Eisenhower: a general to better manage your priorities

When everything is a priority, nothing is

It is not always easy to find a simple order for ranking your tasks or actions. Which one comes before the other? And if everything is a priority, then in the end nothing really is. Yet since nobody can carry out several tasks at the same moment, we make this kind of trade-off every day, often without thinking about it.

Most of the time, urgency decides: the message that has just arrived, the most pressing request, the most insistent reminder. But are our criteria relevant? How do you prioritize your actions properly when everything seems to be a priority?

A general facing priorities

One man gave his name to the best-known answer: Dwight David Eisenhower. As Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, he led the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944, before being elected President of the United States for two terms, from 1953 to 1961. Given the responsibilities he carried, it is with some humility that we look at the way he sorted problems.

In a 1954 speech, he explained that he had two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important, and that the urgent are rarely important while the important are rarely urgent. He presented this idea as that of a former college president. The four-box matrix came later and was popularized by Stephen Covey. Our article on the history of the Eisenhower matrix traces this path.

What today's managers retain is the distinction itself: urgency tells you when something calls for a response, importance tells you whether it contributes to your objectives. The two do not necessarily go together, and it is by separating them that you take back control of your schedule.

The Eisenhower matrix: a simple and effective tool

The priority of an action is read by crossing two factors: urgency and importance. This system is represented as a two-way table, with the degree of urgency on one axis and the degree of importance on the other.

Every action falls into one of four categories, each with its own treatment:

Category	Treatment	Example
Important and urgent	Do it immediately	Answer a customer complaint that is blocking a delivery
Important, not urgent	Schedule it in your calendar	Prepare next year's budget
Urgent, not important	Delegate it if possible	Book a room for tomorrow's meeting
Neither important nor urgent	Drop it, or keep it for a free moment	Sort out old shared folders

The step-by-step method, with a filled-in example, is in our guide how to use the Eisenhower matrix. You can also download an Eisenhower matrix in Excel, PDF or PowerPoint format.

Applying Eisenhower's logic as a team

The matrix is often presented as a personal organization tool. It is just as useful for a team, provided you adapt a few rules:

• Define importance against shared objectives. A task is important if it moves a team objective forward, not because it was requested by the most senior person.
• Delegating means handing over with a due date. An urgent but unimportant action that goes to a colleague needs an owner and a date, otherwise it comes back.
• Protect the "important, not urgent" quadrant. It holds the long-term projects, prevention and improvement work. Block time for it, or it will always be pushed back.
• Review priorities in meetings. A quick check-in each week is enough to move actions from one box to another when the context changes.

Other approaches complement this sorting. Our article on the importance of prioritization in task management shows how to apply it to a team's day-to-day work.

How Perfony interprets the matrix

We looked into this question of priorities in response to requests from our users. Tools on the market often use exclamation marks, colored flags or numerical scores, where you never know whether "1" is the lowest or the highest priority.

We wanted Perfony not only to let you set a priority, but also to help you assess it. The priority level of an action is shown as a small four-box matrix that fills up as the priority rises, from priority 1 to priority 5.

Because Perfony aims to be simple and flexible, you can also keep a traditional score-based prioritization with the same set of icons. This interpretation of the matrix is not binding: it helps make the order of actions more objective without upsetting the habits already in place in the company.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Classifying everything as "urgent and important". If this box overflows, it is often a sign that importance has not been assessed honestly, or that the "schedule" quadrant has been neglected for too long.
• Confusing urgent with loud. An insistent request is not necessarily urgent: ask yourself what really happens if it waits a day.
• Delegating without follow-up. A task handed over with no due date and no checkpoint is a forgotten task.
• Doing the matrix once and for all. Priorities move: the matrix should be reviewed every week, or even every day.

For more practical advice, see our 9 easy-to-implement tips to manage your priorities better.

In practicePrioritize and track your actions with PerfonyEach action has a priority, an owner and a due date. Delegated actions stay visible and reminders go out automatically. Free 15-day trial.Discover the action plan software