In the previous article we covered the 4 quadrants of the Time Matrix . The Quadrant 1 or C1, the important and urgent is the quadrant of Necessity: the crisis, deadlines, emergencies .

Quadrant 2 , what is important and not urgent, is the quadrant of Extraordinary Productivity : focused work, maximum concentration and creativity, exercise and rest . This is where we recommend living.

Quadrants 3 and 4, are the villains of this story , of your own life. Both quadrants are not important. Number 3 contains the urgent but trivial , like a call from your bank to offer you a loan; while 4 includes everything that is wasted time , such as spending hours and hours browsing the Internet mindlessly.

From an economic point of view, the time and energy invested in the important and urgent of the C1 has a one-to-one return on investment. The time you put in this quadrant gives you a satisfactory result: the problem is solved . The time invested here is valuable, it works.

In this scheme, time spent on C3 is wasted time . The time and effort devoted to what is urgent, not important, always gives the feeling of loss, frustration or of sacrificing something good for something of doubtful benefit. Have you ever been in a meeting where you feel the “social pressure” to stay, yet you are completely convinced that it does not bring much positive and rather takes time away from other better matters?

The feeling of wasting time in this quadrant is evident once we experience it. Yet this is the most impactful quadrant in productivity today.

The time and energy invested in the C4 is the biggest waste of our time . The return on investment is equal to zero.

Instead, the quadrant with the maximum return on investment of time, attention, energy and resources, will always be C2 . Here we receive double, triple and more than we invest.

If this quadrant is that good, it must be the most popular, right? Nothing of that.

The percentage difference is minimal in each quadrant. What is striking is that more than 40% of the time people dedicate to unimportant things in quadrants 3 and 4. The time dedicated to urgent activities is 51.2% .

The quadrant that allows us to achieve extraordinary productivity , deep, comprehensive, short and medium term, receives only 31% of the time and resources .

What if we managed to reverse those numbers and get 30% downtime and 70% time spent on what’s important? What is the value of increasing our time and life in quadrant 2? Stay tuned for our next topic on this blog.