The battle of important vs urgent, and why you should focus on your "Quadrant 2"
AKA why it's so easy not to do the things which actually matter the most, AKA why I'm really good at avoiding exercise
Hello from the south of France! At least, at the time of writing this, I’m enjoying my summer holidays besides the pool. Whilst here I’ve been reflecting on something which has been on my mind a lot lately - my health. This is most definitely influenced by my constant bathing in the pool to avoid the 40 degree heat (hard to ignore your body when you can constantly see it) and my total lack of ability to swim more than two laps without gasping for breath.
I’ll come back to that in a moment, so bare with me. First I want to talk about one of the best books I’ve ever read, which also has one of the worst, most cliché titles: “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. I always hesitate when recommending it because it feels like I’m telling people “I think you could be more effective as a person”. That aside, it’s truly fantastic and it’s fully in the “it actually changed my life” category of books.
The part of the book which surfaces in my life again and again is the Eisenhower Method, and more specifically, the idea that we should distinguish between tasks which are “important” and tasks which are “urgent”. Generally speaking, we are likely to do things when they’re important and urgent, but we have a tendency to neglect the tasks which are only important and not urgent.
This makes a lot of sense as a default. Kitchen on fire? Important and urgent, let’s deal with that. Spilled hot coffee all over yourself? You’re gonna wanna take care of that right now.
The issue comes when we always default to prioritising tasks in the “urgent” category. Left unchecked, we give urgency too much agency. In the book, Covey shows a 2-by-2 matrix (originally from the book "First Things First") where each quadrant is numbered — “important and urgent” being Quadrant 1, “important and not urgent” being Quadrant 2, and so on:
You may already see where I’m going with this. When we use other Quadrants like Quadrant 1 (or even worse, Quadrant 3) as our basis for decision making, we easily neglect Quadrant 2, and that’s the catch.
Quadrant 2 is actually where we should be putting our focus.
The exact example from the book which has resurfaced in my life right now is of course “exercise”. It’s a classic Quadrant 2 task. It’s rare that exercise will be urgent, but it will remain a recurring important task for you in your life. Quadrant 2 tasks tend to be those things which will yield the highest long term benefits for your life but show the least satisfying short term gains. The lack of urgency and tangibility makes them so easy to ignore because you will see no immediate negatives when you ignore them.
It’s so easy for me to ignore exercising and eating well, and it’s always the thing which falls to the side when I’m busy with my career or other tasks in my life. Exercise is the task I will all too gladly drop in favour of other tasks which I tell myself are more urgent and therefore more deserving of my attention.
When I started reflecting on it I realised that it’s not just about exercise. In the past several years I have been neglecting many of the Quadrant 2 activities in my life. This newsletter and the other projects I’ve dreamed of working on fall into the same quadrant. It will never be urgent for me to write this newsletter, or to start a podcast, or to build any creative side-project which let me experiment with a career away from my existing 9-5.
Even if I suddenly lost my job, Quadrant 1 would kick-in and I’d focus my efforts on finding a new job as quickly as possible. There’s almost no (good) scenario which will make exercise, eating better, or my side-projects, my kitchen-on-fire-priority — even if those are the tasks which I know can yield the best long-term impacts on my life.
How to actually focus on your Quadrant 2 activities
So, how do we give more attention to our “Q2s” and less to our kitchen fires and crying babies? (Please don’t actually ignore kitchen fires or crying babies.)
My method is a simple three-step approach: Define, Measure, Reflect.
1 ) Define
Simply put: Make sure you know what you want to focus on. If your priorities aren’t clear, think about them and then actually write them down. I’ll go against the grain and say don’t worry yet about achievable “SMART” goals (I may write another article about why). The aim here is to dream — to give yourself a boost of motivation and at the same time make sure you’re heading in the direction you want.
To be able to actually make decisions that put your focus on the right tasks you need to know what’s in your personal Quadrant 2 so that you can say no to things that don’t matter as much. To do this, ask yourself: What does success look like, one year from now? Or: Which things will I thank myself for having done consistently and intentionally, one year from now?
2 ) Measure (but keep it simple)
So you have a direction. Now we need to “tease out the tangible”. If leading teams for a living has taught me anything, it’s that if something is important, especially long-term, you measure it. Looking at quantifiable numbers can give you a tangible way to see your progress in the short-term and in doing so, make your Q2’s harder to ignore in the long-term.
For me, I like to set personal KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). I know, I know. Yuck, a corporate term. Stick with me: I’m using this terminology because the key word here is key. We want to measure the absolute core aspects which matter for you to be able to see your performance over time.
What you decide to measure is entirely up to you. For my “Health Q2” (exercise + healthy eating) I am now measuring:
My weight — just as a reference point, I have no weight goals.
Calories consumed — only approximately, I’m not aiming for perfection, I’m aiming to make more intentional decisions about what I put in my mouth, and making myself write down (roughly) what I eat works well for me.
Exercise frequency & length — I’m aiming at 30 minutes of exercise per day.
Steps — I’m aiming for 10k per day.
How many times I eat out / order food per week — I’m aiming to keep this as low as possible.
First, to repeat: only track what is absolutely essential, or you’ll create way too much noise and it will be too much effort to track everything. Track too much and you will overwhelm yourself and then quit.
Second: Make it as easy as you can to track what you need. Most of the things I’m tracking (like activity level, steps, weight) are automatic, or close to it, thanks to my smart watch. “How often I eat out” is a notes file on my phone where I simply note down the date every time I order food or eat out.
3 ) Reflect
The last part to this process is that you need to have intentional check-in points to remind yourself about what your Quadrant 2 looks like.
Here I have to thank my partner for convincing me on the power of journaling. It truly is an amazing tool. If you don’t believe me, checkout this Dr. K video.
This newsletter is in itself a very open version of journaling for me. In addition to this, every week, I open up my notes app on my phone and for 5 minutes I write whatever is on my mind. I’ve now added an extra 5 minutes of focused journaling on the topics I defined for my Quadrant 2. Again, simplicity is key. To do this, I ask myself a simple question for each of my top defined priorities: “how is it going?”
Right now I have two priorities for my Quadrant 2: “health”, and “the 9-5 escape pod” (what this newsletter is about). For me, “how is it going?” is all I need because it covers both core aspects: the emotional aspect (how do I feel about my priorities? Should I keep going, stop, or change something?) and also the practical aspect (have I actually done anything this week to bring me closer to my goals? Why or why not?).
…and repeat
That’s it! That’s the whole process. Right now I repeat this cycle (noting down my KPI values and journalling) every week because it helps me keep my finger on the pulse. You may prefer a different cadence.
If you’re still reading this far, thank you! This was a long one. I’d be really curious to know if this works for you, or how you balance these tasks in your own life. For now, please stop reading and answer for yourself:
What are your Quadrant 2 tasks?
See you next week.
Mike.
✍️ Quote of the week
Be curious, not judgmental.
― Ted Lasso (not Walt Whitman, for fans of the show)
🏆 Other things I enjoyed this week
✍️ Video: Sharing again for those who skimmed this post, Dr. K’s video “Does journaling actually work?” is a wonderful deep-dive into the science of journaling.
📚 Book: The E-Myth Revisited. My holiday read and a great one for anyone considering starting a business, especially if you will start a business focused on the same “technical work” you’re used to doing for someone else. One of the core ideas is that you should “work on your business, not in your business”. This is really making me think about the way forward for myself.
📺 Series: If you can’t tell from the quote of the week, I’m absolutely loving Ted Lasso! I’m loving Lasso’s optimism and overall energy and there’s a lot of humour and humanity in this show. Even if you’re not a sports fan, it’s great viewing.