The Importance of 86440

By- Naresh Sharma : IMT Programme Manager

86440.. does it ring any bell to you, ok let me give you some hints.. Its one of the most important & scarce thing in
our life, its intangible and it FLIES (though it doesnt have wings). Lastly we always wish to have it MORE.. Got it??
Yes, the 86440 is the number of seconds we have in a day, basically its 1 day of our life. In todays world TIME is
MONEY. So considering it to be a scarce and equated to MONEY, we all need to make the best use of this 86440.
Over the years, Time Management has become a very popular subject and a multi-million dollar
industry. People have learned how to prioritize, schedule, and journal, thinking this will help them get more
control of their lives. The following article is bits and pieces of very little knowledge that I have gathered during
my working & studying days.
In his book 7 habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey has included a habit called Putting First things first
where he explains about 2 x 2 matrix with classification under IMPORTANT & URGENT tags. This is also called as
urgency/importance matrix or time management matrix or time leadership matrix.

Quadrant
I - Important and
Urgent

What it means
The task is Important and has
great Urgency to complete.
These tasks come adhoc and
need
our
immediate
attention.

Examples
Customer
issue,
Crisis
Management or what we
commonly term as Fire
Fighting;

II - Important but
NOT Urgent

We need to take real care of

this area as if we sit longer
time
on
these
item
(sometimes due to our
procrastinating
behavior),
st
they can jump to 1 Quadrant
and get real urgent. This is

Project Planning, Schedules,

Resource
planning,
Scheduled meetings and etc.

Comments
NOT an ideal zone; If we
spend too much time in
this quadrant, it would
mean that we lack proper
tools, processes, people or
technology to support us.
Being in this quadrant for
long is not a good choice.
This is an Ideal quadrant
and with proper planning,
scheduling & delegation of
these tasks we may avoid
these
tasks
from
becoming
Quadrant-1
tasks.

III- Not Important

but Urgent

IV Not Important
and Not Urgent

also considered an ideal

quadrant as the tasks can be
planned and executed.
The tasks in this quadrant are
not important but due to its
urgency we tend to finish
them after we handle the
Quadrant-1.
These tasks are usually leisure
activity (Note I dont mean to
say that Leisure is not
IMPORTANT;
infact
one
should take some timeout to
think and enjoy but these
tasks usually dont pressurize
you and have NO impact to
your goals.

Emails &
employee
chats.

phone calls,
interruption

We need to use our best

judgment to reduce time
spent in this quadrant so it
allows us to use that time
for quadrant-2.

these tasks do not move you

towards your goals

Note: We can classify the tasks as soon as it comes to our todo list into Important and Urgent. Just to add, a task
will NOT remain in the same quadrant for ever as our priority changes and hence quadrant it holds changes. Main
idea in this model is to work proactively on important things with some good breathing time.
Harvard recently came out with the below diagram that translates the above quadrant into a mind-mapping
snapshot. Nevertheless the underlying principles and facts remain same.

Here are some of the tips that I have collected over the years:
1. Use Time to Plan and Schedule: Take time to think, plan and schedule the activities. Not planning activities is a
recipe of failure fact, you are planning to fail. Some people thrive using a daily To Do list which they construct
either the last thing the previous day or first thing in the morning. you just might find one that works for you,
2. Set achievable Goals : Optimum goals are those which cause us to "stretch" but not "break". Goals gives us
direction and planning gives us necessary path to reach to the goals.
3. 80-20 Principle: 80-20 principle/rule was originally mentioned by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto and it means
that 80 percent of the reward comes from 20 percent of the effort. 80-20 is very prevalent in whatever we do, be

it Issue resolution, Budgeting, Costing and etc. Basically the trick is to identify those 20 percent, which once
addressed, gives us 80 percent result/success.
4. DO THE RIGHT THING RIGHT :Noted management expert, Peter Drucker, says "doing the right thing is more
important than doing things right.Focus first on effectiveness (identifying what is the right thing to do), then
concentrate on efficiency (doing it right).
5. ART of DELEGATION: Its important that we reduce micro-management wherever possible by delegating the
tasks. This helps us to give us more time to concentrate on the activities in Quadrant-2 and thus makes more
effective use of our time.
6. USE SOME TIME MANAGEMENT TOOL: Here is the link to find one http://www.dovico.com/tips.aspx

7. REWARD YOURSELF: Treat yourself for small successes and celebrate achievement of goals. Doing so will help
you maintain the necessary balance in life between work and play.
So my friends: What is the truth about time management?
Below are the words that I read somewhere.just reflects what is said above
There is absolutely nothing you can do to change the speed of time. It is not manageable or debatable. Time will
move forward whether you do something or you do nothing. So the term time management is a misnomer.
What we are really talking about is self management and task management. You can manage yourself and your
tasks.