Ep 46: The Creatives Gift Guide Pt 3

Written By Dustin Pead

The Eisenhower Matrix

SUMMARY

In the final installment of our three-part Creatives Gift Guide series, Dustin Pead explores an almost century-old concept made popular by a former US President that can revolutionize your creative productivity in 2024. This powerful time management technique helps you separate truly important work from the noise and distractions that constantly vie for your attention.

As the holiday season approaches and we look toward a new year of creative possibilities, implementing this system could be the most valuable gift you give your creativity. By distinguishing between what's urgent and what's important, you can finally focus on the work that truly matters to your creative journey.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • ⚡️ The Eisenhower Matrix divides tasks into four categories based on urgency and importance: do first (urgent/important), schedule (important/not urgent), delegate (urgent/not important), and delete/procrastinate (neither urgent nor important).

  • ⚡️ Implement a weekly brain dump to capture all tasks, ideas, and opportunities vying for your attention, then honestly evaluate each item on the Eisenhower Matrix to determine its true priority.

  • ⚡️ Keep your completed matrix visible as you work to stay focused on your priorities and quickly categorize new opportunities or tasks that arrive throughout the week.

NOTABLE QUOTES

  • 💬 "The 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoted an unnamed university president when he said, 'have two kinds of problems, the urgent kind and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent.'"

  • 💬 "There's so many things vying for our attention... so many opportunities that are constantly put in front of us that if we don't empty out the old ticker once a week on a legal pad, a note on your iPhone, whatever it is that you use, it can be really congested and things will get lost in there."

  • 💬 "I really don't think our brains are designed to hold in today's world more than about three months worth of information and things that we have ingested without jotting it down somewhere."

EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. Today we're going to conclude a three week podcast series in this spirit of giving season called the Creatives Gift Guide in which we'll discuss some gifts that you can begin to give your own creativity for the holiday season this year and take your creativity to the next level in 2024. This week I want to share with you an almost century old concept made popular by a former US President. Let's get into it.

Welcome back everyone to Creativity Made Easy. I'm your host Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. Everything that I do put out into the world, all the ways that I can help you or your team or your organization, you can find at DustinPead.com. That's P-E-A-D. You can follow me on all social media platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all the fun ones, at DustinPead.

If you're listening to this, would really love and appreciate a five star review as it helps get this content out even further to those who need it like yourself. If you're watching on YouTube, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. I invite you to just kind of take a poke around after you watch this short podcast episode and look at all the other amazing pieces of content that we've been able to put together this year in 2023. It's been an incredible year.

And I'm so very excited to share this stuff with you. I would love for you to hit the like button, subscribe and ring the bell every time I post any pieces of new content to YouTube, you will get a notification about it, which I dropped this podcast every single week on Thursdays. There are clips and shorts and reels and all that fun stuff that hop out throughout the week. But the bulk of our content is on Thursdays for you. Before also we get into it, I want to remind you my new ebook is now out.

You can actually order it on my website, dustinpead.com/store. The ebook is called using Asana for creative teams. And I want to tell you that even though you may not use Asana or you may not be on a creative team, this is very applicable to yourself as a solo creative or a solopreneur. It's also not specifically tied into Asana.

I use that verbiage in the book because that's what I'm used to. It's what I've been teaching and coaching and consulting with creatives and creative agencies with for many years now. But it's not something that you have to have. You could use Post-it notes for all I care and this book will still help you take your creativity to the next level. So you can go and purchase that. You'll immediately get it in your inbox as soon as you do it. And you can have it for yourself. Gift that to your creativity in 2024.

or you can gift it as a little digital stocking stuffer for the creatives in your life and help them accomplish things that they've never thought possible in the new year. So let's get to today's episode. The 34th president of the United States. Do you know who that is? If I just said that off the top of your head, are you one of those history buffs? I'll give you a second to think about it. 34th president. Answer in three, two, one. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower. That's right.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States and a five-star general during World War II, he presented an idea that would later lead to what we know as the Eisenhower Matrix. In a 1954 speech, Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university president when he said, have two kinds of problems, the urgent kind and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of

highly effective people took Eisenhower's words and then used them to develop what is now a popular task management tool known as the Eisenhower Matrix. The Eisenhower Matrix is also known as the Time Management Matrix or the Eisenhower Box or the Urgent and Important Matrix. This tool helps you divide your tasks into four categories. The task that you'll do first, the task that you'll schedule for later,

the task that you'll delegate and the task that you may delete or procrastinate on. Now I was first introduced to this concept by a former boss of mine and it has really changed the way that I lead teams and the way that I coach and consult creatives as well. Here's my recommendation on how you can implement this gift to your creativity in 2024. Number one, you need to do a weekly brain dump at minimum

weekly. There's so many things vying for our attention. So many projects that come across our desk, so many opportunities that are constantly put in front of us that if we don't empty out the old ticker once a week on a legal pad, a note on your iPhone, whatever it is that you use, it can be really congested and things will get lost in there. Once you do that weekly brain dump, I want you to evaluate each one of those items on

the Eisenhower matrix. And I want you to be honest in your evaluation. There's a lot of things that come across our desk that we would really love to make urgent and important, but if we're honest with ourselves, it's really neither one of those. It's neither important nor urgent in the grand scheme of things. And so as you look at these four quadrants on your paper, you're going to see these categories of urgent, urgent and important, urgent, but not important, not important.

not urgent. You're going to see these things. So let's talk about what is urgent and important. This gets bumped into the top priority for you for that week or for that month or for that term or whatever length of time you have. This will be top priority for you. If it's both urgent, meaning it's, it's D U E it's, it's do really quickly and it's super important, then nothing else gets above these items.

in your week and there could be multiple items but realistically there's probably only going to be one to two items in your urgent and important list. The things that are urgent but are not super important things that are very shortly time sensitive but they don't really add a ton of value those are things that you can either automate or you can even delegate something that's important but not urgent gets delegated to someone else or gets saved.

for later, it doesn't get to be at the top of your to-do list. And listen, if it's not important or it's not urgent, either needs to be deleted or heavily procrastinated on. And so I encourage you, when you're feeling overwhelmed, use this tool. I think it's a really great thing to introduce into your weekly preview if you're doing something like on sunny nights or whenever the beginning of your week is and you're kind of forecasting out what the week is gonna look like. I think going through this Eisenhower Matrix is

really great way for you to be able to kind of separate the the facts from fiction and and be able to truly understand what the most important thing is that you need to go after that we can clear out all the clutter and clear out all the mess and when you've done that mind dump now you have the brain capacity to take on the some things that are very important and very urgent so I suggest you do this no more than weekly

But I would say no less than quarterly. I really don't think our brains are designed to hold in today's world more than about three months worth of information and things that we have ingested without jotting it down somewhere. To me, weekly is more appropriate, monthly it can be appropriate for you, quarterly can be done if you have a really good system in place. But I would say

Make sure you're doing this mind up and getting things onto your Eisenhower matrix. And then you keep that matrix on your desk in front of you attached to your computer monitor, wherever you sit and work at. You're to want to keep that in front of you so that when you feel yourself beginning to get swayed off the path by the other continual things that are coming across your plate, it's a new week. There's new opportunities. There's new problems to solve. There's new fires to put out. Then you can ask yourself as those things come across your desk, you can begin to think.

proactively and say, is this urgent and important? Is this urgent but not important? Is it important but not that urgent? Is it neither important or urgent? And then from there, you can evaluate immediately and know exactly where to send those tasks. Urgent and important gets your top priority for you today until it's done. And then from there, you can go onto the urgent but not important stuff. And then from there, you can get into the important but not urgent things.

But you can automate things, can eliminate things, you can delegate things, you can procrastinate things, all the things that are in the focus funnel. If you know what I'm talking about, run it through that system after you've put it on the Eisenhower matrix. Listen, it's been an incredible 2023 with you. I thank you so much for listening to this podcast series on the creative gift guide and being able to gift your creativity some very strong productivity in 2024. There's some amazing things coming.

your way from me in 2024. cannot wait to share with you. I'm hoping next week to drop a best of 2023 episode, but if I don't, look forward to seeing you in the new year. And so if we do get that episode out next week, it's going to be some of our favorite things that happened in 2023 on this podcast that I'm going to cut up and share with y'all. But like said, if we don't get to it, it's not a big deal. You know why? Because it's really not urgent and it's really not all that important to me. Like I would love to be able to share it with you.

At the end of the day, what matters to me most is that I'm sharing today's episode with you and I'm going to do the next right thing and I'm going to share it with you before the end of the year. So January comes around. We're going to have a whole new set of fun adventures together on creativity made easy. Happy new year, everyone.

Dustin Pead
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Ep 45: The Creatives Gift Guide: Master Your 12-Month Rhythm