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Quadrant I Important urgent Most teaching activities (Quadrant of necessity) |
Quadrant II Important, not urgent Most research activities (Quadrant of quality) |
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Quadrant III Urgent, not important Most service activities (Quadrant of deception) |
Quadrant IV Not important, not urgent “Time killers” (Quadrant of waste) |
Covey’s Quadrants Applied to the Academic Life
Stephen Covey has devised a method of classifying tasks into one of four quadrants. The upper quadrants represent important things, the lower two, unimportant things. The quadrants to the left are urgent (that is, time sensitive) things, and the things to the right are non-urgent (they have no deadline).
When I went to a “How-to-get-tenure” presentation about ten years ago, the speaker applied this thinking to the academic life.
The most productive time is in Quadrant II; those activities are generally the most important although they are not usually the most urgent (unless you’re working under a publication deadline, for instance). Because these activities aren’t time sensitive, they’re easiest to put off; that’s a fatal mistake, because many of the rewards in academia are generated by work done in the second quadrant. Again, as I’ve stated in other posts, it’s so important to schedule time to write. When it becomes a quadrant II habit, productivity increases and is constant.
I also argue for putting some teaching activities into the second quadrant. A lot of materials that I gather or write are not needed for my next class or even for a class that I’m teaching that semester, but can be for a class I’ll be teaching in the future. I recommend that a couple of hours every month be devoted to this quadrant II teaching preparation.
Nevertheless, most teaching activities are time sensitive, and thus are “urgent.” Papers have to be graded, lectures written by a determined date, and classes planned.
Though it seems that there’s never enough time, there is if priorities are established and stuck to. But, the priorities have to be in the upper two quadrants. To allocate time to important things, take time away from the unimportant things, especially Quadrant IV things-it ain’t called the Quadrant of Waste for nothin’.
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Quadrant I Important urgent Most teaching activities |
Quadrant II Important, not urgent Most research activities |
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Quadrant III Urgent, not important Most service activities |
Quadrant IV Not important, not urgent “Time killers” |
Covey’s Quadrants Applied to the Academic Life
