For those of you that are productivity geeks and/or familiar with the David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology – this post today is likely a refresher.
For those of you that have never heard of the Eisenhower Matrix – this post is going to be very useful for you.
Dwight Eisenhower lived a very full life. He was a two term president, he was a 5 star general, and in many ways lead the country to victory in WWII as the Supreme Allied Commander during the war.
He has a number of very famous quotes and frameworks that he utilized as he lead the war effort in particular.
One quote that really resonates from him is this:
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
The truth of this is evident each day of my life. You have to go through the planning process to be ready for the day, and then you take it as it comes. To this end, I believe surveying the things you have in play through his matrix will help you isolate the important things that you need to focus on.
This matrix presupposes that you are already clear with your priorities and that you are clear with your broader mission across your Dimensions of Life.
So the matrix is divided into four quadrants with the X axis being the range of urgency, and the Y axis being the range of importance.
High Importance & High Urgency:
“DO”
Example: Pay the bills today.
So the upper left quadrant is highly important, and highly urgent. This is where you need to knock out the to do’s for the day typically. This is the ‘do it now’ type of stuff in your life that needs to be prioritized before it becomes even more urgent.
High Importance & Low Urgency:
“DECIDE”
Examples: Exercise. Cultivating long range plans
The upper right quadrant is where the longer term and most valuable time is to be spent in your life. This is where you can truly multiply your effectiveness by investing your time into the activities in this space.
Those that spend more time in this quadrant are the ones that seemingly are able to fit it all in. The people that set aside time for this zone of activity are the ones that are working their long term priorities, and they do not let the dumpster fires of the day overtake their priorities. The notion of boundaries is key to enable this approach to your schedule on a day to day basis.
As a recovering busyholic, the key to preserving the longer range action in this quadrant is to actually schedule time on the calendar for these deliverables and actions. If I do not schedule the time aside, I find that the daily urgency is what overtakes my day. However, when I go into the day with a planned window or two that is focused on the action in this quadrant – this time is sacrosanct unless there is a true emergency that overtakes my time. In which case, this time just gets rescheduled.
When I combine the scheduled time with the pomodoro technique – I find that I am able to pound out what I need to.
Low Importance & High Urgency:
“DELEGATE”
Examples: Scheduling meetings. Arranging travel.
This is the first quadrant I’ve reviewed here that really can be outsourced. If you have an assistant this is the type of stuff that they can help with. This is the type of stuff you should look at very hard at, and ask yourself if there is someone else that could do this.
Low Importance & Low Urgency:
“DELETE”
Examples: Watching Netflix.
These are the classic time burners that truly add minimal value. Granted, Netflix is time that can be used to decompress, and downtime is something to be treasured when done intentionally rather than as a default routine.
This is the type of stuff that you should seriously consider eliminating or greatly reducing in your life. This is where you will free time to focus on the much more important stuff that you have in play.
The Eisenhower Matrix really is a tool to get you to focus on the more important elements in your life, leaving the less important items for delegation or deletion.
Here’s another gem from Dwight D. Eisenhower:
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”
Let’s begin to focus more on the important stuff in our lives, this is the matrix to help you strain out the less important from your daily life.. The true key to long term achievement is to build in the time by scheduling in the less urgent and important items on a daily basis. You will find as you increase your muscles in this practice – the less important stuff does atrophy over time – thus freeing up even more time to focus on the important items that require your focus.