How to prioritise to get the most important tasks done!

“How can I achieve more?” often a question asked by leaders on reflecting on their productivity. Our effectiveness can play a key role in determining our success in leadership.

The key to becoming more effective is to focus on what matters most.

Everything may seem urgent and important but it’s just not the case.

Urgent and important are two different things. When something is urgent, it must be done within a short timeframe and can’t be avoided or it will have clear and detrimental consequences. Important tasks may not require immediate attention, but these tasks help you achieve your long-term goals.

The Eisenhower Matrix, developed by former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the model which forms the basis of Stephen R Covey’s Time Management Matrix, is a task management tool that helps you organise and prioritise tasks based on urgency and importance so you can establish an efficient workflow. Using the tool, you'll divide your tasks into four boxes based on the tasks you'll do first, the tasks you'll schedule to complete next, the tasks you'll endeavour to delegate, and the tasks you'll likely delete off your list.

Why use the Eisenhower Matrix?

This tool helps business leaders to:

• Increase productivity through structuring your work: The matrix helps you decide what to prioritise and how to efficiently approach these tasks and accomplish goals. Having an organised list of tasks can help you complete necessary tasks.

• Develop new habits: The Eisenhower Matrix can help you identify where you are spending most of your time and why you are getting the results (or lack of) that you are. You can use this awareness to refocus and choose what you want to be prioritising your time on.

• Increase work-life balance: Using the matrix to help build more productivity at work enables you to have more time for what matters outside of work.

• Improve planning skills: The Eisenhower Matrix helps you to build your organisational skills to prioritise tasks and determine clear short-term goals which can help you better plan tasks and long-term goals.

• Solve problems: Managing your time well also allows you to have space to be creative and proactive with solving problems and achieving goals. Using the matrix to assign specific time to complete your tasks, you can also assign time to think big picture for yourself and the business.

It is through prioritisation that we accomplish our goals. Stephen R Covey sums up why it’s so important to prioritise when he says:

“The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.”

An article from Trafft showed just how easy it is to focus on non-important tasks at work highlighting that:

• The average manager spends three hours per day handling unforeseen interruptions and problems.

• Workers receive, on average, 7-8 disruptions per hour. This equals 50-60 per day – most of which are unnecessary.

• Of the time given to a workday, 80% is spent doing tasks with little to no value and only 20% is spent doing something important.

• If you spend 10-12 minutes planning your day, you’ll save up to 2 hours of time that would have otherwise gone to waste.

What is The Eisenhower Matrix?

The Eisenhower Matrix is a framework for prioritising your time and tasks to be as efficient and productive as we can. The matrix is a four-quadrant system to help you categorise each task you need to do and take responsibility for managing your time based on:

• Urgency: Tasks and responsibilities requiring immediate action or attention

• Importance: Those with high significance or value to goals

The 4 Quadrants In The Eisenhower Matrix

Each quadrant has a different focus and is designed to help you prioritise your tasks and responsibilities.

How to use the Eisenhower Matrix

When using The Eisenhower Matrix, it is recommended to aim to maximise time spent completing quadrant II activities as this reduces quadrant I activities being created through better planning.

The matrix helps you question whether a certain activity brings you closer to your goals or not and to prioritise tasks that are over tasks that might demand your time but don’t contribute to your goals. We want to delay activities that don’t contribute any significant output until more important tasks are finished.

There are many ways to use this matrix as a planning tool.

One way is to reprioritise your current ‘to-do’ list. The time matrix can be applied as a tool that allows you to reprioritise your current and upcoming tasks by level of importance and urgency.

These steps can help you use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritise tasks:

1. Create your task list.

2. Add deadlines.

3. Identify urgent task that need to be completed.

4. Identify the most important tasks that will achieve long term goals.

5. Assign tasks into the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix. This can be done on a daily, weekly, monthly basis etc. Even list them in priority order in each quadrant.

6. Schedule your priorities (quadrant 1 and 2 tasks) and after completing urgent and important tasks accomplish the most important tasks, that is, tasks in Quadrant 2.

Assessing Your Productivity

You can also use the matrix as an assessment tool to assess your productivity.

Repeat this process for your daily and weekly activities. After using the method for a week or more, reflect upon your productivity and how you are using your time. If you discover some items are not as important as others, consider reassigning tasks in the matrix, adapting your schedule or work methods to put more meaningful tasks first.

We trust you find The Eisenhower Matrix a useful tool to help you increase your productivity.

If you find you spend most of your time in quadrants 1, 3 and 4 and want support spending more time in Quadrant 2 then it’s likely you are not being as effective as you could be. If you are interested to develop your ability to prioritise more effectively reach out to us at Leaders Network hello@leadersnetworkgroup.com.au