It’s really hard to stay focused on one thing at a time, but to be successful in anything that we do, we need to keep our focus on the task at hand.
If you work or live in an environment where you are getting pulled in many different directions, then how do you decide what your time should be spent on?
It’s not always an easy thing to choose where you’re spending your time. It’s even harder when we let emotions dictate where we are spending our time.
Picture this: you have a very important email to send out, but your co-worker just walked by your desk and told you about a last minute meeting discussing that new project that you are a part of.
Do you stay focused and finish your email, or do you step out, lose your train of thought, and spend an hour in that meeting?
If you haven’t practiced saying “no” then you will probably put the important task that you’ve been working on to the side, and end up sitting through that meeting with half of your focus on the email that you need to finish and the other half on the meeting that you’re sitting in.
Your best work is not being done because you’re not totally focused on anything.
You let the urgent meeting take your focus from the important email.
The Eisenhower Matrix is designed to help you take care of this exact problem.
Dwight D. Eisenhower had a lot on his plate. Significantly more than any of us will likely ever have.
He was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. Before becoming President, he served as a general in the United States Army. He was also the Allied Forces Supreme Commander during World War II. He later became NATO’s first supreme commander.
As you can imagine, he was pulled in many different directions every single day. He needed a way to help him decide how he was going to spend his day.
“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
That’s where the Eisenhower Principle comes from
The Eisenhower Matrix was developed to help determine where to put things on our to-do list.
Quadrant 1: If it’s urgent and important, do it first.
Quadrant 2: If it’s important, but not urgent, then schedule it for later.
Quadrant 3: If it’s urgent, but not important, then see if you can delegate it to someone else.
Quadrant 4: If it’s not urgent or important, then get rid of it altogether.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a really effective way to help increase your productivity. There’s only so much time in the day, and deciding what to focus on can sometimes be a real challenge.
Time management is a critical tool for all of us. Besides using the Eisenhower Principle, there are 12 other techniques that can help you make the most out of each day.
For more tips on productivity, check out our free Ultimate Guide for Productivity. It has been developed to help you achieve anything that you want to achieve, as long as you’re willing to put in the work.
Wrapping it up
The Eisenhower Decision Matrix can truly help plan your day to be as effective with your time as you possibly can.
Time management is a critical skill to develop if you want to become the version of yourself that you are meant to be.
Let me know in the comments if you have any other time management techniques that have helped you!