The Eisenhower Matrix
As one way to combat multitasking.
In the last article I briefly discussed the choice of eating the frog as the best option to deal with the main challenge of the day.
Of course there are other ways to deal with it, for different contexts.
Among the methods, there is one with clear criteria that allow you to define what to do with each type of demand. The former US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who gives the method it’s origin and name. It’s fundamentally build around a framework in the form of a matrix divided into four parts:
As can be seen, the matrix allows four possible combinations that relate the presence and absence of urgency and importance.
- ⏳ Urgency says about time
- ⚠️ Importance says about relevance
Urgent tasks must be done as quickly as possible. While the notion of importance is relative, in the sense that it says about a relationship between tasks: important tasks are relatively more priority than unimportant ones. The question is to define which criterion should be considered more important or not.
The method is fairly simple:
- 📄 List the daily demands.
- ✔️Check one by one which quadrant it fits.
- ✍️Act according the action defined for each quadrant.
0. There’s a catch, which can be considered as zero step, which is the definition of the criteria for each quadrant.
1. Urgent & Important — do it
The most important quadrant, deal with tasks that either have an immediate deadline or cannot be postponed. It’s like a water leak in your house, which if you don’t fix it, it will flood it.
2. Not Urgent & Important — schedule it
These are activities that serve as an instrument for carrying out larger projects. In the workplace, they are like planning meetings, in which, although they seem boring and a waste of time compared to the urgent tasks, without them we lose track of our goals.
These are the two caveats of the second quadrant: (1) to think that planning is something urgent, being carried out routinely, taking up more time than the actual urgent demands; (2) or, on the contrary, think it’s not important at all and postponed indefinitely.
3. Urgent & Not Important —delegate it/ do it later
Usually described as busy work, on this quadrant. It’s a task that must be done, but doesn’t necessarily help the achievement of higher goals.
💭One criticism that i have about this quadrant it’s due to the presence of the action`delegate it`. I say this because a common example of an action is to have your secretary schedule a flight you need to take. However, usually we are either the ones who are the delegates or we have no one to delegate it. For this reason, i think we should not take the Eisenhower Matrix as a monolithic block — and this goes for any method — , but adapt it according to our needs.
For example, we can think in the 1-minute rule — if the task takes 1 minute — from David Allen Getting Things Done. That is, quick tasks that take less than 1 minute can be done immediately. Otherwise, you can delegate it to yourself to do it whenever you have more time, but don’t push it under the rug.
4. Not Urgent & Not important — delete it
As the function of the matrix is to deal with tasks and not leisure activities or hobbies, anything that falls into the last quadrant is not considered relevant at all, from the point of view of work, for this reason they should be deleted.
This does not mean they are irrelevant to your life or should be completely abandoned. They aren’t up to the working environment and the reason of the matrix’s existence. On the contrary, we should value our idle time, that we spent with our family. Otherwise, why are we looking to be more productive?
Where can i build an Eisenhower Matrix?
In the virtual environment, i personally recommend Miro, where you have a ready-made template and can collectively build simultaneously the steps, dragging the sticky notes with the task writing between each quadrant. In the physical environment, the most recommended is still the good old Sticky Notes.
