Cure Your Addiction to Urgency: Time Management Advice from Stephen R. Covey

By Selling Power Editors

Most time-management techniques can easily help you become better organized and more focused. But do these techniques help you feel happier and more fulfilled?

At the end of a day, week, month, or year, the workaholic who spends all his time fighting fires and running from one urgent matter to the next often feels empty. This emptiness is a symptom of what Stephen R. Covey calls an “urgency addiction.”

A crisis can leave us feeling stressed and exhausted, but it can also be exhilarating to be caught in the eye of a storm, says Covey.

“There is a momentary sense of euphoria from getting things done, almost like a chemical dependency,” he says. “But it can have terrible long-term consequences because you may be into efficiency, rather than effectiveness, and you may never provide the leadership for your life because you’re so hurried by what I call the ‘thick of thin things.'”

As a solution to the urgency addiction, Covey recommends we divide our activities into four categories or quadrants, depending on their importance and urgency.

Quadrant One: Activities that are both important and urgent, including crises, pressing problems, and deadline-driven projects.

Quadrant Two: Important but not urgent activities such as long-range planning, self-improvement, and overall preparations for the future.

Quadrant Three: Urgent, but unimportant activities – from tedious phone calls and meetings, to drop-in office visitors.

Quadrant Four: Activities that are neither important nor urgent, such as mindless television shows, superficial conversations, or any activity that does nothing to improve one’s mind.

Covey feels that workaholic/urgency addicts tend to spend all of their time in Quadrants One and Three, while they neglect Quadrant Two. However, Quadrant Two time is most essential for determining long-term success and fulfillment.

To make the best use of time, maximize Quadrant Two time at the expense of Quadrant Three.

“To find time for such essential Quadrant Two activities as long-term planning, prevention, relationship building, and empowerment, you have to neglect Quadrant Three,” he says. “And you have to live with the withdrawal pains of breaking that urgency addiction.

“You can’t neglect Quadrant One, because it is genuinely important and urgent and the alternative is dying. But you have to knowingly neglect Quadrants Three and Four. Quadrant Four is worthless anyway, but Quadrant Three has a sense of value to it because it is urgent, but it isn’t really important.

“That’s why I say the enemy of the best is not the worst, it’s the good. We’re busy performing tasks that are urgent, but aren’t really important. But the only way to get time for Quadrant Two is to take it from Quadrant Three. And the more time you spend in Quadrant Two, the smaller Quadrant One becomes.”

As with a chemical dependency, Covey does not recommend that people quit their urgency addiction cold turkey.

“I normally recommend that you start taking a little time from Quadrant Three and put it into Quadrant Two,” he says. “As people gain satisfaction and confidence that doing preventive work shrinks the volume of Quadrant One activities, they are encouraged to take more and more time away from Quadrant Three until they get a great sense of satisfaction and motivation.

“Admittedly, some people may get offended because you are sharing less time in lengthy meetings and on directionless phone calls, but you have to be almost fierce in dividing time between Quadrants One and Three. That’s a small price to pay for accomplishing tasks related to a transcendent vision or mission.”