I assume many of you entrepreneurs and freelancers probably wake up feeling overwhelmed by your constantly-growing to-do-list most days, just like me! So I’m going to share with you this invaluable tool that I borrowed from the book ‘Organizing Your Day’ by Sandra Felton. I read this book several years ago as a beginner business owner and several of the techniques I still incorporate in my day-to-day operations today, including this one.
The idea here is that you take a piece of paper, and separate it into 4 quadrants: 1) Urgent/Important (time sensitive and needs to be done), 2) Not Urgent/Important (not time sensitive, but it would help to get it done), 3) Urgent/Not Important (time-sensitive, but it won’t kill your business if it doesn’t get done) and 4) Not Urgent/Not Important (more like wants, things you’d like to do if you can find the time.
Then, you take those quadrants and decide which tasks, if any, you can delegate. I, for example, can delegate many of my data-entry tasks to my lovely assistant, Sonya. But I cannot delegate things like Higher Education Compliance matters, UNFORTUNATELY!!
I’d love to get your feedback and comments on Twitter @theAMUA– enjoy!