The Eisenhower matrix: know what to do now and what to drop

Think of it as a simple decision tool for sorting a to-do list with two questions: is this task urgent, and is it important? Each task gets a yes or no to both, which puts it in one of four boxes:

• Urgent and important: do it now.
• Important, not urgent: schedule it.
• Urgent, not important: hand it off, or shrink it.
• Neither: delete it.

You'll also see it called the urgent-important matrix, the Eisenhower box or the time management matrix. They're the same grid.

The name comes from Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th US president. In August 1954 he gave an address to the World Council of Churches in Evanston, Illinois. In it he quoted "a former college president" who said: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."

So the famous line wasn't his. He was quoting someone else, in a speech about the world's problems, with no grid in sight. The four-box version people use today matches the four quadrants of time management in Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, under its third habit, "Put first things first."

The matrix only works if you keep the two questions apart. Most people blur them, because urgent things feel important while they're happening.

Urgent means the task needs immediate attention because it has a clock on it. Someone is waiting, a deadline is close, or waiting until next week costs you something real. A ringing phone is urgent, and so is a bill due tomorrow.

Important means the task moves a goal or something else you care about in the long term. It protects your health, your money, your work or the people close to you, or it causes trouble later if you skip it. Studying for an exam in March is important in October, even though nothing about it is urgent yet.

Two quick tests help you answer honestly:

• For urgent, ask what happens if this waits a week. If the answer is "nothing much," it isn't urgent, however loud it feels.
• For important, ask whether you'd care about this task a year from now. If you wouldn't, it isn't important, however busy it keeps you.

Urgent tasks shout, and important ones wait quietly. Left alone, you'll spend the week answering the shouting, and the quiet work slides to next month. The grid makes the quiet work visible, and it takes the decision-making out of a busy day.

Each box has its own rule, and the table gives the short version before the detail below it.

Box 1: do it now

These are crises and close deadlines: the sick child, the tax form due Friday, the report your boss needs by noon. You can't avoid box 1. Some of it comes from outside, and some of it is box 2 work you left too long.

Take action on these first, and keep an eye on where they came from. If box 1 is full every week, the cure is spending more time in box 2.

Box 2: schedule it

This is where the matrix earns its place. Think of exercise, savings, a new skill, a car service before the car breaks, or a call to the friend you haven't seen in months. None of it is urgent, so none of it happens unless you give it a time.

Covey's own advice, on the FranklinCovey page for the habit, is that time spent on important things that aren't urgent gives you the best return. The page names planning and creative thinking as examples. Box 2 work also shrinks box 1, because the car you serviced in May doesn't break down in June.

Box 3: hand it off or shrink it

Box 3 is other people's urgency: the message that wants an answer now, the meeting you don't need, the errand that only feels pressing because someone keeps asking. The classic rule says to delegate it, but most people don't have an assistant, so the section below covers what to do instead.

Box 4: delete it

Box 4 is the scrolling, the re-sorting of a list instead of doing it, and the hobby project you stopped caring about two years ago, so take them off the list. Rest is a different thing: a walk or an evening off matters, which makes it box 2 work with its own time.

1. Write down every task on your mind, personal and work together. Don't sort as you go.
2. Ask the urgent question of each one: what happens if it waits a week?
3. Then ask whether it will matter in a year.
4. Put each task in its box. If you hesitate, treat it as not urgent.
5. Start with the box 1 tasks. The closest deadline goes first.
6. Give every box 2 task a day and a time this week or next. A box 2 task without a date stays in box 2 forever.
7. Hand off, batch or cut the box 3 tasks.
8. Delete box 4. Don't move it to a "someday" list you'll never read.
9. Re-sort once a week. Tasks change boxes as deadlines move closer.

The first sort takes the longest, maybe twenty minutes for a full list. After that it's a few seconds per task, because you'll ask the two questions as you write things down.

Amara's CV had sat in her head as "something I should do" for months. Once it had a box and a date, it took one evening.

The matrix came out of a world of offices and assistants. In ordinary life, box 3 is where people get stuck, because there's nobody to hand things to. Here's what works instead:

• Shrink it: answer the message in two lines instead of ten, or fill in the form with what you know and send it.
• Batch it by putting all the small urgent-but-unimportant jobs in one 30-minute slot, so they stop breaking up your day.
• Say no or not yet, because "I can't make that one" is a complete answer to a meeting you don't need.
• Share it at home, where a partner or an older kid can return the ladder or book the plumber.
• Put the repeating bills on autopay, so they never turn urgent again.

If a box 3 task keeps coming back, ask why it's urgent at all. Often it's a box 2 task wearing a disguise. The car registration is urgent this week because it was ignored for eleven months.

• Putting everything in box 1. If ten tasks are urgent and important, some of them aren't. Use the one-week test again.
• Treating other people's urgency as yours. A message marked urgent isn't automatically urgent for you.
• Never dating box 2. The grid shows you the important work, but it won't put it in your week. You have to.
• Sorting once and never again. A task moves boxes as its deadline gets closer, so the grid goes stale in a week.
• Using the matrix as the day's plan. It tells you what kind of task each one is. It doesn't tell you when to do it.
• Calling rest box 4, when sleep and exercise belong in box 2.

The matrix is a sorting tool. It works best feeding a method that plans the day itself.

A good routine: sort the whole list in your weekly review, then pick each day's main task from box 2 with the 1-3-5 rule. If the box 2 task is the one you keep dodging, eat the frog and do it first. If you'd rather give it a slot on the calendar, read up on time blocking.

You don't need to draw a grid. the planner's four priorities do the sorting for you, and dates do the scheduling.

1. Use priorities as boxes: p1 for do now, p2 for schedule, p3 for hand off, p4 for anything you can't bring yourself to delete yet. Type them in the same line as the task with quick add: "book dentist wed p2".
2. Give every p1 task a deadline. The ones due today show up in Today.
3. Put a date on each p2 task. That's the scheduling step, and Upcoming shows the important work spread across your week.
4. Tag handed-off tasks with a label such as @waiting, and add a reminder for the day you'll check on them.
5. Build a filter for p1 and p2, so you can focus on your top priority work when the list gets long.
6. Make the weekly re-sort a repeating task with a clock reminder, for the time you usually plan your week.

New tasks land all day. Send one as a Telegram message while you're out, then give it a box when you next sort. More on how lists and priorities work is on the to-do list page.