In his insightful book on Personal Management, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Covey points out that many of the tasks we occupy ourselves with are unimportant, clutters, and may even be time wasting. He goes on to distinguish urgent from important in respect of our schedules.

“Urgent matters are usually visible. They press on us; they insist on action. They are often popular with others … they are pleasant, easy, fun to do but so often they are unimportant…Importance, on the other hand, has to do with results. If something is important, it contributes to your mission, your values, and your high priority goals.”

(For visual reference I reproduced his famous Time Management Matrix below)

I personally call Quadrants 3 & 4 of that matrix as clutters. Unnecessary, more often excessive / unmanaged, clutters’ greatly affect our way of life. They derail us from our real goals and objectives. They cause us to lose sight of our priorities. Worse, we end-up so tired at the end of the day without accomplishing anything significant. We then wallow in our frustrations.

Take this: we wake up one day and knew that everything is in order. We know what we are going to do and probably had a list of priorities, albeit, unexpected ‘clutters’ (Quadrants 1, 3, & 4) appear from nowhere and you are caught in a myriad of difficult situations. How do you cope?

Years back, I chance upon this story:

Not long ago great flocks of migratory birds overwhelmed airport radar systems at Des Moines, Omaha, Nebraska and Kansas City. The computerized radar systems were ‘knocked-out’ for hours after they tried to process information on thousands of transient geese. There was pandemonium all over the place as planes where put on a standby and those that were about to land created great jitters and fears to those manning the tower because their radar systems were not working. FAA radar systems are supposed to filter out the radar echoes that come from birds by tracking their speed, but often controllers will turn off primary radar (the one that reads echoes in the sky) and rely upon transponder signals from aircraft. But on that fateful day the birds appeared in such vast numbers that the filtering system (which screens out echoes from birds) quickly failed. The Des Moines radar system can process 700 bona fide aircraft returns and 300 non-aircraft returns simultaneously. But on that day, the system was overwhelmed with over 900 bird echoes within minutes. The static that ensued became so debilitating that work for the next hour came to a complete stop.

OUR TAKE: No system is perfect. No matter how well you are in organizing everything in your life, careers, or business, unattended ‘clutters’ or unexpected ones can sometimes push you back to complete helplessness. This is where your ability to adapt and adopt to changes will ultimately give you the edge to survive. Stay focus. Let not these clutters deter you from doing what you intend to do. Organize. Manage your priorities. Concentrate your efforts on the Quadrant 2 priorities. Then, keep on organizing and prioritizing some more until they become effective personal management habits.