Master Productivity And Save Time With The Eisenhower Matrix

4 categories to prioritize what matters in your life

🏷️ Categories: History, Time management

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Dwight D. Eisenhower is best known for being the 34th president of the United States, but before that, he had an extraordinary military career. He was Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and later held positions as the Supreme Commander of NATO and president of Columbia University (Smith, 2012).

Throughout his life, Eisenhower excelled at maintaining excellent performance in all his roles, and did so for decades. This is why his way of working has gone down in history. Especially a strategy he used to organize tasks.

Let's see how we can be more productive using the Eisenhower matrix.

Dwight D. Eisenhower in his office

What is the Eisenhower Matrix?

The Eisenhower Matrix or Eisenhower Box is a method to classify tasks in 4 quadrants according to urgency and importance. This way you will instantly see which ones deserve your immediate attention and which ones should be delegated or eliminated (Covey, 2013).

The 4 quadrants

Classify your tasks in these 4 quadrants and attend to them in this order.

1. Important and urgent: These are the tasks that require our immediate attention. They are usually incidents, unexpected problems or upcoming deadlines on which the progress of projects depends. You must execute them immediately to avoid bottlenecks and major problems.

2. Important, but not urgent: These are key to our long-term growth. Although they do not require immediate action, you should not ignore them. Here we should concentrate most of our time. They usually do not have an immediate deadline, so you should plan them to avoid procrastination and procrastination.

3. Urgent, but not important: These are tasks that require immediate attention, but are not essential to our objectives. They are usually interruptions such as phone calls, emails or requests from third parties.

4. Neither urgent nor important: These are activities that do not add long-term value and can, in many cases, be eliminated. Think of time spent staring at the phone with no purpose or aimlessly surfing the Internet.

Urgent vs. Important: The Crucial Distinction

Eisenhower had it clear, you have to know how to distinguish the urgent from the important.

Think about it, surely you have sometimes spent a lot of time on urgent but unimportant tasks, which leaves you feeling like you are always doing lots and lots of tasks, but not really making progress when the day is over.

That happens because you spend too much time in non-priority quadrants.

Here's the solution.

The Eisenhower Matrix in Practice

1. What to do with what is important but not urgent

I don't know if this has ever happened to you. You have a project in mind, one that really excites you, but you never set a date for it. You leave it there, floating, waiting for the perfect moment that never comes. And then another year goes by, and in December you find yourself thinking: “But what did I do? I still have the same goals as last year”.

The solution is simple.

Plan projects, assign them times, days on the calendar and set deadlines to stop procrastinating ad infinitum. For example, I am in the habit of making intervals of 50 minutes of concentration and 10 minutes of rest, to attend to the tasks of this quadrant. This is what is known as the “pomodoro technique” (Cirillo, 2018).

Every day do as many 50-10 intervals as you can, you will see the difference.

2. What to do with what is urgent but not important

To avoid spending too much time in this quadrant, the following has worked for me:

1. Group tasks: To avoid multitasking, group similar tasks together. Instead of looking at mail constantly, do it in blocks of time, for example, 2 times a day. Do the same with calls, meetings, etc. The less you switch between tasks, the more productive you will be.

2. Automate: Use rules in your inbox so that emails are sorted into specific folders. I use recipient and keyword filters, so I instantly see what is important and urgent and what is not.

3. Templates: If you usually make responses of the same type or deliver the same type of report, make templates to reuse them later. You will save a lot of time.

4. Time dosage: As I said, I use concentration intervals of 50 minutes and then 10 minutes of rest for important tasks. After each interval, I check if there are tasks from the third quadrant (urgent but not important). If there are, I group them together (emails, calls...) and do them all at once. Then, I do another interval of 50-10. This ensures that you always take care of the important things first and that you don't live in a constant state of urgency. It's okay if you answer emails or make calls an hour or two later. No one will die for waiting a little while.

Don't live an urgent life, live an important life.

✍️ Your turn: Has the matrix changed the way you look at your tasks and routine? I have used it for 1 month as a replacement for Ivy Lee's method and both have given me excellent results. I can recommend both to you.

💭 Quote of the day: “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” Dwight D. Eisenhower.

That's all for today! See you 👋

References 📚

1. Smith, J. E. (2012). Eisenhower: In War and Peace. Random House Incorporated.

2. Covey, S. R. (2013). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Simon and Schuster.

3. Cirillo, F. (2018). The Pomodoro technique: The Acclaimed Time-Management System That Has Transformed How We Work. Currency.