Stress has many negative effects, but the one that may be the most annoying is its impact on our ability to think straight. Whether it’s the wildfires, tariffs, or back-to-school readiness that has you in a state, taking a few minutes to assess all of those thoughts whirling around in your head can be very helpful.
We’ve talked before about the Eisenhower Matrix but bring it up again because it’s a tool that isn’t just for business OR personal use. You can easily combine both, making it far more representative of life’s realities. So, do a quick mind-dump and write it all down. Then organize using these four categories:
1. Important and Urgent – Do First
If there are serious consequences for not doing a task today or tomorrow, it’s important and urgent. Just make sure that the urgency isn’t clouding your judgement about importance. Focus on the potential consequences.
2. Important but Not Urgent – Schedule
It’s important to get the supplies the kids need for school and it keeps popping into your mind, so set a date and time right now. It’s not urgent because you do it next week without dire consequences. Put it in your schedule and forget about it until then. If it’s an important project at work that seems to be losing traction, the same applies. Schedule some alone time or a meeting with key players and talk it out.
3. Urgent but Not Important – Delegate
You’re supposed to be working on that important project but you’re being distracted by email notifications. You know there’s a quite a few that you haven’t even looked at yet and wonder if you should do that instead. You should not. Get someone else to sort through them, delete the junk and prioritize the rest.
4. Neither Urgent nor Important – Eliminate
You’ve been invited to yet another wedding, or conference, or whatever. They’re not important to you. Or your predecessor made a habit of sitting in on the department meetings, and you think your time is better spent on planning and policy setting. You do you. Your time is valuable, don’t give it away unnecessarily.
