The Eisenhower Matrix is a time management tool useful for when you are busy constantly but are not making any long term progress on big picture items.
What is the Eisenhower Matrix?
The Eisenhower Matrix is named for president Dwight D. Eisenhower and a quote he made in a 1954 speech. “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
This quote was later repackaged into what we see today: The Eisenhower Matrix. The matrix is broken into four squares: important and urgent, important but not urgent, not urgent but important, and not important or urgent.
With these four quadrants in mind, we break tasks down by whether we should:
- Do
- Decide
- Delegate
- Delete
How can I use the Eisenhower Matrix?
Applying the Eisenhower Matrix to your personal and professional life will have profound effects on your long term progress towards your goals. It is an incredible time management tool that I recommend everyone work into their routine.
While I personally find it an effective way to organize my workload, I understand that it won’t for everyone. That is why I advocate to look for the tools that work for you, whether that is the Eisenhower Matrix or not.
To start, you make a list of everything you do daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Then, you categorize each item by whether they are important, urgent, both, or neither.
Do
Tasks that fall under this category are both urgent and important. They have a clear deadline with consequences carrying significant weight if left unfinished.
These tasks are basically emergencies. These should be on the front of your schedule with an immediate priority. A good example would be that your house is on fire and your baby is inside. Important? Very much. Urgent? Definitely. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t immediately rush inside to save their child.
Decide
Tasks under this category are important but not urgent. There is no deadline, or no immediate one, but leaving these unfinished will have consequences to your long term goals.
Successful people spend the majority of their time in this quadrant. While “Do” tasks are more important as they have major deadlines (urgent), “Decide” tasks are the bread and butter of your long term success. Since these do not have an immediate deadline you are able to schedule them out ahead of time so you can make sure your time is used on highly productive things.
Your house isn’t on fire yet, but there is a wildfire spreading a few hundred miles away. This isn’t urgent just yet so you have time to plan ahead, but it is very much important to address.
Delegate
Tasks under this category are urgent but not important. These need to get completed, but don’t need your personal expertise to complete them.
If there is someone better suited to complete a task, it is obviously better to let them. Many people spend too much time here working on tasks thinking they are really a “decide” task when in reality they need to “delegate” the task to someone else.
Your house is on fire but everyone is safely outside. There’s not a lot you should do other than let firefighters take care of it. They are more suited to do the job and you will just end up getting in the way.
Delete
These tasks are neither important nor urgent. They waste your time, energy, and have significant consequences over time if you focus too much time on them.
The simple solution is to “delete” these tasks from your calendar and don’t bother with pursuing them. If a task does not need to be completed and does not push your long term goals forward, then why are you doing it anyway? Get rid of it.
Your house isn’t on fire, there is no threat of fire, you’ve spent the past six hours planning every possible scenario if there was a fire, but what if it’s not enough? Stop it. At this point you’ve done more than enough to plan for a fire, and arguably too much. Continuing to plan for something already well planned for is a waste of time.
The Eisenhower Matrix and You
With the Eisenhower Matrix, you can quickly separate what is the most important things in your life you need to do from the things you either need to defer, delegate, or delete. Whether it be in a personal or professional environment, the Eisenhower Matrix is a very powerful tool to implement in your life.
