What is Your Time Perspective?

Reprint of: 
Introduction to Time Management For University Students
Counseling and Development Center
York University, Toronto, Canada
Copyright (Permission Requested)

Earlier, we talked about how you define your reality by the decisions and actions of today. Your time perspective is part of that reality. Have you ever noticed how people who have goals and are serious about their future take great care to use their time well? These people seem to consider time a precious resource to be allocated to appropriate ends, and only after careful consideration. This is in sharp contrast to the wandering masses of people who are confused, lost and unfocused. These people do not consider time as a valuable resource, but simply as a measurement of how old something is or when something is going to happen. These differing viewpoints are both generated by the goals or lack of them of the people in question.

Developing a personal sensitivity to the value of your time is easy. It's a natural outgrowth of having goals. Imagine you had one more day to live. Wouldn't every minute suddenly become cherished and unwasted? Since none of us really knows how much time we have it would make sense to consider our time to be of limited supply and great value. Being of limited supply, our time should be spent on some things while other things should be avoided. To know which is which, we'll discuss a few crucial spectra of time use including importance and urgency, effectiveness and efficiency, and the Pareto Principle. Importance and Urgency.

Importance and Urgency

A helpful strategy in clarifying your present time perspective is to think of your activities in terms of importance and urgency. The diagram, displaying a grid of four quadrants, represents different blends of important and urgent activities. The lower-left quadrant for instance represents activities that you engage in that are neither important nor urgent. As the urgency increases (towards the lower-right) we often find ourselves doing things faster and more hurriedly. Be careful though. That does not mean that these things are more important. The upper-left quadrant contains things that are high in importance and low in urgency, and the quadrant in the upper-right corner represents activities that are high in both urgency and importance. Let's briefly consider each of these quadrants in turn.

Figure 3. Importance and Urgency

Not Important Nor Urgent

You are probably wondering why anyone would want to engage in activities that are neither important nor urgent, but you would be amazed to find out just how much of your time is really spent in this quadrant. If you find yourself engaging in such throw-away tasks as sleeping in, watching game shows for hour after hour, playing video games, or chatting on the phone - be careful. You might be engaging in activities that have nothing at all to do with your goals. Doing things that are neither important nor urgent does not make sense.

Not Important But Urgent

Engaging in tasks that are urgent but not really important is a potentially dangerous way to spend your time because it may keep you from achieving your goals. Imagine feeling rushed and pressured to get something done while you think about how useless the task really is in terms of what you want to accomplish! Our unfortunate tendency is to misinterpret urgency for importance. As a result, we spend more of our time than we want to rushing around doing things that, in the end, probably don't give us any real accomplishments.

But there is a simple solution to this problem. If you are feeling hurried, stop for a moment and ask the following question: What would be the consequences to me if I don't do this? The answer to this question will put the activities importance and urgency into perspective. Urgency has a personal dimension and it is crucial that we understand to whom the urgency really applies. Often, the consequences to you are so small that it seems ridiculous to continue to do the activity.

Important But Not Urgent

The activities that fall into this quadrant tend to be tricky. Quite often we put off until tomorrow a very important activity only to engage in something less important and more urgent. Let's be honest, one of the most important activities students face is studying for exams through regular reviews, but how many students do it with lots of time to spare? The very best time to start studying for a final exam is the first day of class, but many students find a third re-run of a situation comedy on television more compelling. It's your choice to make as to which quadrant to be in, but be sure of your reasons for doing what you do.

Important And Urgent

I do my best work the night before the due date. Why change my method, it got me this far hasn't it? It may be true that the focused determination that you show the night before the due date of an important assignment or exam will produce results. But it is very unlikely that it is your best work. As time goes on and your assignments become increasingly complex and involved you will recognize that the 'night before' approach will fail. It becomes more and more difficult to do an entire term paper at the last minute. Activities that are both urgent and important are readily acted on by most students. In this quadrant we find things like studying for exams a few days before class, typing up a major term paper the day before it is due, and trying to finish the lab assignment before lab time ends. For many students it is the urgency of the activity that prompts them to do the work.

Some believe (as one student has said) "I do my best work the day before it's due." The sad reality for many of us is that the day before the due date is when we do any of the work. The work was not done when it was not urgent. Strangely enough, the importance of the activity has never changed, only the urgency has. Waiting until something becomes urgent makes less and less sense as something becomes more important. Take for instance two real-life examples; financial planning and marriage. Would it make any sense to begin your retirement savings plan a few weeks before you turn 65, or how about trying to get to know your fiancée a few days before getting married? Not only would you retire without enough money to live, but you would marry a virtual stranger. These two examples display how strange it seems to try to cram months and years of activities into a few days. If these examples make sense to you, you will realize how foolish it is to try to cram your studies too.

Return to Top

Effectiveness and Efficiency

Let your imagination wander for a moment and imagine that you are the director of an expedition of explorers making your way through dense jungle. Surrounding you on all sides is the deep green foliage and the whistling and chattering of thousands of birds and monkeys. You begin to think about how fortunate you are to be leading this expedition when suddenly you hear "Stop! Stop your advancing!" It's the expedition navigator. He is approaching you from the back of the line. "It has become apparent in the last few days," he says "that we have veered drastically off course!" He motions to the north-east exclaiming "we must continue this way." Hearing this, the bushwhacking guide turns and approaches the two of you from the front. He gazes to the north-east momentarily and exclaims "That's the densest jungle I have ever seen. Why don't we just keep going this way. We're making great time!".

Now, after having been on your expedition, what do you have to tell the rest of the world? Did you follow the advice of the navigator or the bushwhacker? We certainly hope the choice seems rather obvious to you. If you follow the navigator's advice you will certainly have your work cut out for you, but you will eventually reach your destination. On the other hand, if you follow the bushwhacker's path of least resistance travelling should be easy, but you'll have no way of knowing what problems lie ahead or where you will end up. The purpose of having you think about yourself as an expedition director is to clarify the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness.This grid represents two more ways of thinking about your time. Each quadrant is a different blend of effectiveness and efficiency. Let's consider each in turn.

Figure 4. Effectiveness and Efficiency

Unimportant Things Done Poorly -Low Effectiveness, Low Efficiency

Remember the expedition you were on? Doing unimportant things poorly would be just like taking the expedition off course to go site seeing and completely ignore your purpose for being there. This would be doing something unimportant and it would make you ineffective. Doing an unimportant activity poorly simply compounds the problem. It's like taking that side trip site seeing and then getting lost! Certainly this is very ineffective because it takes you much longer to get back on course. Unimportant things are best left undone. Why do something poorly, or well for that matter, if it's just not important. As a student many of your goals either center around or are interdependent with your schooling. So, activities that lead you toward your goals are important. Activities that do not lead you toward your goals are real barriers and would be considered unimportant activities.

Important Things Done Poorly - High Effectiveness, Low Efficiency

Have you ever heard the phrase "If you are going to do something you might as well do it right?" If you have, you are probably wondering why someone would want to do an important activity poorly? The answer is, for practice. It's not that your focus should be to do it poorly - not at all - you should always strive to do important things well. But keep in mind that people who are the best in the world at what they do started out being lousy at it.

Unimportant Things Done Well - Low Effectiveness, High Efficiency

We all like to receive congratulations for a job well done. It seems to boost our self-esteem and sense of competence when we get wonderful results. Most often, though, the recognition and personal satisfaction do not come from doing unimportant things well. Only when something is important is there a real payoff. As a rather silly but very helpful example consider students who commute to their classes from off campus. Does it matter how well a student stares out the window of a bus? I warned you that the example was silly but that's how most students use their time while commuting - they stare out the window. It doesn't make sense to do unimportant things at all, let alone do them well.

Pareto's Priority Puzzler It's quiz time at the Learning Skills Programme. Give Pareto's priority puzzler a try and see how well you do. The question is: What percentage of waking time does the average university student spend on important tasks? The surprising answer to this question can be found at the end of one of the Time Management For University Students pages.

Important Things Done Well - High Effectiveness, High Efficiency

Doing things effectively and efficiently means finding out what's important and then doing it over and over until you do it well. It's highly unlikely that you as expedition director would have much success if you set out without a map (which tells you where to go and when) and some background in expeditions, navigation and jungle survival. Likewise, efficiency and effectiveness have a bearing on your academics. Displaying effectiveness as a student means knowing what to study and understand for your exams. Displaying efficiency means you have gone over the material enough to be so familiar with it that, come test time, you aren't fumbling around with the concepts, drawing blanks and running out of time.