We all lead busy lives, and to-do lists can be a great way to help us manage our tasks on a daily basis.
However, depending on how busy your days get, those same to-do lists can sometimes have the opposite effect, making our schedules seem overwhelming, leading to procrastination or even anxiety as we bury our head in the sand to avoid the feeling of being snowed under.
In this blog, we’ll explore how you can master your time management skills through a technique referred to as The Eisenhower Matrix, giving you the tools to help you cope when your to-do list starts to feel unmanageable.
Where did the matrix originate from?
The term was first conceptualised by Dwight D. Eisenhower, the then President of the United States, in a famous 1954 speech:
“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
When writing the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, author Stephen Covey used these words to develop them into a now widely used time management tool called The Eisenhower Matrix.
How can I use this matrix?
Particularly in work, there can be a constant barrage of distractions pulling you away from your tasks, leaving you with little time to truly focus. These interruptions can come in the form of emails, phone calls, chatting with colleagues or quickly checking social media.
With the hours ticking away, you may struggle to prioritise the tasks on your ever-growing to-do lists, and end up focusing too much time on the projects that aren’t as important, in order to give yourself a quick win.
By implementing the matrix, you can start to take each task on your list and assign it a priority from one of the below quadrants:
Quadrant One – Do
This is where you’ll look to place the tasks that need to be dealt with as a priority, as they both “Urgent” and “Important”. These are likely to suffer consequences by not completing them, such as missing a deadline or an opportunity.
Quadrant Two – Schedule
These are tasks that are important but not urgent, and usually refer to tasks that will need to be completed at some point but may not have a clear or set deadline. This could be long-term projects that take time to complete, but it doesn’t mean you can just completely push these to the side (more on that here).
Quadrant Three – Delegate
This quadrant refers to tasks that are urgent, however perhaps don’t require your specific skillset, and can be delegated elsewhere. While needing to be addressed as a priority, this task isn’t for you to complete – an example of this would be an urgent email that came in addressed to you, but is better suited to another member of the team. This email can then be forwarded accordingly.
Quadrant Four – Delete
Perhaps the most satisfying of the quadrants, those tasks that are both non urgent and not important can be deleted, or left to your leisure time. This can include junk emails or checking your personal social media accounts.
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