Summary: Steven covey’s Time Management Matrix explained

    The time management matrix is all about prioritizing and budgeting your time wisely so that you can organize better and how to decide which tasks are best completed first. He divides time management into 4 quadrants. Quadrant one is the most urgent and important, for example: Crises, pressing problems, and emergencies. The second quadrant is not urgent, but important, so like exercise and eating healthy. Quadrant three is urgent, but not important, such as interruptions and meetings. The last quadrant is not urgent or important. It is considered the time wasting quadrant because they are mostly recreational activities. The time management matrix is meant to help prioritize objectives so that we can get the most important things done first and budgeting time wisely.
    By using Coveys time management matrix, I find myself to be living in quadrant 2. I say that because quadrant 1 is usually reserved for emergencies and usually in my typical day, emergencies aren't a common occurrence. I tend to follow the time sheet I made for myself in order to see just how well I was managing my time. The result was pretty good, but of course could always be be improved. Quadrant 4 tends to be my most enjoyable one because I love my down time, but having assignments with deadlines make it a bit difficult to enjoy that downtime. With self motivation I am able to complete a number of tasks efficiently without even thinking about how much time it’s going to take. What I mean by that is that instead of thinking about how much time an activity will take me I just take it one step at a time and the outcome is always good as a result. There is also a big amount of stress lifted off of me which is rewarding within itself.
    Eisenhower once gave an inspirational speech about what is important and urgent and if they could ever be both urgent and important at once. Usually things that are important lead to an outcome which help us accomplish our goals and urgent things usually appeal to other people rather than yourself and require to be attended to ASAP. By that logic nothing can ever be important and urgent because your goals take longer to be achieved and cannot be completed as an urgent task. I agree and disagree with this statement. Usually when urgent things happen, they come out of nowhere, but for things like pregnancy, that would hopefully be an urgent and important matter for you and your significant other. hopefully the goal was to have a baby (if intended). but interruptions that come up, such as a stranded friend, would be to help him out and go out of your way to do so. 
    The article by James Clear gave great examples of using your time more efficiently. A “marshmallow test” that was done among 4-5 year old kids showed that if they saved their marshmallow while the researcher was away they would get another one in addition to the one they have when the researcher would come back. The other option was to eat the marshmallow that was placed in front of them, but they would not get another one later. Waiting is very hard for children especially at that age so naturally time consumed some of them, but some made it through. Researchers followed up on those kids throughout the years and they found that those kids who would rather wait for the marshmallow had higher SAT scores. The whole point of the test was to show that if you wait for the luxury things and do the necessary things such as doing work, not buying junk, and finishing everything 100% through, the payout would be greater. 
    In my experiences, trying to multitask is no walk in the park. I believe that it increases stress on you because of the amount of tasks I’m trying to complete all at once. However, I can't say that it has never worked for me. In a rare case I have been able to multi task with ease, but that is depending on the task. For example, Listening to music while working on math homework is easy because one requires completion while the other requires nothing but the human ear. Cooking while trying to do homework would be unadvised because the consequences could be dire. Like your lunch/dinner burning in the pan or you writing down a recipe as an answer for your homework. The point being is that the mind can't be in two places at once. Though some may claim they can multitask It’s really just shifting attention rapidly from one activity to another.
    After reading the article it really helped me organize my activities into their right quadrants. As I said before I found myself trying to help others more than myself, but now others needs are in quadrant 3 instead of 2. I find the quadrants to be a little selfish only because the TMM is based around you and even though I do like helping people, I can't help anybody if I can't help myself. The Quadrants have helped me greatly because I have not only been able to budget my time more efficiently, but I now have set priorities to follow which helps me in the long run. I still find myself tempted to resort to the fourth quadrant only because some of my ethics are misplaced but the organization of the quadrants has definitely helped my discipline and still continues to. 
    By using Steven coveys time management matrix I was able to improve what was urgent and what was important. The time management matrix  both urgency and importance are different categories because importance is focused on me and urgency is leaning towards other peoples needs. For awhile I was on the mind set that they could be the same thing, but soon after learning about the time management matrix I found it to be back and forth a bit, but leaning towards it not being possible. I found myself responding more to other people than myself and for awhile that was my goal, but it didn’t benefit me much. Sometimes in life you have to be a little selfish. The time management matrix is to help prioritize your time to help better your goals you are pursuing. 
    

Works Cited

www.mindtools.com, Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle using time effectively, not just efficiently, Mind tools Ltd, 1996-2016, Date accessed, March 22 2016

www.Jamesclear.com/delayedgratification,40 years of Stanford Research Found that People With This One Quality Are More Likely to Succeed, Date accessed, April 20 2016