Urgent vs Important
Urgent vs Important - Keys to Prioritizing
Most contractors have so many things on their plate, that getting through the day sometimes can be overwhelming. They don’t want anything to slip through the cracks because that could mean they’re going to upset the client.
Materials may not get ordered, bills may not get paid, invoices may not get collected, on and on and on.
Any or all of these can create a negative impression or a negative reputation for the company. Most contractors have a lot going on, a lot on their plates. Included in these are the employees complaining, somebody not showing up for work, and having to deal with all sorts of fires that come up on the jobsite.
How do you run a business that has some level of sanity in all of this chaos?
If you want to run a business properly, trying to do anything and everything under the sun is not a smart idea. What you should be doing is delegating.
But then the question is, how do you come up with a way that allows you to easily figure out what you should delegate and what you should be holding on to? What should be your top priority, what should you do second? Most business owners have no clue how to delegate. They try to handle everything that comes their way, developing a to-do list in the morning that just grow longer as the day goes on.
It doesn’t get shorter.
So, what is the system that can help people handle something like this?
Here’s a great example. It comes from Franklin Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He said that regardless of what you have, anything falls into two categories:
Is it something important, or is it not important?
Is it something urgent, or something not urgent?
Anything or everything that you’re facing with can be categorized in these two ways.
One way to figure out what you should be spending your time on versus what you should definitely be delegating to somebody else is to Create a Quadrant. The horizontal line – one side is urgent; the other side is not urgent. Then you have a vertical line – top of that is important, the bottom is not important.
You see these four boxes now:
Now, put everything in there where it makes sense. For example, you have a bid due to a client. Now is that bid important? Yes, obviously that’s how you make money. Is it urgent? Yes, it has a date on it.
Now let’s say you need to get back to the guy who’s been bugging you about Yelp. Is it important? Maybe not. Is it urgent? Definitely not. So that guy can go into the other box.
Once you’ve assigned all your tasks to a box, now ask yourself: which of these four boxes is box #1, your focus? Most people think that box #1 should be the things that are Urgent and Important. But it’s NOT. Box #1 are the things that are Important but Not Urgent.
So, what goes into this category?
Well, for example, having a good marketing strategy. It’s important but is it really urgent? Do you have to do it today? No.
Hiring a good mentor. Is it important? Yes. But do you have to do it today? No, it’s not urgent.
Working on yourself, developing a better mindset to be a better business owner. Is that important? Yes. Is it urgent? No.
Developing a strategic plan for your business, where the business should be over the next year or the next three years. Is that important, Yes. Does it have to be done today, No.
The most critical things that a business owner should focus on are things that are important but not urgent. However, most business owners end up focusing their time on things that are urgent. Essentially, they are in what’s called Fire Fighting mode, and that’s how they spend their entire day, week, month and ultimately, the entire decade.
As a result they have a business that sucks up all their time, yes makes them some money, but really in the long term, it’s not going anywhere. They’re going to be more or less in the same place the next year, the following year, the year after that. That’s why most people start to hate their business. In fact, they suffer from what’s called burn out. Therefore, if you want to develop a business that really provides you the type of life you want, you’ve got to pay a lot of attention to how you spend your time. This is a tool to help you build that.
Your #1 Priority: Spend Your Time in the Areas that are Important but Not Urgent.
