Eisenhower Matrix
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
This quote is actually the basis of Eisenhower Matrix. Before i will write about this technique i am going to write some background. Dwight Eisenhower was the American army general, statesman and also served as president. He introduced an amazing technique of prioritization of work but Business thinker Stephen Covey popularized the Eisenhower’s Decision Principle in his book, The seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Sometimes at the the end of the day we feel like we have not done our important and urgent tasks or we are facing issues on time management. I can’t decide which work to do first and which to do at last. If we don’t have any idea what values and goals matter most to us, we obviously won’t know what things we should be spending our time on to reach those aims So, Eisenhower introduced this matrix which has four boxes and we can divide our tasks according to it.
- Tasks which are important and also urgent.
- Tasks which are important but not urgent.
- Tasks which are not important but urgent.
- Tasks which are unimportant as well as not urgent.
So, the work to do is firstly make a list of all your works then arrange them in the boxes the tasks which are important and urgent will have 1st priority. Similarly, write all the works in these boxes. I also arrange my to-do list in these boxes and i find it convenient to know which work i will do firstly. This is also a way of avoiding distraction.
As this is the list of work to do in a week so I know what to do first and will achieve my goals easily. In the present world, the ability to filter the signal from the noise, or distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s truly important, is an essential skill to have.
