How can I manage my career?
Key Learnings
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Setting a clear and precise objective helps you to concentrate your efforts and gets you heading in the right direction.
Divide your goals by time slots: (a) lifetime goals; (b) career goals; (c) season goals.
By making better use of your time, you can achieve your goals much more easily.
Prioritise tasks based on importance and urgency and remove non-essential activities.
Making good choices is crucial for success as much of your earning potential is related to your reputation on and off-the-court.
Only use the advice of others to inform your decision-making process – don’t rely on it as the sole basis for your final decision. You are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make.
Networking is the art of building alliances and can help you get a job, find a sponsor, make new friends, get new ideas, etc.
Preparing for your professional life after basketball is just as important as your current career on-the-court.
During your basketball career, you can invest in your development through part-time education.

Set your priorities

There are different tools to help you prioritise your tasks. In this section we present you the Urgent-Important Matrix. This matrix is a simple but effective tool for prioritising your tasks based on the level of urgency and importance of each task. It gives you a rapid view of what activities you should focus on and of what activities you should ignore. Developing this matrix doesn’t require special training, just time to think and plan.

The template is very simple – 4 quadrants reflecting the degree of urgency and importance of individual tasks

 

Q1 - URGENT / IMPORTANT

Do it right away

Emergencies that you couldn’t predict or those that you’ve left until the last minute

Items from Q2 that weren’t dealt with on time

By developing systems and plans, you can make many of these tasks more efficient or even eliminate them outright

Examples: items from Q2, deadlines, firefighting, etc.

 

Q2 - NOT URGENT / IMPORTANT

Schedule it

Activities that help you achieve your long and mid-term goals and objectives

Because they aren’t pressing, we put them on hold

They can become Q1 and become Urgent

You should invest more time in this quadrant to help prevent and eliminate many of the urgent activities of Q1

Examples: work that contributes towards goals, relationships, education, training, creating budgets and saving plans, etc.

Q3 - URGENT / NOT IMPORTANT

Delegate it

Activities that drain your time and energy without contributing to longer term benefits

You should renegotiate deadlines and delegate where possible

Examples: requests that don’t really contribute to your objectives, ineffective tasks, regular meetings and reports, phone calls, most emails, etc.

 

Q4 - NOT URGENT / NOT IMPORTANT

Don’t waste your time

Activities that distract you from doing things that matter

Reduce or completely avoid spending time, effort, and resources

Ideally: delete them

Examples: personal phone calls, social media usage, anything making you procrastinate Q2

Understanding the difference between urgent and important is crucial:

  • Urgent
     
    • They require immediate attention
    • Consequences of not doing them: immediate negative consequences
  • Important
    • They contribute to our long-term objective
    • Consequences of not doing them: they accumulate over a longer period and can then become a crisis