Have you ever felt as busy as it can get, overwhelmed, spending most of your time in your business or job, working extra hours, even weekends, and still, not getting the results you want? Being busy is not the same as being productive. And that is where prioritization plays a big role in determining your level of success.
The Eisenhower Matrix, developed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, is a strategic prioritization method to help you make decisions on what to do with your time and your pending tasks. Whether you yourself should focus on the task, delegate it to someone else, schedule it out, or simply not do it at all, the Eisenhower Matrix is here to help you make that decision and be more productive.
A very important principle when we talk about productivity is this: the only things that get done are the things that you schedule. Tony Robbins says: “If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real.” Stephen Covey, the author of the famous book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people” also said: “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” This methodology will help you schedule your priorities so that you make sure they get done.
As you can see in the chart above, if it is urgent and important, that is the task you put all of your focus on. If the task is important to you but not as urgent as the others, that is something that you may schedule for later. It might be in a week or later in the day, but don’t let more urgent items get tossed to the wrong quadrant. If it is urgent, but not of great importance to you, that is when you decide to delegate. There are methods to this part that we will touch on. If the task isn’t of importance to you and theres no urgency to it, it shouldn’t be taking any space in your mind. This isn’t to say that it shouldn’t get completed at any time down the road, but it needs to change importance or urgency before you put your time into it.
How to Use the Matrix
These are the 4 quadrants (or priority ranks) of the Eisenhower Matrix:
- Important and Urgent (Tasks you need to do immediately)
- Important/Not Urgent (Tasks that are important but can be done later/schedule)
- Not Important/Urgent (Tasks you may delegate)
- Not Important/Not Urgent (Task you will eliminate)
This method is very simple and easy to follow. Start by following these steps :
- Prepare a list of all your pending tasks. Everything that comes to your mind that you know you need to complete.
- Assign a priority rank to each one of the tasks you wrote down on step 1. The priority ranks should be based on the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix.
- Write each task on their corresponding quadrant on the Eisenhower Matrix.
And you are done. You now have a visual map of your priorities. You can now use this map to develop an execution strategy and plan to get these tasks done, scheduled, delegated, or eliminated.
Determining Importance
What should be considered important to you? The answer to these questions should be based on your goals, business and personal. What are those activities that are key in the achievement of your goals? What are those tasks that have the most impact on your business or the company you serve? These are the activities that are important to you, the ones that will move the needle of your success meter.
We recommend doing whatever is going to benefit you and those close to you. If you need to finish some work before your deadline to make sure you get a full paycheck, and to make sure that your family has food on the table the upcoming week, that should be of importance to you.
Obviously not every task is going to carry that much weight, so you need to be able to focus on what is going to benefit you most in both the short and long term. If your gut is telling you that a certain job needs to be in position one, you should put it there. Not second guessing this one.
Determining Urgency
What is considered urgent when it comes to day to day tasks? Urgent tasks are time sensitive and demand immediate attention. There are two key factors in determining urgency: the deadline of the task (for when is needed) and how much time it will take you to complete the task. If you know the deadline is next weekend and the project or task will only take you half of an hour, its not urgent right now. But if you need to have it done by noon the next day, knocking it out with your nearest free time is recommended. If someone is already waiting on you to complete the task, you need to get that done soon.
How to Delegate
Delegating something that is less important but very urgent can be a tricky task. Who to give it to, how to approach it, and how it could possibly benefit the person doing the task. When it comes to finding the right person to give the task to, you have to find someone that is open to the idea of being in favor with you. Because you likely won’t be paying them for a simple task that you don’t see importance in. There is a reason you’re not doing it already. If you approach it as you being in a crunch and needing someone to help you out, they will likely be willing to help you out. Remind them how grateful you are for their help and that you couldn’t have done it without them. The purpose of delegating these type of activities is for you to be more efficient with the use of your time and invest it into the more important activities, which will consequently produce the results you want.
How to Schedule
Just because it isn’t urgent doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing it. If its important, you are going to find time. The best way to do that is set time aside in the future to do it, or in other words, schedule it. Block a specific date and time to complete the task. For example, if you need to go car shopping, schedule it for when you are most likely to be free and unlikely to get another job assigned to you. Saturday morning at 11, we are going car shopping. If someone asks if we are available at that time with no urgency, we are busy.
The only way you’ll finally get to that activity or task is to finally prioritize it and turn it into something that is time-bound the closer you get to it.
When to Eliminate
Thinking you need to do a task, and only coming to realize that it isn’t worth your time right now can be a humbling moment. So how do you go about not doing this activity, and will you even do it? Maybe. If you’re writing out your quadrants and realize that playing board games are in your fourth spot, the eliminate spot, that doesn’t mean you won’t ever play board games again. It simply means that if your plate is more than full with a busy day, you probably won’t be at the games at 2 in the afternoon. 10 pm and your wife wants to have a drink and play scrabble? Yes that might work! But don’t sacrifice your urgent and important tasks to do the things that are least urgent.