Happy Sunday Everyone:
I have commented and used quadrants multiple times. The original quadrant examples were created by Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People book. Many of you know this already but his quadrants are Q1- important/urgent, Q2- important/not urgent, Q3-urgent/not important, Q4-not urgent/not important. You can customize quadrants into other areas as our leadership team did with loan officers, producing/positive, producing/negative, not producing/positive, not producing/negative. Any quadrant exercise creates a deeper level of clarity and understanding. Clarity to think where you’re spending your time, clarity on who you’re spending your time with. From my perspective, the whole idea is to be intentional with the hours you have in a day. I’ve come home on the best of days saying “WOW, I can’t believe what I accomplished today”. Other days “WOW, how did I let the day’s events dictate the amount of nothingness I accomplished”.
Why am I writing about this today? One of our team members chose this book for our team to read, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Full transparency, I wasn’t excited, thinking “been there done that”. I couldn’t haven’t been more wrong. There’s a reason Mr. Covey has sold 40 million copies of this book. We’re reading about the quadrants right now and I’m finding a new appreciation for them. I’m thinking about them in a way I haven’t thought about before. It’s not just about time management, it’s about thought management. Last chapter we read was about the 2nd habit, “thinking with the end in my mind”. You want clarity on the four quadrants, get clarity on what the end in mind looks like to you. I feel like I have an unfair advantage right now. I know what my “end in mind” looks like, I know the thoughts and tasks/appointments coming my way, and I throw them through the filter of the quadrants, and I place them accordingly. It’s crazy simple!
Part of thinking about what the end in mind looks like is creating a personal mission statement. I’m sure there are plenty reading this thinking “come on”. You can say “come on”, I’d suggest the opposite and hit you with the simple fact that we’re all going to die, so what are we living for? After 2 days of walking, talking, thinking to myself (scary), my personal mission statement is simple “to breathe life into everyone I care about”. After 2 days alone, that’s what I came up with! When it popped in my head, I thought it was too simple, too broad, too Pollyanna, but it’s how I truly feel. The more I let it sit, the more I can equate it to Kim, my boys, my broader family, my friends, my co-workers. Anyone I’m engaged with that I care about, breathe life into that situation, that conversation, that experience.
Thinking with the end in mind is in quadrant 2, It’s not urgent, but it’s important. Urgent and important is responding to a client opportunity quickly, but if it’s not urgent, I can move it to a scheduled call, important, not urgent (quadrant 2). I get an urgent call from someone that honestly doesn’t deserve my time or energy, recognize this by filtering it, and moving on (quadrant 3). Sitting on social media for 3 hours in a day looking at nothing that serves no purpose to better my life, quadrant 4. Point is, your day comes to you, or you go to it, use the quadrants as a filter to where you spend your time.
Full circle, about 2 months ago I decided to pull out my dad’s old school Franklin Covey organizer, he’s had it since the 80’s. I ordered the new calendar year for 2025, I use it for notes throughout the day. I use the calendar to acknowledge what quadrant the activities of the day fall under. Brings a level of intention and clarity to how I’m spending my day! Something to be said for writing stuff down!
So, we have quadrants, missions’ statements, and thinking with the end in mind, hope you have a nice chill Sunday (HA)! I know these are some deep thoughts, but it’s been a highly impactful couple of weeks for me!
Big love!