“How much time do you spend in the second quadrant?”

A question I asked a group of finance business professionals in today’s time-management training. For those of you who are not time management geeks, second quadrant contains the activities that are Important but Not Urgent – such as planning, learning new skills and building relationships (more on this for example here).

“One hour every day,” said Tom, the first one to speak. That by itself was not so interesting; what was odd was that in that moment, everyone turned their heads to Tom in disbelief.

“Wow, really – an hour every day? Where do you get the time?”

1 hour out of 8 – 12.5%. Is it really that much?

The rest of the group of fourteen had somewhere between zero and two hours every week.

A few slides and some minutes later, I asked another question: “How much time do you spend in the fourth quadrant?”

That is: Not Important and Not Urgent. Trivial activities, escape activities, time wasters.

“About 15% I guess,” Tom speaks first again. “For me it’s rather 20%”, says a guy on the other side of the room. Others nod in agreement.

Isn’t that surprising – nobody asks: “An hour and a half? Where do you get the time?”

Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash