If the content of these interruptions doesn’t rise to your level of importance, delegate them to others. But because they’re not necessary, they don’t necessarily require your time, and they can, therefore, assign them to someone else.Įxamples of these items would be requests for help from colleagues or emails marked urgent. These are urgent items that pop up and demand immediate attention. Quadrant 2 items are typically tasks or projects that can help you personally or professionally or help your business achieve a long-term goal. So these are the items you’ll want to schedule work for a later time. These are essential issues, but they’re not urgent and therefore don’t require your immediate action. Decide on when to deal with the tasks in quadrant 2. One example, Covey explains in his sample Eisenhower Matrix above, might be a fire in your kitchen. Items in this quadrant typically include crises and issues with deadlines. These are the items that are both urgent and important, and they, therefore, demand your action right away. This will allow you to categorize your to-do items into one of four possible descriptions: First Quadrant (upper left): urgent and important Second Quadrant (upper right): important, but not urgent Third Quadrant (lower left): not important, but urgent Fourth Quadrant (lower right): neither important nor urgentĪccording to productivity expert James Clear, you can understand the items in each of the four quadrants with this simple framework: Do, decide, delegate, and don’t do (or delete). Eisenhower Matrix Template:Īfter you’ve drawn your Eisenhower Matrix, you will have four empty boxes, two by two. As a result of Covey’s work, the Eisenhower Matrix has become a widely used time-management and decision-making framework in business.īelow is a sample Eisenhower Box taken from another of Covey’s books, First Things First. He used it to help him prioritize and deal with the many high-stakes issues he faced as a US Army general, then as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Forces, and eventually as president of the United States.ĭecades later, author Stephen Covey popularized Eisenhower’s framework in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. President Dwight Eisenhower himself developed the concept behind what would later be called the Eisenhower Matrix. What’s the History of the Eisenhower Matrix? Then, group the items on your list into one of the four boxes, with the Urgent-and-Important box in the upper left requiring your immediate action.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a productivity, prioritization, and time-management framework designed to help you prioritize a list of tasks or agenda items by first categorizing those items according to their urgency and importance.Īlso called an Eisenhower Decision Matrix, Eisenhower Box, or Urgent-Important Matrix, this approach consists of drawing a four-box square with an x-axis labeled Urgent and Not Urgent, and the y-axis labeled Important and Not Important.

Priority matrix chart