The Important and the Urgent

When conceptualizing and prioritizing tasks, use the Eisenhower Matrix. This is a quad chart President Eisenhower created that organizes tasks into

• not urgent and not important – reduce or eliminate
• urgent but not important – delegate or automate
• urgent and important – schedule & pomodoro or delegate to those who can do them better
• not urgent but important – schedule, prioritize, and defend

Urgent tasks are urgent because of other people and have time constraints. Important tasks are important because they are important to you – they serve your goals and align with your values.

Ironically, you can often find yourself ignoring those things most important to you because they’re not important to others (not urgent but important).

Because urgent tasks are important to others, you can find yourself struggling to overthrow the tyranny of the urgency and actually accomplish (or even work toward) those things that are important to you.

Prioritize the Important – Urgency as Enemy

Matt has some advice all the four categories above and how you can approach them.

Reduce or eliminate tasks that are neither urgent nor important. These are things no one is telling you to do and you don’t find valuable. This might be scrolling social media or binge-watching movies.

Delegate or automate urgent but non-important tasks. These tasks must get done, but they’re not important to you. Maximize efficiency so that someone else can do them or you do them efficiently.

It may seem like urgent and important tasks – because they’re BOTH urgent and important – should fill your time, but that’s not the case. Why!? Because you can still completely ignore the important but non-urgent. Schedule and pomodoro these tasks or delegate them to someone who can do them better.

Lastly, schedule, prioritize, and defend the important but non-urgent. Try to create some false urgency by putting them in your schedule and now allowing distractions. If you don’t prioritize the important, no one will.

When you do the above, you order the chaos. Things you never could accomplish will suddenly be doable (and eventually done).

Remember, this is Barbell Logic, and health and fitness is important but not urgent (until, for some, they have a serious illness or limitation that seems to bring an urgency to the important).

PS -  Coach Smarter, Earn More: https://bit.ly/3X4ixOX Matt's Links Website: https://ryanmattreynolds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reynoldsstrong/?hl=en Chris's Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismreynolds/  

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