Stephen Covey’s Quadrant Thinking

Stephen Covey’s Quadrant Thinking has become my go to framework for time management. I’ve referenced it often in seminars, adapting its principles to suit different contexts. One example is my September 2023 article, Covid Fog, Crisis Fatigue and Other Blahness in which some of these principles were addressed.

Though Covey’s principles date back several decades, the core concept—understanding and managing the urgent versus the important—remains profoundly relevant. In a world flooded with productivity advice, we often approach these ideas with a sense of obligation: “do more,” “be better.” But this mindset can inadvertently add pressure, especially when we’re not equipped with the resources or tools to enhance our productivity in meaningful ways.

We commonly approach Covey's principles on dealing with the important over the urgent from the perspective of “this is what we should do”, but this can result in us feeling that we are being hit over the head yet again with “do more” or “do better”. Of course we have to learn to prioritise, but it is not always helpful if it places more stress on us by insisting on greater productivity without knowing how to increase productivity capabilities. Helping us understand what makes us tick to enables self-improvement and increased productivity.

This is why it is important to understand ourselves better through psychometric testing and other means, to know how to take better advantage of our learnings. We should know what feeds our soul so we can make better use of our activities.

Knowing yourself can help you take best advantage of refreshment activities. Learning what floats your boat - what refreshes and empowers you, can provide refreshment that can almost turn that time waster of quadrant 4 into a capacity building activity of quadrant 2 that increases well-being and output. If you are a people person, chatting with some friends can provide refreshment, while a task-oriented person may benefit more from a mind sharpening activity such as word or number puzzles.

But first let’s unpack Quadrant Thinking.

Covey’s Quadrant Thinking differentiates between the urgent and important, with four quadrants being:

1. Urgent and Important

2. Not urgent but Important

3. Urgent but not important

4. Not Urgent and Not Important

Those who spend their lives putting out fires know the exhaustion of spending too much time in Quadrant 1 – dealing with crises, constantly pivoting, and dealing with time critical issues. Quadrant 1 activities are a necessity of life, but for many we can prevent the number of activities in this quadrant. The proverb ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ addresses this issue. Poor risk management and conflict management inevitably leads to more fires.  After dealing with the urgent and important matters that fall in quadrant 1, we rarely have the mental or emotional energy to deal with the non-urgent but strategic issues of quadrant 2, which is where the best work gets done.

Quadrant 2 is about being organised, having all your ducks lined up, your data at the ready and your infrastructure in place. This can increase productivity ten-fold. Having that well thought out email makes it easier for others to provide you with information, enable task completion and means that the work is done more efficiently. Sending it out promptly to give the other party time to prepare a good response is even better. Planning means the work is happening even while you are sleeping.

This is also where team and relationship building fits in as well, to make sure the information conduits are flowing without hindrance or barriers. That social chat that could be perceived as a frivolous quadrant 4 activity may be able to reap benefits as a quadrant 2 relationship building activity. Constructively planning Quadrant 2 activities should always be our goal, but doing so is much harder when you are exhausted.

Quadrant 3 is all too familiar to most of us. Those interruptions that are rarely as important as we think and leave us with a lack of accomplishment at the end of the day. What seems important at the time may not be as important as we think. In my article on Time Management, I address the ‘four D’s’ to emails and tasks. Do, Delegate, Defer or Delete. If it takes less than 2 minutes, then just do it. This can reduce your slavery to emails but doesn’t prevent all interruptions.

It is helpful to recognize when quadrant 3 activities (interruptions like that less important question from a colleague) are actually a quadrant 2 activity of building relationships and earning goodwill. Granted that it takes a high level of emotional intelligence to recognize when this is the case, and be warned, you will get it wrong on many occasions, but at its core that is what management is, making our best decisions based on the information we have at any given time.

Quadrant 4 is where we find ourselves when we are mentally exhausted, the land of “spuddling”—busy but seemingly unproductive. I am not as critical of Quadrant 4 as some. When used intentionally, these activities can refresh and restore us. A walk, a game, or a chat can be the circuit breaker we need to return to our work with clarity and energy.

Just as the distinction is not always clear in the busyness of the moment between Quadrant 1 and 3, we may not always recognise that those ‘time waster’ activities in quadrant 4 may be more important than we realise in refreshing and revitalising us. These activities may qualify as capacity building activities that improve worker’s performance. There is a place for taking the time to revitalise, whether it be a recreational activity or a physical activity. In the workplace or at a personal level, an organisational or physical activity can provide the circuit breaker needed to approach a task with a fresh set of eyes.

But we know all too well of how we can all waste time when we are so exhausted from our time in Quadrant 1, that we genuinely don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to do anything other than stay in quadrant 4, digging and refilling the same proverbial hole with no improvements or benefits. This is where we have to learn to manage ourselves, know how to apply limits but also search for the reason we may be procrastinating.

So, what do we do? How do we find ways that will genuinely refresh ourselves and our staff? We acknowledge that we have depleted our resources through our inability to spend enough time in Quadrant 2 rebuilding our organisational infrastructure. Circuit breakers are necessary, but they need to be managed.

 We need to make more time for Quadrant 2, programming time for capacity building activities. Measuring the outputs for quadrant 2 activities is much more difficult, but not impossible (a deeper dive into KPIs and their role in this process is a topic for another day). Although it is helpful to plan how much time you should spend in each quadrant, it will vary depending on your job and your field. An emergency or service delivery worker will inevitably spend a lot more time in quadrant 1 or 3 while an admin worker will spend more time in quadrant 2. Generally speaking though, we need to be more intentional in our activities, and spend more time in Quadrant 2.

This is where we need to learn to take a step back, refresh and reevaluate with a clear head. Plan your activities, including how to be agile enough to turn our interruptions into relationship management and other capacity building capabilities. Doing so may help us achieve two worthy goals – increased productivity and reduced stress levels.