One of the many contributions that Stephen Covey has made to modern society’s corporate culture is the time management matrix. As shown in the example below, it divides the tasks that fill your day into quadrants, allowing you to apply rules about how much time should be spent on each activity. Spending time in quadrant 1 is good, and spending time in quadrant 2 is even better. Time spent in quadrants 3 and 4 should be minimized.

Although it does translate to other environments, this tool as presented in Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People seems to be targeting the average white-collar American adult. This person has a 9 to 5 job and works in an environment with many coworkers. If you work in such an environment, you could probably safely focus all of your energy on the important items and ignore anything else. All of the urgent but unimportant items from quadrant 3 will mostly like by handled by somebody. (At least this is the impression I’ve had from my past jobs.)

When you’re a freelancer, especially just starting out, there is no one else. You are responsible for everything whether it is important or not. Now the time management matrix can still be very useful for prioritizing items, but even the trivial things are on your plate and no one else’s.

For me this concept has been the biggest adjustment to becoming a full-time independent web developer. At no point am I forwarding emails or phone calls along for someone else to resolve. The buck stops with me.

To complicate things, successful use of the matrix depends on how accurately you can classify the importance and urgency of items. While this is also true in the corporate environment, often more than one person is providing input on whether a particular item is important or not.

A freelancer doesn’t have that kind of safety net. You decided that responding to that email was perhaps urgent, but not particularly important. Were you right?

filed under: Project Management, Running a Business