I don’t prioritize my schedule. Instead, I schedule my priorities. This shift in thinking is the most strategic decision I’ve made when it comes to life-balance. There’s a huge difference between the two.

Are you like me, where crossing things off your priority or To-Do list brings incredible satisfaction? I was a sucker for any time management and productivity tools. I was all in when I learned about author Steven Covey’s The Urgent Important Matrix, a decision and time management tool used to prioritize tasks, plan, delegate, and eliminate.

The 2×2 matrix looks like this: Quadrant 1 upper left is labeled Urgent and Important this is your top tasks quadrant or a crisis quadrant. Quadrant 2 upper right is labeled Not Urgent and Important. This is your goals and planning quadrant. Quadrant 3 lower left is labeled Urgent and Not Important. This quadrant represents those tasks that others try to impose on you as urgent and important. Quadrant 4 lower right is labeled Not Urgent and Not Important. This quadrant reveals distractions and time wasters that can be greatly reduced or easily eliminated. I adopted but adjusted this matrix by focusing and spending as much time as possible in quadrant 2, scheduling and executing my priorities.

Here are two quick examples of the differences between quadrant 1 and 2. Your car breaks down on a busy highway during rush hour. Urgent and Important. You discover the motor has seized up and when you check the dip stick, you have no oil. In the Not Urgent but Important quadrant you would have scheduled regular maintenance for your vehicle including oil changes. You are served with divorce papers – Woah! Urgent and important (crisis) Quadrant 1. However, had you loved your wife as Christ loved the church, cherished her, scheduled and spent time with her, gone on regular date nights, invested time in your relationship and served her, divorce would never have been an option. This would be an example of Quadrant 2, scheduling your priorities.

To schedule my priorities, I use 7 categories that pretty much cover nearly all areas of life:  Faith, is your devotional time, church services, Bible studies, your small groups. Family is time spent together, date night, time with children. Firm (Work), this is your job, your profession. Fitness this includes exercise, meals, hygiene, and sleep. Finances is balancing the checkbook, keeping budgets, monitoring investments, and home maintenance. Fun is leisure time, game night, time to relax and rest. Friends is time with others that you have relationships with.

Wanna see how balanced or unbalanced your life is? Try this exercise. Take a blank calendar or enter on a spread sheet all 24 hours in a day for a month, start filling in every hour of every day with how you are spending your time in these 7 areas. If a month is too hard, try 2 weeks to get a good snapshot. Let me know how it turns out.

I still have my to-do list in quadrant 1. There are always some things that are more urgent and important than others. Quadrant 4 is easy to address those are the distractions and time wasters that can easily be eliminated from your schedule. Quadrant 3 can be a bit tricky to navigate because others may get aggravated with you because what they think is important doesn’t fit in with your priorities. Quadrant 2, Now that’s the game changer. Park there for a while and start scheduling your priorities instead of living from crisis to crisis.

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