Page 24 - Mini-Module 10

Importance

You can also rate your activities as being ‘very important’ to ‘not
important’. Importance refers to the consequences of decisions or
activities. If you are spending too much time on activities which
are unimportant in relation to your goals and major responsibilities,
you are probably wasting your time. Pareto’s Law, sometimes
labelled the 80/20 rule, tells us that only 20 per cent of a leader’s
time creates results, whereas 80 per cent of time tends to be spent
on unstructured ‘little things’. The importance of an activity is
related to your professional, career or personal goals. Very
important tasks should be given your immediate and undivided
attention. For more information on Pareto’s Law see the Mini-
module “Principal Wellbeing: Balancing Work/life”.

IMPORTANCE AND URGENCY

Consider some of the tasks you face this week. Ask yourself how
important and urgent they are? Rate the tasks on these dimen-
sions on the corresponding axis. This will give you some idea of
the priority of the task

24