The Eisenhower Matrix
You ever heard of the Eisenhower Matrix? No? Yes? Either way, it’s important for any type of decision-making, especially if you’re all of the belief that this is the fastest-moving, busiest time ever. I will explain to you what exactly it is, including visuals, but I gotta walk through this so you have the back context. Isn’t that what this blog is called?
The first step in this process
There’s a really good recent article on First Round Review about making self-care a competitive advantage. I’m sure a lot of hardcore business people bristle at that, because “self-care” runs opposite to “The Temple of Busy,” and the busy side is more important for relevance. (More on that in a few seconds.) Here’s a great little pull quote from this article:
Did you execute your work — the emails you wanted to write, the strategy document you owed your boss — the stuff you had on your list at the start of the day? Did you do the things that were important and not just urgent?
That last one is the key question here, and oftentimes the key question of work. And how we solve this issue is the Eisenhower Matrix.
Is the Eisenhower Matrix named for Dwight Eisenhower?
Sure is. Hopefully he doesn’t need vetting, but if he does: helped U.S. win WW2 as a general, then presided over a period of generally nice prosperity as the U.S. grew post-WW2. Yes, often considered a boring President, which is probably part of the reason America wanted Kennedy over Nixon following Ike. On aggregate rankings by U.S. Presidential historians, he’s considered the fifth-best ever. So I guess we can listen to him?
OK, so what’s the Eisenhower Matrix?
Here’s one visual:
The matrix here is “urgent vs. important,” with four potential outcomes:
If you like video explainers, here you go:
Let’s break this down a little bit.
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Some virtually-undeniable facts about most offices
Every job is its own magical unicorn to some extent, but in general — and based on decades of management research — I can tell you a few things:
That’s an interesting five-way intersection with a lot of unclear priorities, stress, and poor time management. In fact, you could argue time management is so important to the modern era that, eff it, we could even call the whole era “The Time Management Era.”
Here’s why the Eisenhower Matrix makes sense, too!
Look at the four possible outcomes in the second illustration above:
“Do Now” should stand on its own. Some stuff is legitimately urgent and top-of-mind. Go get it, grasshopper.
“Schedule” is everything to most people. “Hey, can we hop on a call? Schedule a meeting?” It’s probably largely overblown at this point, at least in American business culture, but a simple blog post ain’t gonna change that. I guess lawyers are in less meetings because of their hourly rate, but if all of us became lawyers, there might be additional issues.
“Delegate” is often misused by managers, but effective delegation has been shown to increase the salary of the one doing the delegating.
“Don’t Do” is the complex one. We all want to believe the work “must get done,” but 7 in 10 actions in most enterprise companies add no value. That’s a true stat. Some stuff just doesn’t need to be done, now or really ever, even if someone is yelling at you about it. Eisenhower won a damn World War. I think he’d know what stuff can be ignored.
So why isn’t an approach like this used more?
Couple of guesses:
The bottom line on the Eisenhower Matrix
82 percent of managers aren’t good at their jobs. At some (multiple) points, you’ll have a manager who throws no-context project after project at you, all deemed “I needed this yesterday.” In those moments, which are probably more normative than you’d like to admit, you absolutely need a system like the Eisenhower Matrix. Is it going to win you WW2? No. But it will get you to happy hour faster, more productively, and feeling good about what you do.