But there’s good news, too — the mere-urgency effect can be reversed. The findings suggest that if you keep the long-term importance of non-urgent tasks in view, you can overcome the pull toward urgent distractions and focus on what really matters. The Eisenhower Matrix is a useful tool for prioritizing your to-do lists. It was made popular by President Dwight D. Eisenhower who used it throughout his military career and presidency to prioritize and keep track of his many tasks and duties. If you are interested in reading more about this topic, you can find more in the “Habit 3” chapter of the book. Because you don’t have a personal attachment to these tasks and they likely don’t require your specific skill set to complete, you can delegate these tasks to other members of your team.
- Because you don’t have a personal attachment to these tasks and they likely don’t require your specific skill set to complete, you can delegate these tasks to other members of your team.
- The RACI Matrix is an essential management tool that helps teams keep track of roles and responsibilities and can avoid confusion during projects.
- If you want to create a matrix every morning or at the start of each week, no problem—just copy the template, add your tasks, and start prioritizing.
- If you receive assignments less frequently, once per week might work better.
- Here are a few quick tips for how to categorize your to-do list items.
- Manage deployments, order equipment, and connect teams—without compromising security.
Most tasks will likely fall in the second quadrant, Schedule it, because they require planning. The fourth quadrant, Delete it, should only contain tasks that are counterproductive and don’t support your goals. When something is urgent, it must be done now, and there are clear consequences if you don’t complete these tasks within a certain timeline. These are tasks you can’t avoid, and the longer you delay these tasks, the more stress you’ll likely experience, which can lead to burnout.
Quadrant III (DELEGATE for completion) – Not Important, Urgent
Prioritize tasks based on urgency or delegate like a pro (or like a President). The ClickUp 2×2 Priority Matrix Template is perfect for prioritizing urgent and important tasks, showing impact compared to effort, and spotting top-priority tasks in a snap. Operations teams strive to optimize and gain efficiency across the business, and can do the same for their own projects with our template. Keep track of project status and provide key stakeholders with at-a-glance progress updates with a project status report template.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a way to organize tasks by urgency and importance, so you can effectively prioritize your most important work. Your priorities might change during the day or as other tasks come up, so use the template to quickly add, move, or change tasks as your schedule evolves. The lower left quadrant is for tasks that are not as important what are the 2 axes in the eisenhower box as the urgent tasks, but should still get done promptly. Make sure to follow up on delegated tasks, to ensure they were executed properly. If someone calls you into a meeting, for example, you could delegate the task by asking a teammate to take the meeting instead. This tool boosts both your personal productivity and project management.
Can the Eisenhower Matrix be used for team projects?
An Eisenhower Matrix is supposed to simplify task management, not create more work for you to do. But luckily, creating your matrix in a digital form means you don’t have to mess around with spreadsheets or manually copy your task list each time. Instead, you can just add your tasks to the matrix, select their urgency and importance, and drag and drop them into the right section. And if priorities change later on, you can easily update your matrix in real time instead of re-copying the entire thing. Your work and personal tasks require different timelines, resources, and methods, and they’ll likely require different thought processes as well.
Place these remaining items on your to-do list in the fourth quadrant, which is the “delete” quadrant. Improve Any Product – Product Management template provides a structured framework for enhancing product quality and performance. With sections for prioritizing enhancements and tracking progress, it facilitates continuous improvement efforts, ensuring that products meet evolving customer needs and market demands. Clarity, focus, and structure — those are the key ingredients to feeling confident in your company’s directions and decisions, and an OKR framework is designed to give them to you.
ALL PLANS
We’ve made a companion video for the Eisenhower matrix because everyone learns differently, and we know some of you prefer to watch instead of read. Check out that video below, or continue reading for a deeper dive. Dwight D. Eisenhower — a five-star general during World War II and 34th president of the United States — was a productive guy. Explore even more templates, widgets, and plugins—all built by the Figma community. Work together to figure out what’s important, what needs immediate attention, and what’s destined for the trash bin. Create a project charter template and outline everything you need to get your next initiative approved.
Another way to limit the number of items on your Eisenhower Matrix is to create separate matrices for your personal and professional to-do lists. Even if you have a lot of tasks on your to-do list, try to limit your tasks to 10 items per quadrant. This will keep your Eisenhower Matrix from becoming cluttered and overwhelming. Once you know how to distinguish between urgent and important tasks, you can begin separating your tasks into the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix.
How to rebalance your quadrants
A long to-do list of tasks can feel overwhelming, but the goal of the Eisenhower Matrix is to go through these tasks one by one and separate them by quadrant. Once you can see your tasks in their designated categories, you’ll be able to schedule them and accomplish your most important work. Team decision-making can be hard—a RACI matrix template makes it easier. Define each project task role to instantly boost clarity for all your stakeholders. Keeping your day organized is more than just writing down a list of daily to-dos. Organize project tasks, deliverables, and milestones into one cohesive schedule.
The key is that these activities were a balance for the many stressful aspects of being a political leader. However, if you’re not intentional about it, the way you spend your downtime can actually drain your energy, passion, and creativity. By attending to Q2 consistently, you decrease the number of pressing problems that pop up in Q1.
Our template guides you through project management best practices for marketing teams so you can get from strategy to tactics to results. Take the guesswork out of task prioritization by creating a prioritization matrix template. You can use it every day, every week, or whenever your to-do list feels out of control. For additional resources, see this comprehensive collection of free priority matrix and project prioritization templates. Treating them all as if they do can leave you feeling overwhelmed and unproductive. This Eisenhower Matrix template lets you break tasks down so you can prioritize them correctly.
The matrix is divided into a 2×2 grid, with each quadrant representing a different level of urgency and importance. An Eisenhower Matrix template is a four-quadrant matrix that sorts tasks by urgency and importance. Project managers and other team members can use this task management tool to determine which tasks to address immediately, schedule, delegate, or delete.
What is important is subjective and depends on your own values and personal goals. The beauty of the Eisenhower matrix is that it forces you to create a hierarchy for urgent tasks and more low importance ones. These tasks are just as important as the tasks in quadrant I, but are not as urgent.
