Eisenhower Matrix in Todoist
I really like the Eisenhower Matrix and it’s a tool I use a lot to help declutter my todo list and to be able to really focus on what matters. As I was mainly using Todoist as my personal todo list application of choice, I wanted to create a simple yet affective system with the Eisenhower Matrix at its core.
More details on the Eisenhower Matrix: https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/
Ingredients
- Todoist
The approach I take to the tooling set-up is to adapt it to function as the Eisenhower Method teaches. I like the Eisenhower Method as it better fits my own judgement and so there is no compatibility conflict with my brain compared to other well known approaches. Again this is just my personal opinion and some people might find the other approach / methods better compatible with their own brain process.
I simple apply this method by utilising the label feature in Todoist and I use at the moment no other labels apart from “urgent”, “not-urgent”, “Important” & “not-important”. Whenever I create a new task in Todoist, I give it two labels based on its urgency and importance.
What I then did was create four filters based on the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Method:
- Do (this will also include any of the below tasks which are DUE today)
- Schedule
- Delegate
- Backlog (should be delete but I think of it more of a backlog)
Here are the Todoist formulas to get the above filters in your own Todoist set-up
DO
Filter: (overdue | today) | @urgent & @important
Colour: RED
SCHEDULE
Filter: @noturgent & @important
Colour: Orange
DELEGATE
Filter: @urgent & @notimportant
Colour: Yellow
Backlog
Filter: @noturgent & @notimportant
Colour: Blue
Now, let’s look at how I work with the above approach in my day-to-day life to understand the approach.
Each day, my main goal is to clear the DO filter completely, if something appears there it MUST be done. Once the DO filter is done, I will check the SCHEDULE filter and look for all the tasks that do not have a date assigned to them, I will then either work on them or assign them a date in the future. If there is nothing in SCHEDULE which I can work on now (only because they have all been scheduled for a future date and I respect the date) I then will focus on the DELEGATE filter.
