The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack

Eisenhower's approach, as both a general and president, was to assemble a very good staff and delegate, while monitoring how things were going. Staff, not line. Line managers in the military are unit commanders at various levels. Staff officers, derided though they tend to be, are extensions of the commander for whom they work. They have to be very competent but less ambitious than line commanders.

"The Hidden-Hand Presidency" (1982) is the best overview of how Eisenhower got things done. Eisenhower was probably the only person ever to be overqualified for the US presidency. Holding the Allied coalition together while winning WWII in Europe was a tougher job. As president, he was fairly relaxed and not overworked, while accomplishing an incredible amount.

He wasn't as laid back as people thought at the time. He wrote clear, incisive directives for his staff and Cabinet. It took a long time before Eisenhower's work was properly analyzed, partly because the Eisenhower Library is in Abilene, Kansas, and few historians wanted to spend a few years there going through the files.

First of all, you need to really work with finding the most important goals for you in your context. Then you figure out what the most important things you could do to achieve this goal in for example the next two years.

Then you will realize you don’t have time to add these things on top of your current workload (like in Scrum, you don’t add new tasks to a sprint without removing other tasks). And when you’ve done that, it’s time to bring forth the Eisenhower matrix.

And in the light of what is truly important, sort your tasks according to the matrix. A key here is also to really think about the Important axis as not important in general but important that You do. Then your job is to delete or delegate enough to be able to fit the new tasks that are the most valuable to achieve your goal.

Also, in the article it says to do the non urgent important tasks after the urgent ones. I think this is really bad thinking. Instead, in the matrix you can see it tells you to plan these things. That’s what you should listen to. The things that are important but not urgent needs to be planned, otherwise they will never get done as there are always too much urgent things to do.

That being said, I think 3x3 might be even more helpful. If I drag a task into an Eisenhower Matrix, I'd like the drop point (done using a non-verbal part of my brain) to benefit from a bit of spontaneous intuition.

Also, the upper right (Important but not Urgent) is the Zone of Neglect(TM), where good things go to die. I'd like an app to any every item in that sector and prompt me to break it down into steps. Then it's easier to get started, and it's easier to make stepwise progress.

https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/AdobeStock_4...

If you look at it thinking it would never work in practice for your situation...you're probably right. There's a lot of underlying assumptions, and as any simple and catchy idea, it only helps as much as nudge for you to find your own system to deal with your issues.

It was fun to poke her about her quad 3 work becoming my quad 1. :) We were encouraged to help our managers prevent that from happening to us by building better systems (quad 2.) Low tolerance for recurring busywork.

Good lessons for this young employee from this framework being seriously applied in a team environment.

It's usually completely obvious what the most important thing that I need to do is. And if it's not then I can ask other people around me and clarify. When that's done, The next Most Important Thing is obvious again.

Mostly this is about software product dev where The Most Important Thing is a feature or bug fix or something that's going to take a few hours at least. It's mainly about not shoving thousands of ideas into the Backlog where they will just never get done. Instead of a whole development plan that gets caught up in old assumptions and stale priorities, just Do The Most Important Thing Now and keep doing it. At some point The Most Important Thing will be shipping the product in time for the marketing event.

1. Delegate as much as possible. 2. Alternate urgent and important tasks. 3. Once in a while do a "fun" task - something neither urgent, nor immediately important, but feels like it may have a payoff someday.

Then I closed the tab.

Please do not boost articles like this.

I judge problems in the urgency dimension by "what will happen if I don't do this?" Will my boss be angry at me? Will I get fired? Will there be fines (e.g. tax paid late)? Will a potentially incurable disease be detected too late if I delay this medical appointment? etc.

Two tasks due next week, one of which will officially miss a deadline but not much will happen if I do it a day later, vs. a tax deadline, I'd better work on the tax first, so if it happens that there isn't enough time to do both then at least I've done the one which would have the worst consequences for not doing it.

So it makes me laugh that the 2x2 matrix lives on. It has always seemed to me that Ike was getting at a 1x2 matrix (or perhaps a 1x3: important or urgent or neither) and that the real question to ask is whether the task under consideration is important or not.

Then, of course, we need to discipline ourselves to perform important tasks that have no clear deadlines.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66567445/how-to-use-a-or...

The extended form makes me wonder if the attribution to Eisenhower is correct...

(Urgent vs important. 4x4, prioritize accordingly)

Layer foo: Story arc. What story are you trying to tell when you get out of bed?

Layer bar: Things you have to do to make the story.

Layer baz: A weekly agenda which you execute on.

This is stupid simplistic. But the point is that different layers require different states of mind. As with writing and editing, you could do the first layer drunk, then the last layer sober.

Jumping straight to some list of things to act on doesn't work for me unless there is someone already taking care of the other layers. If all I have to do is walk in the office, look at the board, put the fries on the tray, and shout "order #23" then I'm good with that. Working from home, I have to do everything myself. The delegate box might as well be some goofy prize I get after I just do the thing myself.

It is how you're supposed to do things. Indeed, it is how most people on Earth accomplish every single task in their life whether they realize it or not.

I wish I was morally bankrupt enough to be a productivity guru. I could, like, charge $50k to stand behind a podium in a hotel ballroom and spout nonsense at desperate people in an attempt to get them to buy my book and planners. It would be awesome.