Eisenhower Matrix App
In a recent conversation for our OPERATORS series, we asked Human Interest founder Roger Lee to tell us the most helpful management tool he’s acquired over his years as a founder. After pausing for a moment to think back through his two decades of founding, he responded with an answer that surprised us: “The Eisenhower Decision Matrix which was popularized by the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”
The Eisenhower Matrix is a framework to sort your to-do list into four quadrants: Urgent And Important; Urgent But Not Important; Not Urgent But Important; and Not Urgent And Not Important. By labelling each task and prioritizing the ones that land on the top half of the matrix, a founder is equipped with an unexpectedly valuable tool: time to tackle the important stuff. Lee admitted he’s far from a master of making time for the Not Urgent But Important things, but the Eisenhower Matrix has helped him remember that that’s often the task that leads to the long-term growth of a startup.
A “getting-things-done” app that uses a novel system for organizing your tasks — the Eisenhower matrix. —Kit Eaton, The New York Times The app is excellent at organizing personal and professional tasks in order to increase productivity and do away with the numerous to-do lists that we find ourselves with. Effectively manage your tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix, a proven time management technique, and dramatically increase your productivity in an instant. Or try our responsive web app. Eisenhower at your service. We’re here to help you maximize your productivity and happiness. The Eisenhower Matrix. The Method That Won The War Drawing its name from WWII commander, 34th President, and all-around-badass Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Eisenhower Matrix helps us make sense of almost impossibly-intricate situations, competing to-do lists, and conflicting priorities. The Eisenhower Matrix & Apps: How To Function Perfectly. The Eisenhower Matrix is one of the most talked about systems for prioritising. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time you’re hearing about it. The question that matters is how to get it to work for you in today’s world?
Back-office work tends to sit near the bottom of the Matrix, but that doesn’t mean it can be ignored. Instead, it often gets pushed aside until the last possible second, and often founders then scramble and mess it up. At AbstractOps, our goal is not to automate the top half of the Eisenhower Matrix. Instead, we’re working on the bottom two quadrants, finding ways to simplify and streamline the Not Urgent And Not Important and the Urgent And Not Important operations tasks that rob founders of the time they need to solve the truly essential problems.
What Is The Eisenhower Matrix?
The Eisenhower Matrix was named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who once quoted a university professor in a speech who told him: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
In Stephen Covey’s 1989 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the author reframed Eisenhower’s prioritization of the important over the urgent into the Eisenhower Matrix.
The goal of the Eisenhower Matrix is to combat the deadline effect, which forces us to prioritize the urgent task even when it’s less important (and even if it’s much less likely to bring value to our company). As any founder can tell you, there’s always something due ASAP.
By grouping each task into a quadrant, we can start to train ourselves away from simply scrambling to finish the urgent at the cost of the important.
What Gets Put Where?
Eisenhower Matrix Applications
The Eisenhower Matrix is helpful as a simple reframing tool, but it can be essential if you begin to use it as a means of delegating.
The Top Left Quadrant (Urgent And Important) is also called “Do It” — as the founder, you have the skillset and the knowledge to take on the essential and pressing to-dos. This might be the pitch deck, the email to investors, or building the MVP; these are tasks that shouldn't be delegated, because they need your attention and expertise.
The Bottom Left Quadrant (Urgent But Not Important) is also called “Delegate It” — as the founder, a certain moment comes when you can’t do everything. It’s an awkward moment, but also a sign that your startup is starting to make it. The founders become successful are the ones that can make the transition from founder to boss. The “Delegate It” tasks could include scheduling, writing blog posts, responding to lower-stakes emails, and other time-sensitive but not make-or-break tasks.
The Bottom Right Quadrant (Not Urgent And Not Important) is also called “Delete It” — these are the distractions that any highly successful person knows they have to avoid. As we said in the “Compound Growth” blog post: “There is value in distraction — a life without it would be extremely dull. But it’s important to be clear-eyed in how one spends their time and energy.” So, really think about what can be deleted from your packed schedule; for a startup, the founder’s time is money.
The Top Right Quadrant (Not Urgent But Important) is also called “Schedule It” — this quadrant is the reason the Eisenhower Matrix is such a valuable tool. Being able to see the important tasks that don’t have a clear ticking clock is what allows for long-term, high-value strategic thinking. The ability to carve out time for the “Schedule It” tasks is what separates the great founders. Make time for a strategy session or to train an employee or to network; it’s these deadline-free tasks that end up paying off exponentially down the line. It might feel indulgent to grab a coffee with an investor when you’re not fundraising while there are a million little fires to put out, but being fully present and engaged over that coffee is essential. Much of the firefighting can be delegated; the future-looking tasks are what the founder is for.
Your Judgment Is A Crucial Factor
In an article on Entrepreneur, writer Anna Johansson laid out five common mistakes that keep us from prioritizing effectively. The first four are issues we’ve covered that the Eisenhower Matrix is made to solve for:
- Not dedicating time to prioritization.
- Failing to consider the big picture.
- Getting distracted by the little things.
- Not delegating.
But it’s her fifth mistake that was fascinating and deserves a longer look:
Refusing to adapt to new information.
Johansson explains that though priorities need to be firmly set in order to get work done, “occasionally new information will arise that forces your hand.” She uses the example of a founder working to improve operations and being confronted with a client emergency — this is a classic example of the Urgent And Important taking precedence over the Not Urgent But Important.
As evidenced by this example, for the Eisenhower Matrix to work effectively, you have to trust your judgment on what goes where. Just as importantly, you have to admit when you’ve made a mistake. Hopefully, your cofounder will feel confident in calling you out, but if you want to be successful, you have to be both firm and adaptable. It’s a tricky mix, but it’s key to building something of value from scratch. Being a founder is hard, but the Eisenhower Matrix can make it a bit easier.
Do The Average When Everybody Else Is Going Crazy
As we saw at the top of this article, President Eisenhower liked to quote others in his speeches. This one, which he credits to Napoleon, is great advice to any founder: “He said, the great leader, the genius in leadership, is the man who can do the average thing when everybody else is going crazy.”
At its core, the Eisenhower Matrix is just a simplifying tool. It’s a box that lets you step outside the crazy of founding and do the rational and valuable thing. Often, that’s enough.
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Your task list can seem quite daunting and overwhelming, at times. Making sure that you eliminate the unnecessary tasks and prioritize the ones that you actually need to do is crucial. Using the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize what you do can make you more efficient and help you manage your time. It can also help you sidestep the constant feeling of considering everything to be urgent. Let’s look at the features of the Eisenhower Matrix and how you can use it.
Eisenhower Matrix: Quick Look
What is The Eisenhower Matrix?
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States is credited with developing the Eisenhower Matrix. Stephen Covey popularized it as a productivity practice in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is a great read if you want to become more efficient and manage your time better.
Using the Eisenhower Matrix you can add your tasks in one of the following four quadrants:
- Urgent and important
- Important, but not urgent
- Urgent, but not important
- Neither urgent nor important
It is an especially helpful tool to use if you constantly keep switching from one “urgent” task to the other and have no set plan. It is also really effective in showing you which tasks you should delegate if you have a problem with delegation. Using the Eisenhower Matrix is just as effective for chores at home or if you are studying at home.
Quadrants of The Eisenhower Matrix
Let’s look at each of the quadrants of the matrix in detail.
1. The “Do” Quadrant
These are the tasks that are important and urgent that need to probably be finished the same day or by the next day. Procrastination and distractions while dealing with these tasks could result in adverse consequences. Using the Pomodoro Technique can help you deal with procrastination and staying focused.
2. The “Decide” Quadrant
The tasks in the Decide quadrant do not need to be done right now so you can create a schedule and set a completion date. It is important to note that letting procrastination or other tasks derail you from the set schedule would mean you will have to complete the tasks in this quadrant at the last moment. Set a realistic schedule for these tasks and make sure you follow them.
3. The “Delegate” Quadrant
These are tasks that are urgent which do not necessarily need your complete involvement. In these cases, even though you have a deadline to hit, you delegate these tasks to someone else. In these cases, you take more of a managerial position. This gives you some time to focus on your urgent and important tasks in the “Do” quadrant.
4. The “Delete” Quadrant
There are tasks that take up your time but do not add much to your end goals. These could include tasks that you or someone else “thinks” are important or just distractions that keep you away from your important tasks.
Things to Keep in Mind
Here are some things you need to consider to use the Eisenhower Matrix much more effectively.
Consider Elimination
Being busy is a badge of honor people like to wear, especially at work. While trying to flaunt this badge, people tend to lose focus on their end goals and what they should really be dedicating their time towards. Many times, we do something just to make ourselves and others feel that we are busy and “productive”. However, eliminating these “filler” tasks by adding them to the “Delete” quadrant would make you more productive.
When reviewing everything you have to do, take into consideration if the task fits your end goal or helps you develop your skills. Eliminating unnecessary tasks is a lot more efficient as opposed to doing something just to look busy.
Urgent vs Important
Eisenhower Matrix App Ios
It is not uncommon to conflate “urgent” and “important”. Dwight D. Eisenhower once said:
“What is Important is seldom Urgent and what is Urgent is seldom Important”
Let’s define these two terms so that it is easier for you to sort your tasks.
Urgent: Tasks that need to be done now. Urgent tasks require immediate attention and need to be dealt with within a short time period.
Important: Tasks that add to our overall development and help us achieve our goals, personal or professional.
Failing to see the distinction would mean that you would see all your important tasks as urgent. You would end up adding a lot more tasks to the “Do” quadrant than you should which will become overwhelming.
Understanding Delegation Better
We tend to look at delegation as something managers or rich people do. But we can all benefit from delegating our tasks.
When talking about delegation, people usually visualize delegating tasks to other people. However, you can just as easily also delegate certain tasks to an app or software. For example, when I wanted to auto-schedule my gym days in my Google Calendar based on the weather, I wrote a simple program in Python. You can also delegate managing your money and investments to a RoboAdvisor like Betterment. This is typically cheaper than having a traditional advisor.
I was blown away by ideas like outsourcing and geo arbitrage your tasks to someone in a different country when I read The 4-Hour Work Week. By using remote personal assistants you can delegate some tasks to someone. This also sharpens your managerial abilities as you get better at instructing people about what to do and how to do something. Read a summary of the 4-Hour Work Week here.
Helpful Resources
Here are some resources that can help you manage your tasks and time better. These resources include some apps you could use to create your own prioritization hierarchy.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
As mentioned above, this book by Stephen Covey popularized the Eisenhower Matrix. It is a classic productivity book that lays out an approach that can make you a better person at home and work. The principles in the book help you create a structure of how to approach decision-making and time management. It can also help you in understanding how to make the most of opportunities and how to adapt to a changing environment.
TickTick
TickTick is a really great app that is also free. I use it personally for recurring reminders and other tasks. You can create your own lists for separate task types. The app also lets you set priorities for every task.
In order to incorporate the Eisenhower Matrix in TickTick, you can start by creating two types of tags: important and urgent. Add the appropriate tag to each of your tasks based on which quadrant the task belongs to.
The main advantage of using an app like TickTick over pen and paper is that you can filter all your tasks by tag. This is especially useful if you have a long list of tasks. There are many other to-do apps out there that can help you achieve the same result. I have found TickTick to be the best out of the innumerable apps I have tried.
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