In prior posts (here, here, and here), I have referenced not letting the urgent usurp the important as well as a decision tool to help with this.
One of the fastest ways to kill your productivity is to jump from one urgent issue to another.
I know many of you can relate to this. After a week you wonder why you didn’t make any progress on your to-do list because you didn’t plan well, didn’t schedule out your tasks, or didn’t value your time.
A frequent question I get is how to know what to prioritize, so that’s what we’ll discuss in today’s post via a decision tool called the Eisenhower Matrix!
Dwight D of D-Day Distinction Dropping a Decision Determining Doctrine!
Phew—that was an exhausting alliteration!
The tool I want to discuss today is attributed to former military commander and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
He purportedly used this to make wartime decisions to help him determine where to put his attention and focus.
I figured if it helped him win the last World War, then maybe it can help you win your…scheduling wars?
Ike: “And…we’re done.”
Specifically, I hope it can help you organize and prioritize your tasks.
A Matrix You Can Actually Use
(Unlike the trilogy created by the Wachowski siblings…).
Eisenhower used two criteria to form his 2×2 matrix: urgency and importance.
The first decision you make: is this important or not important? And the second: is this urgent or not urgent?
He then set up his matrix up as the intersection of these binaries to generate the following:
So the top left quadrant encompasses the things that are both important and urgent. These are the things you Do now.
The top right quadrant involves the tasks that are important but not urgent. These are tasks upon which you Decide what (or when) to do.
Items that are not important but urgent fall in the bottom left quadrant to be Delegated.
Finally, to-dos that are neither important nor urgent can simple by Deleted.
Let’s take a look now at each quadrant.
I’ll use a running analogy for the four quadrants based on you owning a business where calling customers is paramount to your success.
Do
Those tasks which are both urgent and important need to be done now or in the near future.
This may seem like the “ideal” quadrant since it has the strongest action verb “do,” but it actually isn’t.
Doing things urgently is stressful and can be taxing. No one needs that.
Furthermore, if you’re hurriedly trying to accomplish a task, then you’re probably not devoting your most creative and productive efforts to it. And that may be doing the task (and by extension, yourself) a disservice.
If you find that you’re overloaded in this quadrant, then you have a busyness problem. I’d recommend you check our last week’s post on your brain’s resistance to calendaring.
For the business example, Do calls would be high-priority customers who are perhaps planning on ending their services with you. You need to call them ASAP to win them back over because their patronage is critical to your success.
Decide
Items of importance lacking urgency make up this quadrant.
This is where you want most of your tasks to fall. This is the matrix’s “zone of genius.”
Basically, you’re deciding when you will take care of these items—i.e., calendaring.
I like to think of planning out vacations for this quadrant, but that just may be my COVID-19 reclusivity slipping.
Intentionality rules here; you are scheduling out your time with the important tasks that move the needle forward for you.
The more time you spend here, the less you allow the urgent to usurp the important (one of my favorite sayings).
For the business example, Decide calls are those high-priority customers who are humming along benefitting from your services. You like a high-touch system where you’re scheduling regular check-ins to ensure you’re meeting their needs.
Delegate
Urgent, unimportant tasks are those that are delegatable (not sure if that’s a word, but it is now!).
The premise here is if something is not important to your success but still urgent, then maybe someone else should be doing it for you.
Think grocery ordering. We typically need groceries with regular frequency, say once a week. This can easily be outsourced via services like Instacart, Prime Pantry, or Shipt.
For the business example, Delegatable calls would be lower priority customers who don’t require high-touch check-ins from you and are perfectly content hearing from your staff members instead to nurture the business relationship.
Delete
Finally, the last, and arguably most fun, quadrant: the deletables. These are items that are neither urgent nor important.
Thus, you should question whether they need to be done at all or if you can simply just cut them out.
For the business example, Deletable calls are actually people on your call list who never respond and have never done business with you. Perhaps you’re using up staff resources on them that could be better deployed elsewhere, so you remove them from your call list.
How Can I Use This?
Hopefully this far into the post it’s apparent to you how you can use the Eisenhower Matrix.
If not, then here are the top three ways.
(If it wasn’t clear—the “dark side” being the Eisenhower Matrix).
1. Prioritize your tasks. This is by far the best use of this. The next two points result directly from this.
2. Figure out what you can Delegate and Delete. This obviously pulls things off of your to-do list.
3. Schedule the rest of your to-dos—that is, calendaring. Again, this is the matrix’s “zone of genius,” and the more time spent here, the more productive and better off you’ll be!
I Like Ike Even More!
The beauty of the Eisenhower Matrix is twofold.
First, it’s simple. Even an overwhelmed brain can use the grid to triage out its tasks, and find a way to move forward.
Second, it’s powerful. It’s a constant reminder to put your focus and attention on what’s actually important and to stop putting urgency in the driver’s seat of your life.
So if you’re struggling to get traction with calendaring because your to-do list overwhelms you, for example, then I’d suggest putting your to-do list through the Eisenhower Matrix to distill out those tasks deserving of your attention.
This is an effective strategy for prioritizing your to-do list which will serve as a nice segue into calendaring!
What do you think of the Eisenhower Matrix? Let me know in the comments section below.
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