Planning is an essential element for achieving success in today’s fast-paced world and it often has a much overlooked impact on our real productivity levels.
With so many tasks and responsibilities vying for our attention, sometimes it’s naturally challenging to stay on top of everything and make steady progress towards our goals amidst the chaos. Apparently, this is something anyone deals with, no matter their status or job title. In fact, it appears that even a former president of the United States of America was faced with such a challenge. Sir Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to act on it and developed a very powerful tool for planning and prioritizing tasks in a way that tames the chaos, maximizes productivity and enhance one’s ability to consistently move towards their goals.
This tool is called The Eisenhower Matrix.
The structure of the Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple four-quadrant grid that helps you categorize your tasks based on their level of importance and urgency. It helpy you get super clear about what you need to do in order to achieve what you want to achieve. The four quadrants are as follows:
Urgent and important tasks: These are tasks that need to be done immediately and have a significant impact on your goals. They’re not only hugely relevant, but they can also be mandatory in order to proceed with some other steps later on.
Important but not urgent tasks: These are tasks that are important to your goals, but do not need to be done immediately. They sit right in the spotlight whrn it comes to importance, but they are not very time-constrained and can be carried out within a more relaxed timeline.
Urgent but not important tasks: These are tasks that need to be done immediately, but do not have a significant impact on your goals. They’re not relevant at all but for some reasons you still need to deal with them as they arise. Examples of this include taking some phone calls, taking part in scheduled meetings, providing requested documentation and the likes.
Not urgent and not important tasks: These are tasks that do not need to be done immediately and do not have a significant impact on your goals. This category often includes things that you might want to do at some point but they’re not directly correlated to the achievement of the goal in sight, therefore they can be safely procrastinated - and that’s about the only place where you’ll see the adjective safe combined with the word procrastination ;)
How to use the the Eisenhower Matrix to your advantage
We’ve already stated that using the Eisenhower Matrix can help you achieve the joys of real productivity and efficiency, by providing a clear and effective framework to plan your tasks with. Now, let’s dive deeper into how you can apply the Eisenhower Matrix to your advantage.
Ideally, you would start by following these simple steps:
Create a list of everything that’s on your plate right now. Include things to be done and tasks of all sorts that are somewhat reated to what you want to accomplish.
Categorize each task into one of the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix. Use thoroughly the criteria of urgency and importance in order to determine which quadrant each task belongs in and don’t be scared to be quite ruthless about it.
Focus on the urgent and important tasks first. These are the tasks that need to be done immediately and have a significant impact on the goal you’re trying to achieve. They are in the spotlight and they are there for a reason. Act on them, no matter what.
Once the urgent and important tasks are completed, move on to the important but not urgent tasks. This can be quite tricky to wrap your head around: if they’re not urgent, why do them now? Well, because they’re important and while they might not be extremely time-sensitive, they’ll still allow you to progress along in the right direction.
The urgent but not important tasks need to be tackled but not to the detriment of the important tasks. You have to deal with urgent tasks, but try your best to schedule them around your important tasks and not in place of them.
Eliminate or delegate the not urgent and not important tasks. These are the tasks that do not need to be done immediately and do not have a significant impact on your goal, so the best option would be to delegate them entirely. If you can’t do that, simply leave out this kind of tasks until you have completed all the others in the previous quadrants. What I like to do is to schedule these for the spare time, intended as those particular time-frames in which I wouldn’t be working on important stuff anyway.
Benefits and conclusions
One of the key benefits of using the Eisenhower Matrix is that it helps you to avoid chaos, uncertainty and the dreaded multitasking. By prioritizing your tasks, you can focus on one task at a time and get it done faster and more efficiently, with the bonus of feeling certain you’re working on something that really matters in relation to your goal.
Another benefit of the Eisenhower Matrix is that it helps you to make better, smarter use of your time and energy. By focusing on the important and urgent tasks first, you can ensure that you are enhancing your real productivity. In fact, nothing’s more counterproductive than busying yourself with something that doesn’t actually bring you anywhere. With the matrix, you get comfortable with identifying your real priorities and this alone is a massive improvement over the status quo.
In conclusion, it’s safe to say the Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful tool for prioritizing tasks, which in turns makes you more productive and way more effective. It helps you to stay focused, avoid procrastination, and make the most of your time. By using this matrix, you can ensure that you are always working on the most important and urgent tasks, and making steady progress towards your goals.