The Perils of Quadrant II
Self-help junkies will be familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix, designed to neatly organise tasks according to whether they are important, urgent, both or neither. Quadrants I and III are full of in-your-face, look-at-me attention-grabbers who leave no time for the shrinking violets in the other two quadrants. While quadrant IV could possibly fall off the face of the earth without discommoding anyone too much, quadrant II is the realm of the enlightened, or so conventional wisdom goes. This is the land of personal development, home-cooked meals, psychic cleansing and yoga, which highly successful people make time to visit regularly. For the rest of us, quadrant II activities tend to do quite a bit of to-do list surfing before eventually and inevitably nosediving into oblivion. It’s the aspirational quadrant, how the other quarter lives.
Like so many things, 2020 changed all that. In the past 12 months, the Coronavirus pandemic has dragged a sizeable portion of the world’s population kicking and screaming into quadrant II. All that red-light-flashing stuff dissolved into thin air almost overnight. High-pressure careers screeched to a halt (in many cases) as did high-octane social lives (in almost all). The urgent emails with the colourful flags, the WhatsApp night-out organisation — you know, typical quadrant I/III material — all gone. And so, we bought yoga mats, subscribed to fitness blogs, set goals, started journalling, discovered podcasts — everything we had always wanted to do but never found the time. We steered our camper vans towards the second quadrant, parked up and did our best to get comfortable.
As we emerge into 2021, what’s the upshot of all of this me-time? Healthier? Yes. More self-aware? Yes. Able to take the stairs instead of the lift? There’s no lift in my house, but yes. Feeling bored? Aimless? Oh hell yes. Of course, it’s not that self-betterment, reflection and personal growth aren’t important or that having a busy life is bad for us — we need a balance and the Matrix helps address that. It isn’t the full picture though; even with the perfect amount of important and urgent (and both and neither), without a meaningful direction or sense of purpose we are ultimately just running around in circles. We’re not more directionless now than before, we just feel that way; when the noise stopped, this realisation hit home for many of us. The Eisenhower Matrix instructs in the how; the what and why are up to us.
