As I walked along the beaches of Exuma on a recent business trip, trying to decide whether I should succumb to my pressing, never-ending to-do list and the insistent call to relax, have fun and enjoy the beauty of the island, a thought came strongly to mind and lingered: Life is a test on priorities. It brought back insight from a time management course I taught this month called "Personal victory", based on the popular book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Steven Covey. Ironically, this was also a topic that I needed a good refresher on for myself.

As our lives evolve and new responsibilities arise, we could all use a reminder to make the best choices with our time.
Quadrant 2, as described in the book, covers "the not urgent but important things" -- those priorities that matter in the long-term and have to do with results -- they contribute to our mission, our values, our high-priority goals. They are things we know we need to get to but probably will put off, over and over again. They can involve having a lunch with an important contact, relationship-building, prevention, recognizing new opportunities, planning a life, etc.

Peter Drucker said, "Time management is something of a misnomer: We have a constant amount of time, no matter what we do; the challenge we face is to manage ourselves. To be an effective manager of yourself, you must organize and execute around priorities. We don't manage time. We can only manage ourselves."

Even the "time masters", whose lives are managed enough to accomplish success in their endeavors, all face the same dilemma - being caught between the urgent and the important. Quadrant 2 falls into the category of "private victory" -- where we go from dependence to independence by taking responsibility for our own lives. He encourages us to "put first things first". This involves self-leadership and self-management by identifying our most valuable priorities and planning our lives around these priorities.

Quadrants 1, 3 and 4 are: "Urgent - Important", "Urgent - Not important" and "Not urgent - Not important", respectively. These comprise the most pressing of tasks requiring immediate attention (crisis, fire-fighting, deadline-driven projects) to completing tasks that clog up our time each day, such as making phone calls, poorly thought-out meetings to full-blown time wasters, like checking and rechecking Facebook and Twitter during the day, because we think we might miss something. These are other activities which we tell ourselves in the moment that we must do, but -- if we stopped ourselves to really think about -- we'd realize they aren't that important. They get our attention, but when we look back at these things at the end of the week, they may not have any bearing on our long-term goals.

People get harried away from their real goals and values by subordinating the important to the urgent; some are beaten up by problems (in quadrants 1 and 3) all day, every day. Their only relief is in escaping once in a while to the calm waters of Quadrant 4.

With the time-management quadrants in mind, consider the question you answered at the beginning of this section. What quadrant does your life predominately fit in? What items on your Quadrant 2 list don't currently get the time they deserve? What work-related items in Quadrant 3 could be removed or delegated, in order to free up time for Quadrant 2?

Make a decision to live in the second quadrant as much and as best you can. To say "yes" to important things requires you to learn to say no to other activities, some of them urgent. You are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the urgent things in your life, it's probably to the more fundamental, important things.

To pursue Quadrant 2, identify your key roles: business, family, church -- whatever comes to mind as important. Think of those you will act in for the coming week. Think of two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each role during the next seven days. At least some of these goals should be Quadrant 2 activities.

Look at the week ahead with your goals in mind and block out the time needed each day to achieve them. Once your key goals are in place, look how much time you have left for everything else. How well you succeed in your endeavors depends on how resilient and determined you are at defending your most important priorities.

At least 10 percent of your day needs to be devoted to the important but not urgent activities. Ideally, you should spend 30 percent of every day on this area. At the start of every week, write a two-by-two matrix on a blank sheet of paper, where one side of the matrix says "urgent" and "not urgent" and the other side of the matrix says "important" and "not important." Then, write all the things you want to do that week. Focus on the important.

The fruits will not come overnight. However, if you maintain this practice, over time you will be happy with the results. Life is a test on priorities. At the end of the day, when it really matters, be sure you passed the test.

o Keshelle Davis is an educator, executive and entrepreneur who serves the world through speaking and teaching. Her roles include executive director of the Chamber Institute, the education arm of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce, founder of Creative Wealth Bahamas and others. Keshelle was listed as The Nassau Guardian's Top 40 Under 40 for the 40th anniversary celebrations of The Bahamas. Contact her at keshelle@keshelledavis.com.

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