Since we’ve been revisiting time principles, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about urgent and important.

Urgent refers to a time deadline.

Important means it is high value.

Every day things come across our path that are of low or high importance, and low and high urgency.

Grab a piece of paper and draw a big square. Now draw a line down and another across. You should now have 4 smaller squares.

Along the top, write High Value and Low Value. And along the left-hand side, write Deadline and No Deadline.

Basically, you want to always focus your time in the blocks on the left.

The top block is high value and high urgency, which means it must get done now and it is very important. I like to think of client work in this block. Clients are why most of us are in business and there are usually deadlines attached to your client work.

If you’ve ever bought a product of mine, you’ll know that you’re redirected to a page telling you I have a 24-hour turnaround time. Private 1:1 clients know that I’ve committed to always respond to emails within 24 – 48 hours.

The block below that is high value but low urgency and it is here that you need to focus if you’re ever going to move towards your goals. Why?

Nobody is standing over my head saying “you need to work on an email teleseminar” but I know that if I want to reach my goal of running x number of live teleseminars this year, I need to make time to do that.

And it’s exactly the same for you.

Whether your goal is to improve your fitness levels, get your home organised or have 3 hours of free time every week, you’re going to have to put some work into that quadrant.

That’s if you want to reach your goals.

I don’t even like to bother with the other two quadrants but I know that’s going to drive some of you crazy so let me just give you some email examples -

Low value tasks with a deadline are things like “send this email to 10 people within the next hour”. They have absolutely no value and the deadline is usually imposed by other people. Most interruptions also fall into this block.

Low value tasks with no deadline are emails with jokes, funny pictures and the like. My suggestion is to get these out of your inbox permanently as they disrupt your focus and waste your time!

This week’s challenge is to focus on the top two quadrants and only do tasks that fit into those blocks.

* Bonus – really step it up by making sure that you definitely get at least one task in the “goals” quadrant done every day.

Want to use this article in your ezine or on your blog? You may, as long as you include this complete blurb.

Marcia Francois is a time management and business organising coach who helps small business owners break out of overwhelm, make the most of their time and get important projects done. Visit http://organiseyourbusiness.com for your free 7-part audio series, 7 tips for time-strapped business owners.

Coaching in a coffee shop

Being a time management coach, I obviously believe in the process of being coached. So I also have a coach.

I’ve found that I get the most value out of my own coaching sessions by doing these 3 things:

Schedule time to prepare for my coaching call
As part of my weekly planning time, I take a few minutes to decide what I want to discuss during the session. Of course, I make some notes too.

Set the agenda at the start of the call
At the start of the call, I say something like “today, I’d like to focus on these three areas. 1, 2, and 3” just to keep us on track. I have a tendency to sometimes get distracted so this is my way of getting accountability.

Ask myself, “what’s bugging me the most right now?”
Sometimes when I do the weekly planning, I tend to want to do too much work on too many projects. Asking myself this question forces me to get real and focus on priorities instead of nice-to-haves.

That’s what works for me.

Do you have a coach? If yes, how do you get the most out of your coaching calls?

I’ve just been browsing 43 things. There are 99212 people who put “get organised” as a goal and 99764 that put “get organized” as a goal.

WOW!

I have heard before that “get organised” is one of the top 10 goals most people set every year.

I don’t believe that getting organised happens instantaneously. You can get the principles instantly but it takes a while to build the habits to stay organised.

It’s one thing to organise a space and another thing altogether to keep that space organised.

In fact, clients often say to me, “I can get my office organised but a week later, it looks like a tornado hit”

That’s why I put together a simple, step-by-step system, 7 easy steps to organise your office and the Organise your Business system.

If this is something on your to-do list this year, then I want you to have that peace that being organised brings.

and Organise your business here

Here’s to an organised 2009!