Chapter 2: The Deeper You Go, the Harder It Gets
Wrapping up
Reading David Allen’s book Getting Things Done did not upset me or keep me from pursuing time management; I simply did not find answers for the questions I had. As well, there was a lot I learned that I both found interesting and applied to my daily life: for example, the desktop organizers and filing cabinet.
I did not stop there, and as I moved forward I found that in some sense the going was easier. I knew what the problem was and what I was looking for—all that was left was reading every well-known time management book I could get my hands on and figuring out the answers to my questions:
1. How should I prioritize?
2. How do I actually get things done?
David Allen talked about some sort of intuition that comes with an understanding of our role, goals, and responsibilities. He also cited Stephen Covey, so I decided to see what there was to learn in First Things First.
Four quadrants
I should note that I was well acquainted with Stephen Covey’s well-known book The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. In it the author lays out four quadrants that together make up a prioritization system for categorizing everything we do. Covey’s new book was totally devoted to that habit, something that I could not help but find exciting.
Stephen Covey’s assertion that his book was the most up-to-date TM system available was enough for me. At the end of the book there is even a diagram laying out three generations of time management systems (there are eight in total). Covey claims that his system represents the fourth and latest generation, something that could not help but inspire me to apply it to my life.
The book is packed with clear thinking and ideas, which is why I highly recommend reading it. My goal, however, was to understand if there was a simple and comprehensible system of priorities.
Covey suggests breaking everything down into four quadrants:
1. Important and urgent
2. Important but not urgent
3. Not important but urgent
4. Not important and not urgent
The author pushes the idea of prioritizing the first two categories, also stating that the second is most important, given that it carries with it the most results and positive impact. Everything in the second category has to do with your calling, what can change your life, and what can change the world. Covey looks at life as a collection of roles and spheres, something that gives us the ability to focus on what is important. In other words, this is an opportunity to understand what is primary in our lives, figure out our mission, and move on from that to write out a list of our roles. Those could be, among others:
1. Vice president
2. Landlord
3. Parent
Now our priority is to set goals for each of these roles or assign them from our to-do list, after which we have a list of the most important things for the week.
What is this? A magic filter for everything in our lives? I tried sorting like this and came up with a big pile of confusion. As it turns out, I have a lot in my life that is both urgent and quite important. In time I understood that the “urgent/not urgent” and “important/not important” classifications were very subjective: I think playing video games is very important and want to get to that right away, while taking back the letter that was delivered to us accidentally is somewhere way down on the list.
Here is a simple and real-life example: once a friend stopped by and mentioned how he was feeling pressured by everything he had to do, most of which needed to be done right away. For example, his list featured buy sneakers for the entire family—urgent and important. At that point I already had my own system for prioritization, one which I will talk about in more detail in chapter four, so we quickly went over his list again and ascertained that most items on it were nothing more than ideas or at best goals. Buy sneakers for the entire family was an idea that according to Stephen Covey would be the main or at least a high priority.
I had a similar situation. My highest priorities were often reserved for ideas or very raw goals, while the most important items were liable to get pushed down to the third quadrant. The goals and ideas taking up the focal point on my to-do list were incredibly stressful. Needless to say, if you use Stephen Covey’s method and it helps you, I am more than happy for you. For me and my friend, however, it was confusing and did not work.
So we took care of our inbox, assigned everything to a quadrant, and had a ready list. What next? Where is the fourth time management generation’s magic secret? A simple to-do list is nothing new—you get that with any old system—but I will be honest with you: Stephen Covey surprised me. On page 90 he uses the ABC method to lay out his weekly to-do list.
The ABC method
What is this method? In my opinion it is a bit of circular reasoning: premise A is true because of premise B, which in turn is proven by the truth of premise A.
I once happened across a YouTube video that one would call corporate coaching. A group of women was sitting in a small room (probably the employees in a single department) listening to a TM specialist who was speaking up by the board. The clip began with him saying, “So do you get how to do that?” His listeners’ eyes widened, their expressions shouting that they had no idea what was going on. The specialist continued by saying, “All right, then let me show you a new TM system I’ve developed. Not many people know about it yet, but it will help you out a lot. You need to split your to-do list into categories A, B, and C (at the same time he drew “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D” on the board with a marker). Then you need to figure out what is most important, what is less important, and what isn’t important at all.”
That was when I just about fell off my chair. Just think: you paid money to learn how to prioritize, and what you get in return is a TM guru who tells you that “You need to understand what goes under A, which is most important, B, which is less so, and C, which is least important.” Excuse me, but the question itself was about how to understand what is most important, what is less so, and why. This is where one more popular TM tool comes into play: intuition.
The great and powerful intuition
I should note that Gleb Arhangelsky’s Time Drive went the furthest: while many TM books just write about using intuition to prioritize, Arhangelsky provided a mathematical formula.
Arhangelsky gets to the main point on page 107: how to understand what is most important and where to begin. Everything can seem important, and so the author states that the problem is in the criteria we use. He suggests using what he calls a “multi-criteria evaluation,” which is a table that uses those criteria—for example, place, price, and space—to prioritize. Now we assign a value: for example, 0.4 for place. Where do we get that value? Intuition, of course. A deal like that would work just as well for prioritizing bets at a casino, believe me.
Certainly, intuition helps if you have, say, three or ten things to do, but when you have 50 or even 300 it simply does not. You will always have tasks that are neither A nor B, instead ending up an eternal sticking point. The problem with the ABC method and intuition is that you will always split your list into two categories: do now and do at some point. Think about it this way: at the emergency room do they assign patients by intuition—who gets help now, who can wait until tomorrow, who can be sent home? Of course not. First they diagnose, and then they use that diagnosis to decide what to do. It is the same with us: if we cannot figure out a diagnosis, intuition will not help and may even be a hindrance.
Conclusions:
I did not find what I was looking for in Stephen Covey’s book, in particular:
• How to quickly and simply sort my to-do list
• How to prioritize
• How to get to work
While I did not get what I was looking for, a negative result is still a result. My studies taught me that we are all very subjective in how we understand what is urgent and important. I saw the disadvantages of the ABC method, while it was also interesting to see how intuition can be deceptive. That, however, will be discussed further in upcoming chapters.
As I wrap up this chapter I would like to apologize if I have been overly critical. I may be writing somewhat emotionally given that I am not only sharing the path I took, but also the feelings that went along with it. I am in no way belittling the work of other authors who have gone before us—I am grateful to them for their work.