The Eisenhower Matrix – Determine Your Priorities

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6 min read
The Eisenhower Matrix – Determine Your Priorities
Dwight David Eisenhower. Picture: Jerry Coli | Dreamstime
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The Eisenhower Matrix is a method for prioritizing your tasks based on their urgency. This helps you determine which activities are important and which do not deserve your attention at all.

The creator of the famous Eisenhower Matrix is ​​Dwight Eisenhower.

One ​​of his famous quotes is, “Most things that are urgent are not important, and most important things are not urgent.”

This quote also lays the foundation for Dwight Eisenhower‘s personal time management. Moving on to the matrix, the matrix basically categorizes your tasks into 4 quadrants according to what you need to do at certain times during the day.

These 4 quadrants are:

  1. Action.
  2. Solution.
  3. Delegation.
  4. Remove.

Action

The first quadrant of the Eisenhower Matrix consists of your most important tasks. Actions that need to be taken urgently. This category usually includes tasks with an upcoming deadline or those that cannot be postponed.

Eisenhower Matrix
Eisenhower Matrix. Picture: Arvind Kumar | Dreamstime

In order to place tasks in this category, you need to first carefully analyze your priorities and then decide if it meets the “Do it now” criteria. If a task needs to be completed within a day or no longer than the next day, it is an urgent task.

Another way to put this into context is to remember Mark Twain’s famous “eat the frog” principle that you should do the most urgent things of the day first thing in the morning.

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Let’s look at a specific working example to make things easier for you. At the end of each week, you are delegated the responsibility to provide your manager with a comprehensive report. Now your weekend is Friday. It’s Thursday morning and you haven’t finished your report yet. Does this apply to urgent tasks? Absolutely!

Solution

The 2nd quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix is ​​the solution. It consists of important but not necessarily urgent tasks. This can include a range of responsibilities, ranging from professional letters, follow-ups, to more personal meetings and commitments.

Tasks in this quadrant should be scheduled for another time. As a rule, these tasks are in line with your long-term goals and contribute to your growth. A common everyday example would be exercise. You know it’s important for good health, but you can’t make time for it. So, you need to decide when you are ready to strike.

Schedule tasks in such a way that they do not go into the “urgent” category. Make sure you have enough time to complete them while they still fit into that unit.

Delegation

3 quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix – delegation. This category includes unimportant but urgent tasks. While this sounds counterintuitive, because naturally your first instinct would be that non-urgent tasks are also important? Not necessary!

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These activities usually give the illusion that you are important, when in fact they do not contribute much to your productivity. You need to decide if you need to reschedule this event or if someone else can do it.

Some of the examples might include scheduling interviews, answering certain emails, or team meetings that someone else might host while you are busy doing your Quadrant 1 activities.

Elimination

The last category of the Eisenhower matrix is ​​elimination. They consist of tasks that, in fact, kill your productivity. They don’t contribute to your goals at all. Identify these activities and eliminate them to improve your productivity.

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Common examples of such activities are mindlessly surfing social media, constantly checking your phone for calls or messages, playing video games, or common activities you use to procrastinate.

How to use the Eisenhower matrix for time management?

If by now you’re wondering that your life will be magically organized with this matrix, it’s not that easy! But with a little effort, you can get on the right track.

Eisenhower Matrix
Eisenhower Matrix. Picture: Donald Böing | Dreamstime

First you need to categorize your urgent and important tasks. To do this, you need to correctly prioritize and determine the levels of urgency.

Your urgent tasks are usually associated with time constraints. All of these classes say “do it now” and require your utmost attention.

On the other hand, your important tasks tend to be long-term and focused. As a rule, they do not provide immediate results and are more focused on making more effective long-term decisions.

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Once you have finished categorizing your urgent and important tasks, here are a few things you need to do to fully utilize the potential of the Eisenhower Matrix for time management:

Give color codes to quadrants

Assign color codes to your quadrants to quickly understand the gravity of the situation. By distributing the colors, you can quickly figure out what to do next. These color codes also help you prioritize your tasks for informed decision making.

For example: The Before quadrant can be colored red to indicate the urgency of the tasks.

Categorize your professional and personal activities

To avoid duplication of commitments, create separate matrices for your professional and personal tasks. This will help you understand what lies ahead and will greatly influence how you manage your time. The trick here might be to set aside specific hours of the day for both types of commitments and see how that works out for you.

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Limit the number of elements in a quad

Adding too many elements to the quadrant will overcomplicate things, and the purpose of using the Eisenhower Matrix for time management will be lost. To optimize it, limit the number of actions to 7 or 8. That way you won’t be overwhelmed with what you need to do.

Marina diligently fulfills her professional duties. During the day, she does what is expected of her, and often more. Sitting up late at work, neglecting personal obligations for the sake of professional obligations is all too common for her.

And all the important family obligations she missed are a different story. But all of this is now taking a toll on her health (both mentally and physically) and her productivity.

So what exactly is missing in her life? As you may have guessed, the Eisenhower matrices.

Often you may not realize it, but the only thing you need in your life is a little organization and prioritization of what needs to be done to fulfill overlapping obligations.

With that said, you’re probably thinking that it’s not that hard. You are right and wrong at the same time. Wrong in the sense that if you think making a random to-do list works wonders for you, it will work, but not in the way you would like.

And you’re right, with a little more effort and using the Eisenhower Matrix, your life will be much better.

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