Thea
Summary: The Eisenhower Matrix is a task prioritization tool to help you identify which of your tasks deserve the most and least attention. The tool splits your tasks up into four quadrants: do, schedule, delegate and delete. Understanding how to apply this tool can save you loads of time and help you achieve the kinds of goals most people don’t achieve.
When I graduated from school and started setting my own deadlines, it didn’t work so well.
In school, the possibility of the poor grade proved enough to repel me from incompletion.
In the real world, I realized I could set a deadline for myself, wake up the next day having passed the deadline and not done the work, and have no consequences. Everything would be totally fine. I wouldn’t get an F. The world wouldn’t explode. I could sink into a cocoon of comfortability.
I might feel a little icky about it, a little mad at myself (the sort of anger that can accumulate over time). In the end, however, I could distract myself or convince myself I’d “do better next time” to the point where the cycle continued.
When I became aware of the Eisenhower Matrix, this issue certainly didn’t go away, but I became more aware of what was going on and how to handle it. The goals I struggled completing had a name (the elusive Schedule quadrant or quadrant two). You don’t feel the full effects of incompletion of these for years, but being able to categorize these tasks showed me the danger behind inaction.
What is the Eisenhower Matrix?
“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
Eisenhower 1954, address to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches
Derived from a quote twice over—President Eisenhower delivered an address in which he quoted a former university president—author Stephen Covey adapted these words into a simple tool known as the Eisenhower Matrix. “Matrix” added for a mysterious allure, I suppose. Truth be told, the tool is much simpler than the word “matrix” implies. This matrix has nothing to do with living in a computer simulation or using computational math.
Covey took the two problem types mentioned by Eisenhower—the “urgent” and the “important”—and turned them into x and y axes resulting in a four-quadrant chart. He famously proposed that you must not “prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
Simply put, the Eisenhower Matrix is a prioritization chart.
What are the four quadrants?
Q1. Do: Urgent and Important
Quadrant one is where you place tasks that need tending to RIGHT NOW. Perhaps these are work projects with prompt deadlines or crises like your kitchen sink exploding.
Q2. Schedule: Not Urgent but Important
You know that dream that you have of something you want to do one day or a goal you want to accomplish when your schedule permits?
Quadrant two is where you place tasks that fall into that category. Their importance is derived from their future value to you.
I will dive deeper into this one later.
Q3. Delegate: Urgent but Not Important
Urgent things require immediate attention, but the catch is that not all urgent things are important. Perhaps the impact of quadrant three things in the long term is relatively negligible like most emails or calls.
Of course, we don’t all have a personal butler or secretary to “delegate” these tasks to, so do these tasks quickly and efficiently to devote the minimum amount of time necessary. For tasks such as these, do not get in the weeds in terms of perfectionism. If you are someone who struggles with minimizing perfectionistic tendencies in tasks where that is not necessary, this article can help.
Q4. Delete: Not Urgent and Not Important
“[The] appearance of triviality is deceptive: it is the things that occur every single day that truly make up our lives, and time spent the same way over and again adds up at an alarming rate.”
Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 117)
Quadrant four tasks are the leftover tasks after you’ve distributed the others amongst the above categories. Think busy work or tasks you do when procrastinating the important things.
If your goal is time management and prioritization, DELETE these so-called “tasks”.
These do not include things you do for personal enjoyment or leisure activities (unless those things are taking up all of your time). Pleasant activities and breaks are vital to balance. As my dad sometimes says, “do the most productive thing possible at any given moment, and sometimes, that might be taking a nap” (just most of the time it isn’t).
How to distinguish between the 4 quadrants
Follow this exercise to create your own Eisenhower Matrix:
1. Identify the scope of your Matrix. Will this Matrix be for the day, month or year?
2. Make a list of tasks and rank the urgency and importance on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being low and 5 being high.
| Task | Urgency (1-5) | Importance (1-5) |
|---|---|---|
| Example task 1 | ||
| Example task 2 | ||
| Example task 3 | ||
| Example task 4 | ||
| Example task 5 | ||
| Example task 6 | ||
| Example task 7 | ||
| … |
3. Use those rankings to place the tasks into the Eisenhower Matrix. Try to limit the number of tasks in each quadrant so your list is manageable.
| Urgent | Not Urgent | |
| Important | ||
| Not Important |
4. You can further prioritize the tasks within the quadrants in accordance with the rankings.
Important and not Urgent: the struggle with the second quadrant
“The things that matter most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I’m going to be completely honest. I spend a majority of my efforts only cultivating the contents of the second quadrant. Because I know I am especially susceptible to ignoring quadrant two tasks, I assign the most importance to these.
Upon later reflection, these are the tasks you are going to feel the most regret over not completing. These are the tasks that will result in the accomplishment of your purpose-driven goal(s).
For some, the mere knowledge and fear that these goals can go a lifetime without being achieved is enough to propel them to work on the goals. For others who are great at falling into the delusion of “there’s always tomorrow”, additional pressure is needed. I’ll be the first to admit that I fall into the latter category.
3 tips to not fall into the “there’s always tomorrow” trap
- Create a sort of schedule you are held to by outside forces
- For example, I publicize that THEATRUM is a weekly publication which means that I better post at least once a week.
- If you can’t work on the goal just for yourself, attach a meaning to it beyond yourself.
- For instance, beyond wanting to make money, why else do you want to work towards your goal? Will the result of achievement help a people group or grow awareness to a problem? Pray on what that additional meaning is intended to be.
- Break down your goal into more urgent pieces.
- Make it so the consequences of not accomplishing a quadrant two task are more immediate. If you create a measurable thread of tasks that can only be completed one after the other, the tasks are reliant on the prior’s completion. That means if you don’t finish task 1, you cannot move forward to task 2, making the danger of not reaching the final product more tangible.
I filled out my Eisenhower Matrix … now what?
- Follow these rules based on the quadrant:
- Pursue tasks in the Do quadrant
- Set some time aside to work on the Schedule quadrant
- Find a way to quickly complete the Delegate quadrant (or literally delegate)
- Minimize, delegate or completely eliminate tasks in the Delete quadrant
- Do the most important things first.
The priority of which tasks to tackle first tends to follow the quadrant number (1, 2, 3, 4). However, I often swap the places of 1 and 2. Tasks that are urgent often have to do with outside pressure or you working on the goals of someone else (deadlines at work, etc.). These are only assigned “urgent” because the consequences for not achieving them are immediate.
- Practice the Pomodoro Technique when you can’t get yourself to do a thing. This timer makes practicing it easy.
- If that doesn’t work, follow this little thought prompt:
Turn on do no disturb, throw your phone away from you (onto a hard surface for bonus points) and turn off all the lights. If you can’t turn off the lights, close your eyes. Quiet the noise. Imagine clearing the clutter from your mind to discover an archaeologist in the center calmly brushing off the remnants of your drive to achieve your dreams. It’s still somewhat buried, but you can see its outline in the dirt. You know it exists and it’s close. Say thank you sir, I can do it from here, and inspect the relic from all angles so you know how to best approach it. Then unearth the darn thing.
Sit with yourself and your thoughts for a moment and be present. Ask yourself why you want to work on the task at hand, and why you don’t want to work on the task at hand. Ask yourself why the desire to work on the task should outweigh the laziness. Pray for the banishment of the spirit of laziness.
Key Takeaways
- The Eisenhower Matrix is a task prioritization tool/chart.
- The chart has 4 quadrants: Do (tasks that require immediate attention),
- Schedule (tasks that contribute to long term goals), Delegate (tasks that require action but do not significantly contribute to your well-being or life goals, and Delete (tasks that can be delegated, minimized or eliminated because they are neither urgent nor important)
- Rank the task priority and urgency to create your own Eisenhower Matrix.
- Beware of the Important but Not Urgent tasks! These are the least accomplished but arguably the most important. These are where long-term success lives.
- Tools like the pomodoro technique can help you get started tackling your list once you have your priorities straight.
