Prioritizing your task, may be one of the most important things to do, in the age of “InformationAssaultEverywhere”. Diluted focus will take us nowhere.
In the book, “7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey, it introduces the 2 Dimensions to prioritize your tasks. The 1st Dimension is “Emergency” and the 2nd is “Importance”. I think most of us know about this already. It’s one the most famous concepts, but this may be a little outdated.
After taking surveys from many BILLIONAIREs and MILLIONAIREs, it is said that there is a need to consider a new dimension when prioritizing your task. The people who were considering this new dimension, weren’t aware of it, but everyone was doing it.
The third dimension is called the “Significancy” dimension. This is where you determine whether the task you are trying to do has the potential to create your time in the future.
For Example,,,
let’s say there is a 5 minute task you have to do every single month. You can either..
A) Finish that off in the next 5 minutes,
B) You can teach someone and make them do the work for you, but it will take 50 minutes to teach them.
If we use the “2D” rule, this task is not urgent nor is it important, because you can finish it off in a zip. I mean, only 5 minutes right? So this particular task will not come to your top priority.
Now, let’s consider the 3rd dimension I just introduced. 10 months have passed since you made your decision. If you’ve chosen A), You used 50 minutes total on this task this year and you still have to use 5 minutes of your precious time next month again. (And again, and again..) On the other hand, if you’ve chosen B) You used 50 minutes to teach this task to somebody this year and now you don’t have to do that task ever again. Congratulations, you have just created 5 more minutes of your precious time every single month.
Do you still prefer decision A)?
THIS is the power of the SIGNIFICANCY DIMENSION. If you haven’t thought about the 3rd dimension this task would have never been done.
Thinking about how we can create our time in the future may change our lives.
