{"id":15559,"date":"2017-09-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.toggl.com\/eisenhower-matrix\/"},"modified":"2024-06-21T11:55:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T11:55:24","slug":"eisenhower-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toggl.com\/blog\/eisenhower-matrix","title":{"rendered":"Eisenhower Matrix: What Is It & How To Use For Productivity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This deep dive is part of our “Productivity Pr0n in Practice” series, where we examine some of the leading go-to productivity hacks, the theory behind them, and try to establish whether they actually work in real life! Read on to discover how the Eisenhower Matrix can make you as productive as a US president…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It’s (really) cliche to talk about how <\/span>everyone has 24 hours in a day.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Lots of us want to maximize those 24 hours and get things done<\/a>. We search for the <\/span>perfect<\/span><\/i> system to help us do more with the same daily time crunch every other human has.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So… why can some people achieve <\/span>way<\/span><\/i> more in 24 hours than others? \ud83e\udd14<\/span><\/p>\n

To answer this question, I thought about what a task list looked like for the person in charge of the largest organization on the planet \u2014 the President of the United States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As it turns out, Presidents also struggle to tick off their task lists.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"President<\/p>\n

The 24th President of the United States \u2014 Dwight D. Eisenhower \u2014 even created his own productivity method to help his team get more stuff done. Known as The Eisenhower Matrix, it uses clear parameters to help people prioritize tasks<\/a>, decide what to delegate \u2014 and what to delete.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Decades later, everyone from freelancers to team leaders to world leaders still rely on the Eisenhower Matrix to maximize every hour in their day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ready to be as productive as a President? <\/span>\ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Want a TL;DR of how to put the Eisenhower Matrix into practice? \ud83e\udd14<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grab our handy Cheat Sheet here<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How The Eisenhower Matrix turned into a productivity powerhouse<\/span><\/h2>\n

We’ve all been there. A huge to-do list and no idea where to start <\/span>\ud83d\ude2c<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s a small comfort that everyone from you and I to the President of the United States can hit a wall when deciding what task to tackle first.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After he took office in the 1950s, Eisenhower knew he needed a better way to juggle his growing task list in the White House. So, he created a decision-making tool called The Eisenhower Matrix to help him work through it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, the method has been popularized in project management spaces, most notably by Stephen Covey’s <\/span>7 Habits Of Highly Effective People<\/span><\/a>, which made its way onto the bookshelves in the late 1980s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, you might recognize the method as this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Eisenhower<\/p>\n

It’s (relatively) straightforward:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n