgent: This is a category that you should try to eliminate as much as possible. There with proper planning and forethought you should be able to avoid a lot of issues ever getting to this point. 
2. Important not Urgent: Ideally most of your time will be spent here. Focusing on important things well before there is any urgency so you can take your time and really be able to do a good job.
3. Urgent not Important: Sometimes things come up that need to be taken care of, but aren't critical to your long term plans. A phone call would be a good example. You kind of need to answer it quickly, but it probably isn't massively important.
4. Not Important and Not Urgent: If it isn't important or urgent you should probably seriously consider not doing it at all. There isn't any real value here.

I did this kinda this week. I am just getting back from a weekend trip and I wrote this post and the last three before I left. I waited a little longer than I probably should have, but I was able to plan ahead and get it done and mostly stay in quadrant 2.

Here is a nice little graph that shows it pretty well.