And this really comes down to understanding your role (and your stakeholders’ roles) in the context of your wider organization.
Before using the Eisenhower matrix you need to get clear on what’s urgent and what’s important. Fence them off in your calendar - preferably towards the end of the day. We all do.īut make sure these Q4 activities don’t take over your day. Think downtime and recreational activities.ĭon’t get me wrong. Plan your day the night before, when you’re emotionally uninvolved, and stick to the plan unless you’re hit with an emergency.Įxamples of quadrant 4: Not Urgent and Not Important. But it’s particularly damaging to spend most of your time in Q3 particularly if you think you’re operating in Q1.īe very selective about tasks that you take on. It’s fine and normal to spend some time each day in the third quadrant. These Q3 tasks often involve other people and give us a false sense of purpose and achievement because we walk away with the feeling of having ‘helped someone. Lengthy meetings with no agenda or planned outcomesĪccording to Stephen Covey, many people spend most of their time on Q3 tasks thinking they’re working on Q1 tasks. Lengthy phone calls (often open-ended discussions). Think interruptions, distractions, and generally directionless effort. But to do this you need to understand your values and goals to know what’s truly important.Įxamples of quadrant 3 activities: Urgent but Not Important. This is stuff that requires your attention now but isn’t really aligned with your long-term goals. Ideally, you want to spend as much time on quadrant 2 activities as possible. You’ve dealt with your health by exercising regularly and averted a (Quadrant 1) crisis – a heart attack. execute tasks while they are important but not yet urgent (Quadrant 2), you’re far less likely to get a heart attack - i.e. If you stick to a regular exercise routine - i.e. Sure, you can never completely eliminate all urgent and important tasks, but you can significantly reduce the likelihood of them occurring.īy being proactive and spending more time in quadrant 2.Įxamples of quadrant 2 activities: Not Urgent but important. These are tasks aligned with your overall mission and have a strong “value-add” component. A crisis at work could result in you losing your job if not resolved immediatelyįor example, if you stick to a regular fitness routine (as we’ll see in the next quadrant) then you’re less likely to have a heart attack. These tend to be crises and you want to handle them before they get to this point. The urgency axis tells you how soon the task needs to be done and the importance axis tells you how valuable the task is in terms of your project or your goal.Įxamples of quadrant 1 activities (Urgent and Important). The four-quadrant grid classifies tasks based on these two axes - urgency and importance. Once you're clear on what's urgent, and what's important, the Eisenhower matrix is easy to implement. Covey priority matrix how to#
How to Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Prioritize Your Tasks This is what tends to help you make the big strategic gains in your business or life, and if you don’t consciously focus on these priorities they don’t get done leaving you with little long-term progress. The key takeaway is to focus on what’s important (but usually not urgent). Focusing (reactively) on the urgent stuff, almost always leads to a build-up of the really important stuff which then leads to crises. The underlying idea is based on Eisenhower’s premise which was that urgent stuff is seldom important and the important stuff is seldom urgent.Īnd this is a critical element of task prioritization. The Eisenhower matrix was designed (in part) to avoid the "urgency trap". It's no wonder he's been studied by several people.
He was able to sustain his productivity for decades and his approach to time management. He also served as President of Columbia University, became the first Supreme Commander of NATO, and even managed to find time to pursue his hobbies. During his time in office, he launched several programs including (but not limited to) NASA. He was the 34th President of the United States and served two terms from 1953 to 1961. It's also often referred to as the priority matrix or the Eisenhower decision matrix.Īs the name suggests, the matrix was initially created by Dwight Eisenhower who lived an extremely productive life. This approach was made popular by Stephen Covey and later came to be known as the four quadrants approach.
As you head into the new year it might be worthwhile to consider Eisenhower’s approach to task prioritization.
0 kommentar(er)
