You’ve surely seen the four-quadrant matrix to help you prioritize your work along the axes of urgency and importance. It’s sometimes called the Eisenhower Matrix.
But after you’ve whittled your list down to only the important tasks, there are two more dimensions to consider when managing your time and priorities:
1️⃣ Importance for when?
2️⃣ Importance for whom?
The question of when may feel similar to that of urgency. But urgency tends to focus on avoiding failure, while importance focuses on delivering success.
When you prioritize, reserve time for tasks that support both long-term and short-term goals.
✅ Progress on long-term, strategic goals helps you stay focused on your vision and desired destination.
✅ Progress on short-term, tactical goals gives the resources to sustain the journey.
Balancing who benefits most from a task is just as important.
✅ Completing tasks that benefit others connects us to our shared humanity and builds favor with the community.
✅ Completing tasks that benefit ourselves contributes to our sustained health and strength and prepares us for greater progress.
As you consider all of your important tasks, be sure to balance both the strategic and the tactical, for both personal and community benefit.
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