THE EISENHOWER MATRIX

I was first introduced to this concept by a former boss of mine and it has changed the way I lead myself and teams.

Dwight D. Eisenhower—the 34th President of the United States and a five-star general during World War II—presented the idea that would later lead to the Eisenhower Matrix. In a 1954 speech, Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president when he said, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”  

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, took Eisenhower’s words and used them to develop the now-popular task management tool known as the Eisenhower Matrix. 

The Eisenhower Matrix is also known as the time management matrix, the Eisenhower Box, and the urgent-important matrix. This tool helps you divide your tasks into four categories: the tasks you’ll do first, the tasks you’ll schedule for later, the tasks you’ll delegate, and the tasks you’ll delete.

Here’s my recommendation on how to implement this gift to your creativity in 2024: 

• Weekly brain dump, at minimum. I talk about the concept of the brain/mind dump all the time, but it’s because it’s so essential to your success in anything.

• Be honest in your eval of each item

• URGENT & IMPORTANT gets bumped to top priority for you that week. Nothing else gets priority over these items. This should be no more than 2-3 items, anything more and you need to be more honest in your evaluation.

• URGENT, BUT NOT IMPORTANT gets automated or delegated.

• IMPORTANT BUT NOT URGENT gets delegated to someone else or procrastinated.

• NOT IMPORTANT, NOT URGENT gets deleted or procrastinated.

Whenever you begin to feel overwhelmed, use this tool. I suggest no more than weekly, and no less than quarterly.

Image Credit: hive.com