Improving Business: Separating what is really Important from what is Urgent

Knowing how to identify which tasks are important and which are urgent results in great benefits in people's lives, extrapolating this knowledge to the business world, represents great advantages, since it directly impacts on the productivity of the entrepreneur.

For some people it is difficult to know that they must attend first, if the urgent cases or the important ones within the company, and when this usually happens the urgent subjects take priority, absorbing the greater amount of productive time, displacing the subjects that are important to impel the development of the business.

How to identify important tasks?

The important tasks are those that will lead you to achieve the objectives set, while the urgent calls us to immediate action with pressure, to be able to divide them and work with each one in an appropriate way is necessary to use a task management tool.

In the book Stephen Covey explains in his bestseller "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" an effective matrix for task management.

In this matrix, Covey invites the reader to segment the tasks into 4 quadrants:

Quadrant I: the tasks that are important and urgent are located as projects with deadlines.

Quadrant II: the tasks that are important but not urgent are located, these can be planning, process evaluation, etc.

Quadrant III: the tasks that are not important but urgent are located, such as telephone calls, answering emails, etc.

Quadrant IV: tasks that are not important or urgent are located.

After the important tasks of the urgent ones have been clearly identified, it is necessary to make a tool to organize them in the agenda of the day, for example a Check list to how to do what I have to do and how to effectively use techniques for the administration of daily tasks.

Benefits of separating the important from the urgent

One of the great problems that affect the performance of the businessman is to focus on urgent issues, which absorb his time preventing him from devoting his attention to important processes to boost his business, for this reason, it is of great value to know how to identify and separate as soon as possible the tasks that steal time and do not represent great benefits to the company.

Among the benefits obtained by applying the scheme of quadrants we can highlight:

- Increase in productivity.

- Better results.

- Achieve the objectives set.

- Less labor stress.

- Greater control of moments of crisis.

- Anticipate crisis situations.

With the mastery of this matrix of task management it is possible that even the entrepreneur has more free time to focus on other important aspects of the organization.