Back in high school I was the master of procrastination. I watched TV, played video games and spent time with my friends — even when I should have studied for school. I would even go so far that I basically did everything else in order to avoid doing stuff for school. This worked great until the deadline was so close that I couldn’t further postpone it. I suddenly felt stressed because I realised that I’ve once again started too late to study. As a result I often spent sleepless nights before an exam. Far from ideal, but enough to pass high school with good grades.
This needed to change at university. It was no longer possible to study just the night before an exam. I needed an actual system to plan ahead and organize my workload. I eventually found this system in the Eisenhower box, a framework for making better use of your time.
The Eisenhower Decision Matrix
Dwight Eisenhower was a five-star general during WWII, and the 34th President of the United States. He established the NASA, constructed 41,000 miles of highways across America and ended the Korean War. He was certainly a very productive guy.
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”
The quote shows how Eisenhower distinguished between urgency and importance, an understanding that’s critical for anyone who wants to be productive.
Urgent tasks are things that require immediate attention. They are usually emails, phone calls and emergencies. As these activities need to be done now, they usually put you in a reactive mode.
Important tasks on the other hand contribute to our long-term goals. Important to-dos can be urgent, but typically they’re not. They put you in a responsive mode.
Separating these differences is simple enough to do once, but doing so continually can be tough. For this reason the Eisenhower matrix is so great as it provides a clear framework for making the decisions over and over again. Additionally the matrix can be used in all aspects of your life, for broad productivity plans (“How should I spend my time each week?”) and for smaller, daily plans (“What should I do today?”).
The Eisenhower matrix is also widely adopted and used by presidents, business leaders and celebrities all over the world. It was popularized in the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by bestselling author Stephen Covey.
Below you’ll find information on each quadrant and in which you should spent the most of your time in order to accomplish your life-time goals.
Do Now
Important & Urgent
Quadrant 1 activities are both important and urgent. They require our immediate attention and help us to reach our long-term and life-time goals. Q1 tasks typically consists of problems, deadlines and crises.
Here are a few specific examples of Important and Urgent tasks:
- Certain emails (could be a job offer, an email for a new business opportunity that requires immediate action, etc.)
- Tax deadline
- Term paper deadline
- Wife in emergency room
- Car engine goes out
- Household chores
- You get a call from your kid’s principal saying you need to come in
A lot of urgent and important tasks can be eliminated, or at least made more efficient with a bit of planning in advance. For example instead of waiting last minute to do your income report, you could schedule your time so that you’re done with your taxes one week in advance.
Although we’ll never be able to completely remove all Q1 tasks, we can significantly reduce them by spending more time in Q2 so that these tasks never get urgent. Try to have a maximum of three urgent and important tasks at the same time as you’ll always experience unexpected, new tasks during the day.
Schedule
Important & Not Urgent
Quadrant 2 tasks are important as they help you achieve your personal goals, but don’t require immediate attention. Q2 tasks are usually centered around self-improvement, strengthening relationships and planing for the future.
Here are some specific examples of tasks that you should schedule:
- Weekly planning
- Long-term planning
- Exercising
- Family time
- Spending time with a hobby
- Car and home maintenance
- Taking a class to improve a skill
- Studying
- Meditating
- Date night
- Journaling
- Reading life-enriching books
- Creating a budget and savings plan
Important, but not urgent activities are where should spend most of our time on. They are the key to happiness, self-fulfillment and success in our life.
Unfortunately most people are too busy with urgent tasks and keep postponing “important but not urgent” tasks. In order to change this behaviour you have to proactively schedule Q2 activities into your day. We can see this behaviour at incredibly successful people. Current U.S. president Barack Obama schedules an hour every morning for his workout routine. His former campaign manager told WebMD, “His logic was always, ‘The rest of my time will be more productive if you give me my workout time’”.
Additionally you should not forget to take your time to figure out what’s truly important in your life. The easiest way is to write down on a piece of paper what you want to achieve in your life. This can be anything, from being financially free to traveling the world. Your goals don’t have to be absolute and it’s completely normal when they change during your journey.
Delegate
Not Important & Urgent
Quadrant 3 activities are urgent, but not important for us. They don’t help us to achieve our goals, but require immediate attention. Most Q3 tasks are interruptions from other people and often involve helping them to meet their own goals based on their priorities.
Here are some specific examples of Not important and Urgent tasks:
- Most emails (some emails could be urgent and important)
- Phone calls
- Co-worker who comes by your desk to ask for a favor
- Text messages
- Mom drops in unannounced and wants your help with a chore
We tend to spend most of our time on Q3 tasks. They are urgent and seem important as we help others out, that why we often confuse them with activities in Q1. While these tasks may be important to others, they’re not important to you.
Ideally delegate them to others, but if that’s not possible you should at least keep a balance with Q1 and Q2 activities. Otherwise you might end up in personal frustration as you don’t progress in your own long-term goals.
Do Later
Not Important & Not Urgent
Quadrant 4 tasks aren’t important and aren’t urgent. They do not help you to achieve your long-term goals. Q4 activities are usually trivia, time wasters or busywork.
Specific examples of Not Urgent and Not Important activities include:
- Watching Netflix
- Browsing through Snapchat, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter
- Late night online shopping
- Mindlessly surfing the web
- Playing video games
We tend to spend a lot of time on Q4 activities, which is bad as we don’t gain anything from these activities. However I wouldn’t completely remove all the Q4 activities as they are sometimes perfect to calm down after a busy and hectic day. I recommend that you reduce non important and non urgent activities to a maximum of 5% of your waking hours.
Spend More Time on Important Tasks
It’s often hard to keep focus in such a fast moving world. There are a lot of distractions and it’s not always easy to keep a clear picture with all this noise. That’s why the ability to distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s truly important is so essential nowadays.
In order to get the most out of this article, I challenge you to use the Eisenhower matrix as often as possible in every aspect of your life. Whenever you are confronted with a decision, you should first ask yourself: “Am I doing this because it’s important for my personal goals or just because it is urgent?”.
I promise you that when you focus on spending most of your time working on important but not urgent tasks you’ll feel a sense of clarity, calmness and control in your life. Investing time into planning Q2 activities also helps you to prevent and eliminate a lot of urgent problems as well as crisis of Q1. Additionally you will be able to deal better with emergencies and deadlines you’re hit with. Don’t forget to make sure to balance tasks from Q3 with your own needs and enjoy the precious time you spend on Q4 activities.
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