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“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” — Stephen Covey

What’s one resource we all have and can’t get more of? Time, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you have the same amount of time as someone in the opposite situation you are in. That’s what I call fair!

Life is shorter than most people realize. People who manage their time well tend to thrive a lot more than people who use it meaninglessly. Most of the time, that’s when someone spends too much time on short-term benefits over long-term benefits.

Below are three simple but hard to master concepts:

1. Use the Eisenhower Matrix the right way.

Here’s what it looks like:

From top-left to bottom-left, we’ll refer to the quadrants this way:

Quadrant I: Urgent and Important
Quadrant II: Important but not urgent
Quadrant III: Not important but urgent
Quadrant IV: Not important and not urgent

Quadrant I activities are things you have to do otherwise bad things will happen. Contrary to popular beliefs, you want to keep this at a minimum. These are reactionary actions mostly caused by bad planning. When people say they’re busy, it’s because they have too many things in that quadrant. Or they think they do.

Quadrant II activities are where the fun is. These are things you do when you complete the quadrant I activities. Any personal growth activities go here. Many people push these activities thinking they are not that important. They’re wrong. They’re less important in the short-term, but in the long-term, these are the tasks that make the difference between you thriving or not.

Quadrant III activities are things you have to do but don’t work towards your personal goals much. To you, they’re tedious and meaningless, but because they’re urgent, you tend to do them when you really should be delegating them to someone else.

Quadrant IV activities are things you once thought were useful but you just procrastinate doing. When you know why you do what you do, you can more easily identify them and never waste time and energy thinking about them.

The overall strategy is:

Limit quadrant I activities by planning and delegating better
Increase quadrant II activities. The more you do, the fewer quadrant I activities will show up.
Surround yourself with people who can take care of your quadrant III activities. Remember, your quadrant III activities might be someone else’s quadrant II activities!
Be aware of quadrant IV activities and stop do them. Instead, do more quadrant II activities.

2. Balance short-term vs long-term

Most people tend to focus on activities that benefit them in the short-term. I have the opposite problem. I’m almost always focusing on the long-term. There are pros and cons to each.

Pros of focusing on short-term gains:

Instant gratification. Life almost always feels good.
It’s less stressful at first.

Cons of focusing on short-term gains:

It’s addicting. You tend to forego future gains, limiting your possibilities of thriving.
You miss out on things that take you out of your comfort zone (missing important life lessons).

Pros of focusing on long-term gains:

You tend to be healthier and have better habits.
You tend to be wealthier later in life.

Cons of focusing on long-term gains:

It’s damn hard to delay gratification! It may seem like you’re working very hard for no returns.
If you need money now to survive, you can’t focus too much on the long-term.

So, how do you balance it out then?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here — it’s up to you to figure it out. But, when you list down your activities in quadrant II, take some time to figure out how the activities benefit you both in the short-term and the long-term.

The reality is, the best way to thrive comes from having prepared before, which means, long-term activities matter more in the end. Short-term activities and reactionary activities you put in the quadrant I. Do as little as is required to live a satisfactory life so that you can later have a better one.

I know this can suck for some of you who have spent too much time focusing on the short-term, but the reality is that instant gratification is not thriving — it’s the illusion of thriving.

3. Know your hacks

No time-saving hack will ever remain timeless, but knowing the current ones that can save you time will allow you to focus more on the quadrant II activities and less so on the other ones. In the following article, I listed 84 of my favourite hacks on how to get more time in your day:

84 Productivity Killers and How to Avoid Them

Here are the easiest to [do/not do] things to save the most time:

Watching instructional videos at 2x;
Going to meetings that have nothing to do with you or don’t have an agenda;
Working on your hardest problems when you’re sleepy;
Starting the day without knowing what you’re going to do;
Driving or commuting during rush hour;
Going to a further away store to save pennies;
Having a TV in front of a couch;
Snoozing;
Going to school for a piece of paper;
Not recalling or implementing what you previously learned;
Doing what you went to school for even if you lost your “passion”;
Not revisiting your self-awareness regularly;
Not taking a damn break when you need it;
Not listening to other people’s constructive feedback;
Only thinking about yourself; and
Reading articles like this one and doing nothing about it.

The overall theme is this:

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker

Find the things worth doing, both in the short-term and the long-term. Recoup time from the quadrant IV of the Eisenhower Matrix and reinvest in quadrant II activities. That’s where truly productive people spend their time.

You can do this!

If you want to be prepared for a better tomorrow, then SkillUp! Check out SkillUp Academy!