“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” John C Maxwell

Every business leader continuously fights against an onslaught of the unimportant so that they can focus on what is truly important and what will make the biggest impact for their business. If they let their guard down, they run the risk of being completely overwhelmed by the unimportant.

Quite a few years ago when I was managing a fairly large engineering project, I was introduced to the concept of classifying activities into the quadrants of low importance, high importance, low urgency and high urgency. This was a lifesaver for me as the project scope grew and my workload increased.

However, it did mean that I could not keep everyone happy. There were times when I was confronted by people who felt I was making trade-offs or compromising on some issues. My answer? “You are correct, I am!” I was choosing what was the most important and most urgent while deferring, delegating or ignoring the rest of “the noise.”