To make good use of this tool, you need to understand its surface and how it differs from the real world.
The following diagram is the well-known Eisenhower Matrix, which is often used to determine task priorities and complete important work more efficiently.
Many have already used it to assist their work, which has indeed had a certain effect. But if you just follow the instructions and do things in the order indicated in the diagram, you may not necessarily enjoy the best efficiency.
The simplest reason is that you are not General Eisenhower. You don’t have thousands of staff to help you judge the details and overall picture.
As a general with resources, you usually focus on what’s important and what’s not and then tell the troops to do their jobs.
I’m not devaluing the matrix or suggesting that only four-star generals can use it. Commanders of any level can use it to judge priorities and manage tasks layer by layer.
Individuals or small organizations utilizing this matrix must consider numerous factors not illustrated in the diagram, and experience also influences the outcomes.
These invisible influencing factors include:
1. Evaluating decisive factors
This is the root of everything: how do you decide whether something is important or urgent? To a supervisor or non-supervisor, to someone with one year or ten years of work experience, the factors may all differ.
If work and personal factors need to be considered, the situation becomes even more complicated. Which is more important: the business briefing early tomorrow morning or your kid coughing all night?
There is no “right” answer to this; it depends on your own priorities. In theory, you will need a set rule (“family always comes before work,” for example); however, if it can be broken too easily, too often, or the situation always runs out of your hands, this matrix may not be for you.
A simple example: if you are a junior manager with several important projects in progress, but the boss has given you a “top urgent” task that is unimportant to you (such as driving his wife to the mall), where in the matrix would you put it?
2. Cost
Processing, delaying, or delegating tasks all involve costs. The lower your rank in the management hierarchy, the higher the monetary cost on the scale; the higher you are, the less you care about money but suffer a higher opportunity cost.
If you see housecleaning as an “urgent but unimportant” task (for example, your in-laws are visiting tomorrow), you can hire a helper, but you’re running low; how will you handle it? If you are a high-level manager with lots of responsibility, the opportunity cost of doing it yourself could be very high.
If the monetary or opportunity cost is too high for you to handle an urgent matter, then evaluating the cost and considering alternatives is another factor to take into account.
3. Dealing with the flows
Things don’t always stay in a certain square on the chessboard.
“Unurgent but important” things may suddenly become “urgent and important.” When things are out of your control and constantly flowing between the four quadrants of the matrix, how to flexibly identify, evaluate, sort, handle, and close cases will put your ability, speed, and experience to the test.
For example, the relatively unimportant and non-urgent “check the boss’s mobile phone problem” suddenly becomes super urgent when the boss’s phone loses its Internet connection. How will the busy you respond?
The faster you handle things (quickly eliminating to-do items), or the more experience you have in handling various situations by quickly identifying importance, urgency, and cost, the less impact the flow will have on you and the lower the opportunity cost caused by delays.
There’s no tool to help you decide. You’re on your own, and experience is your best friend.
4. Prediction of possible outcomes
The importance and urgency of things are only one side of the coin, and the other side also matters: evaluating the results of doing, not doing, delegating, or delaying.
The evaluation of the results does not have a role in the Eisenhower matrix. Things that look “Urgent and important” may actually be relatively unimportant in the end, and vice versa; however, they may unexpectedly become very important after taking other factors into consideration.
Let’s take Eisenhower, who commanded the Normandy invasion in World War II, as an example. The menu of the soldiers’ rations during the operation (not the ration supply—keeping the troops well fed is a top priority) was relatively unimportant and non-urgent. But if the “morale” factor is added, offering the soldiers a hearty steak meal before setting off becomes a booster.
In fact, having the troops eat well is one of the hidden factors that contributed to the successful invasion.
In short, assessing the results and placing things in the right quadrant is no less critical than judging their importance, and this also requires mentorship and experience.
5. Time
Time is another form of cost. I believe everyone has been in this situation: an urgent, important task requires a considerable amount of time to complete, which puts many relatively less or equally important things off in the process. This kind of delay is also an opportunity cost.
What’s worse, you finally completed it, but your boss blamed you for delaying other tasks.
That’s why some people take another approach: disregard the priority of tasks and focus on completing the ones that require the least time first, then use the remaining time to deal with the primary objective.
Even if only 80% of the primary task is completed by the due date, you can probably be safe since you’ve somehow got “all the jobs done.”
Of course, these are two extremes. While some may “trick” the boss this way, smart people still manage to make good use of multitasking with personal ability and speed to make it as perfect as possible.
Both are viable solutions but have little to do with the principles advocated by the Eisenhower matrix.
Conclusion
In the real world, our matrix may look more like this:
It’s not simply a straightforward distinction between “urgent/not urgent” and “important/not important.” Tasks can be categorized into many more levels and scurry around like mice.
If an analytical model contains too many levels, it will not function as intended, as the complexity of the matrix may become overwhelming and difficult to comprehend.
That’s why we don’t see a perfect Eisenhower matrix every day. Like many economic or management models, it is only an ideal, but the more you can organize the tasks to approach the model state, the higher the efficiency and the more predictable the results.
To take advantage of the matrix, you need a few things mentioned earlier:
Experience, practice, and ability to identify, assess, sort, and handle tasks.
Your work skills and professional knowledge to complete tasks faster. The less delay, the fewer surprises.
Outstanding ability to consider the factors of change, time, and cost that are not in the matrix and to make more accurate outcome assessments.
As for unpredictable factors such as “the boss wants you to do this first,” I don’t have an answer. Let’s wait until you become the boss, and we’ll talk about it.
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