What is the Eisenhower Matrix?

Improve your task planning and workload handling skills with the Eisenhower Matrix, a tool for managing time based on methods used by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

No one plans to be unproductive, especially at work. But as the day goes on and urgent requests come in, your to-do list grows. This makes it harder to stay focused and productive.

Whether you’re missing key deadlines or struggling to stay on track with long-term projects, knowing how to prioritize tasks could be the difference between lagging behind and leading the pack. This is where the Eisenhower Matrix comes in.

Understanding the Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix—also known as the Eisenhower Box or the Urgent/Important Matrix—is a simple framework for prioritizing tasks and managing workload. 

It’s named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, a five-star general and the 34th president of the United States. Eisenhower was famous for getting a lot done. His methods for setting goals and managing time have been studied by many people, including Stephen Covey. In his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Covey turned Eisenhower’s ideas into a simple tool for deciding what tasks to do first: the Eisenhower Matrix.

What is the Eisenhower Matrix? Essentially, it’s a strategy that allows you to put into practice the following quote attributed to Eisenhower: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." 

All you need to do is evaluate your tasks according to urgency and importance.

How does the Eisenhower Box work?

Businesses and individuals can use the Eisenhower Matrix to plan, delegate, prioritize, and schedule daily or weekly tasks. 

By putting tasks into one of the four quadrants below, you can see how urgent they are and figure out how to handle them appropriately.

First Quadrant

Urgent and important (tasks to complete immediately)—these are “do first” tasks that are vital to deal with as soon as possible. They’re usually last-minute requests that arise due to unforeseen circumstances. Generally, tasks like this should be completed immediately or on the same day. Examples include covering a project for a sick colleague or dealing with an unforeseen emergency, such as supply chain disruption.

Second Quadrant

Important, but not urgent (tasks to schedule for later)—these are long-term goals/tasks that are important, but don’t have a particularly firm deadline, so you can schedule them for completion later. Examples include gaining a professional qualification or planning for long-term business targets, such as budget reduction.

Third Quadrant

Urgent, but not important (tasks to delegate to someone else)—these tasks need to be completed immediately, but they may not be important enough to require your attention, which means that they can be delegated to other members of your team. Examples include routine work, or lengthy meetings/phone calls without a clear purpose.

Fourth Quadrant

Neither urgent nor important (tasks to eliminate)—these tasks are a distraction and should be avoided if possible. In many cases, you can simply ignore or cancel these types of tasks. Examples include social activities or unnecessarily long work breaks.

The Eisenhower Box helps you visualize your tasks based on how important and urgent they are. When you think about your work this way, it's easier to do the most important things first and finish them as quickly as possible.

How do you distinguish between urgency and importance?

There’s no set way to tell the difference between urgent and important tasks when you’re making a Priority Matrix. But it’s important to think about. In real life, it’s usually harder to decide which category a task goes into compared to when you’re just planning with an Eisenhower Box.

In a nutshell, urgent tasks are unavoidable and require immediate attention, whereas important tasks require more planning and contribute to long-term goals. For example, answering phone calls from a major client is urgent while keeping up with the latest research in your field is important.

What are the advantages of the Eisenhower Matrix?

One of the key advantages of Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Matrix is how easy it is to implement. There’s no need to purchase a costly software package and you don’t need to spend a significant amount of time producing the matrix. 

The Priority Matrix helps you manage your time better by setting clear priorities. This is very useful for managers, business owners, and freelancers who handle tasks from many projects or clients at once.

What are the disadvantages of the Eisenhower Matrix?

The Prioritization Matrix has some downsides. It can be hard to judge how important a task is. This could lead to giving a task to the wrong person, which might lower the quality of the work.

Furthermore, it’s important to remember that it may not always be possible to act immediately when you’re dealing with urgent activities. Lack of knowledge, lack of time, regulations and bureaucracy, or multiple urgent/important tasks can make that impossible, rendering the Priority Matrix a little less effective when it comes to decision-making and time management.

How to use the Eisenhower Box to manage your tasks and workload

The Urgent/Important Matrix can be an excellent starting point for work and project management. After this, you can use it to find chances to make these improvements in your daily work:

1. Manage processes more easily

After you’ve assigned your tasks to the appropriate quadrant, you can start setting up time management processes to help you deal with important activities in a timely fashion. For example, you could use Dropbox to manage your to-do list more effectively, build a timeline template. You can use these task management tools to assign urgent/non-important tasks to other members of your team, while you can also set due dates and reminders for important/non-urgent tasks that can be scheduled for a later date.

2. Set up automation for basic tasks

It may also be worth thinking about implementing workplace automation tools. Automation—where possible—is a great way to deal with tasks that need to be done, but don’t require very much planning or analysis before you jump in. Using automation tools or integrations in Dropbox productivity app you can “delegate” Q3 tasks (urgent, but not important) in a way that’s time-efficient for your business. You can assign tasks to team members in Dropbox Paper with deadlines, or port them directly into Trello cards for your team members from Dropbox files. Automatic content ingest tools can help you eliminate time-consuming, error-prone tasks that are likely to cause bottlenecks, ensuring that you and your team work more productively in the future.

3. Optimize time management

Furthermore, you should consider combining the Eisenhower Box with other time management approaches for a better result. For example, Eat the Frog. Eat the Frog stems from a saying from Mark Twain, who stated, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning.” In a business context, this means that you should tackle your biggest or most complex task first, before moving onto the smaller tasks that you can prioritize based on other factors, like deadlines. There’s also the ABCDE method, wherein you essentially take your tasks and assign them a letter value based on order of importance, before completing them in that order.

Combine the Eisenhower Matrix and Dropbox to boost your efficiency

The Eisenhower Box can be an extremely effective tool for task and time management—as can the Dropbox suite of features. The two go hand in hand! By learning to prioritize tasks, you can work better, cut out wasted time, and move toward your long-term business goals.