Page 44 - TPGFBAO First Draft (5th Ed)

• Unimportant mails.

• Organised events.

Quadrant 4 (Q4) -- Not Urgent & Not Important

Activities

• Pleasant pastimes- social media, social phone calls & chats, gossiping,

watching TV, mobile & computer games.

• Other ways of ‘killing’ time.

Clarification

The key is not to prioritise your schedule but schedule your priorities. Going

to watch a cricket match with family is recreation (comes in Q2), but being

addicted to IPL, or Game of Thrones, or some TV show, is a Q4 activity. Some

examples of how Q2 activities become Q4 activities are: not getting your

bike serviced (Q2) and waiting for it to break down (Q1); not leading a

healthy lifestyle (Q2) and getting a heart attack (Q1); not studying regularly

(Q2) and panicking in exams (Q1); and not investing in your growth (Q2)

and suddenly discovering that technological advancements have rendered

you unproductive for the society (Q1). Popular tendency is to react to urgent

matters. Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative and be-

ing proactive.

Effective people stay out of Quadrants-3 and 4, because urgent or not, they

are not important. Q2 is the heart of effective personal management. It

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