The Eisenhower Matrix
A simple way to prioritise (or deprioritise) your life and work
Being in a leadership position is a big task. As leaders we are often dealing with a multitude of different things at once, but how can we make sure we are using our time to our advantage? The answer, at least for today’s Theory Thursday article, is the Eisenhower Matrix.
Today we will explore a simple model for categorising tasks into one of four quadrants, helping reduce unnecessary noise and creating laser focus on the things that truly matter.
"I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
The above quote is from former-President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s address at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches in August 19541. In his speech, Eisenhower quotes the words of a former college president in relation to the “dilemma of modern man”. Although the name of the matrix has been attributed to him, we can safely say that Eisenhower himself was influenced by the [unnamed] college president’s words.
With the brief history aside, let’s look at the model in more detail to understand how it can help us avoid an overload of "stuff to do”.
The Model
As you can see, the model (or matrix) is made up of four quadrants. Each row and column is categorised into either being urgent or not urgent (columns), or not important or important (rows).
Starting with the urgent ‘slice’ of the model, we have two possible options:
Urgent and important
Urgent and not important
With these in mind, we can categorise our urgent tasks into one of the two buckets.
The urgent and important tasks are the things we should do first.
The urgent and not important tasks are the things we should delegate.
Similarly, in the not-urgent slice we have another two options:
Not urgent and important
Not urgent and not important
The not urgent and important tasks are things we should schedule.
The not urgent and not important tasks are things we should eliminate.
Urgent and Important (Do First)
As this bucket suggests, these are the things we need to prioritise above anything else. The urgency and criticality of these tasks means that any time wasted is likely a bad thing for us as leaders, whether that is an impact on ourselves, our teams, the business or customers.
Such things within this category include things like production incidents that require an immediate eyes-on to help limit further issues. It could also include deadline-specific tasks such as submitting a report’s promotion pack to the promotions board to make sure it is received and processed in time for the next promotional cycle.
The key thing here is to do these over anything else.
Urgent and Not Important (Delegate)
It is likely that the urgent and important tasks are taking up most of your time, but what about those urgent but not so critical tasks that still need to be done?
This is where the delegation bucket comes into play.
Where it makes sense, we can delegate certain tasks to others to ensure they get completed given their urgency. This isn’t just a case of having ‘slopey shoulders’ (if you aren’t aware, this is a term meaning those who skilfully pass the buck to subordinates to deal with), but instead tactically leaning on the skills of others to aid you with the completion of your tasks.
Writing this down it sounds very “pass it to my P.A. to deal with”, but that’s not the case. It could be that you said you would look into a broken CI pipeline during some downtime, but more pressing things have cropped up in your diary. Consequently, you decide to speak with one of your engineers to see if they have the time to pick up the task in your absence. The urgency hasn’t gone away, but you have rightfully maintained the fact it needs to be done by leaning on the support of someone else.
The key thing here is to delegate things where it makes sense.
Not urgent and Important (Schedule)
Some things not super urgent but still considered important. These are often things which might be long-running or so far out in the future that they’re not right under our noses, but realistically need some degree of attention at some point.
Examples of these things include long-running projects, or even something like learning a new skill (unless the skill is needed now of course). The lack of urgency with such tasks doesn’t mean you drop them entirely, but make carefully thought out decisions as to when to pick them up. With the learning a new skill example, this might be better suited to the Friday afternoons you always have free in your diary instead of trying to do it first thing on a Monday morning when you have a lot of things to catch up on.
Tasks that fall into this bucket simply need to be scheduled.
Not urgent and Not Important (Eliminate)
This is the simplest of the four quadrants. The things which fall into here are neither urgent or important, so to summarise they are potentially a waste of your time.
Now, we have to be careful to ensure we aren’t categorising certain things as not important. Importance doesn’t just always relate to oneself, it could be what someone else deems important - in which case consider whether it’s something time critical that needs to be done first, or is it something you can bat back as it’s irrelevant to you.
Although a harsh, potentially military term given the roots with Eisenhower, things which fall into this bucket need to be eliminated.
Summary
So there you have it. A brief history of how the Eisenhower matrix came to be, followed by a useful breakdown of what each section actually means.
Next time you are struggling to manage your to-do list, create a physical or digital version of the matrix and place your tasks into the relevant categories. Doing so will help you categorise, eliminate noise and allow you to focus on the bits which matter most.
Until next week, thank you for reading and please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.
Have you ever used this method for organising your work?
Did it work for you?
Do you use something else?
Let me know :)
I’m a fan of this matrix. It’s easy to use and stick with. I also like The ONE Thing. That’s helped me a lot to ditch multitasking and focus on my one thing.