Eisenhower matrix · Prioritisation · Time management
Eisenhower matrix examples for work, freelancing and study
By T. Krause
A task can feel urgent until you ask what happens if it waits. Here is a made-up week of work put through an Eisenhower matrix task by task, with the reason for each box, then the same matrix for a freelancer, a student and someone with nobody to delegate to.
An Eisenhower matrix sorts each task by two questions, is it urgent and is it important, into four boxes: do now, plan, delegate and drop. For a manager's week, that might put payroll due on Friday in Do now, a hiring plan in Plan, booking an offsite venue in Delegate and reorganising the shared drive in Drop.
That's the whole method. The hard part is the sorting, because a task can feel urgent when you look at it on its own. This guide takes eight tasks through the matrix with the reason for each box. Then it shows the same four boxes for a freelancer and a student, and what to do when you have nobody to delegate to.
We make Prompt Board, and our Eisenhower matrix template opens on the same eight tasks, so you can drag them around and then replace them with your own. A sheet of paper with a cross on it works too.
One week, eight tasks
This example is invented, and so are the company and the person. Dana runs operations at a made-up software company with 20 staff. It's Monday morning, and these are the tasks on her list. The template labels its boxes "Do now: urgent and important", "Plan: important, not urgent", "Delegate: urgent, not important" and "Drop: neither", and the table uses the first word of each.
| Box | Task | Why it goes there |
|---|---|---|
| Do now | Payroll by Friday | The date can't move, and 20 people get paid late if it slips |
| Do now | Client bug on login | A paying client can't get in today |
| Plan | Q1 hiring plan | It decides what the company can do next year, and nothing breaks if it waits until Wednesday |
| Plan | Refactor billing | Billing errors cost real money, but no date forces the work |
| Delegate | Book venue for offsite | The venue fills up soon, and anyone with the budget figure can book it |
| Delegate | Reply to vendor survey | The vendor wants it by Thursday, and the person who uses the tool can answer better |
| Drop | Reorganise the drive | Nobody has complained, and it would feel more useful than it is |
| Drop | Second logo round | No goal this quarter depends on it |
Sorted this way, Dana does two things this week that she can't hand off, and she books time for two more. She passes two to colleagues and deletes the last two. The list hasn't got any shorter yet, but only two tasks now compete for this morning.
The two questions, asked properly
The words "urgent" and "important" are too loose to sort with. We use a sharper version of each.
For urgent, ask what happens if this waits a week. If the answer is a missed date or a client locked out, it's urgent. If the answer is that someone is mildly annoyed, it isn't. An email marked ASAP tells you what the sender wants, and you still have to ask the question.
For important, ask which written goal this moves. Name the goal. If you can't, the task may still be worth doing, but it isn't important in the sense the matrix means. Dana could point to a billing goal for the refactor and to next year's headcount for the hiring plan. She couldn't name a goal for the second logo round.
Those questions changed three of her first answers:
- Refactor billing started in Do now, because a billing bug had annoyed her that morning. Someone had already fixed the bug, and the refactor can wait a week without harm, so it moved to Plan.
- Second logo round started in Delegate, because the designer's message said "by Wednesday please". Nothing depended on Wednesday except the designer's schedule, so it moved to Drop.
- Book venue for offsite started in Do now, because Dana likes picking venues. The date is real, but her taste isn't required, so it moved to Delegate.
What each box asks you to do next
A sorted list changes nothing until each box has a next step.
Do now means today or tomorrow, starting with whatever has the nearer date. Keep the box short. If it holds ten things, you've been too generous, so run the waiting-a-week question over each one again.
Plan means a slot in the calendar with a day and a time. This is the box where work goes missing, because nothing in it has a date. Dana blocks Wednesday morning for the hiring plan and two hours a week for the refactor. A task that sits in Plan with no slot for three Mondays is on its way to becoming a Do now, usually at a bad moment.
Delegate means a name and a date. Write both on the note, and say what done looks like. "Book a venue for 20 people on the 14th, under the budget in the sheet" can be finished without a follow-up question.
Drop means delete. Our template's steps suggest duplicating the board each week and clearing the boxes. A note that keeps landing in Drop can go for good.
The same boxes for a freelancer and a student
Both of these are invented too. The first is a freelance designer with three client projects and a tax deadline. The second is a student six weeks from an exam.
| Box | Freelance designer | Student |
|---|---|---|
| Do now | Final files for a client, due tomorrow. Tax return, due Friday | Essay due on Wednesday. Exam registration, which closes this week |
| Plan | Portfolio update. Finding a new client before a retainer ends in March | Revision timetable for the exam. Going over the topic that went badly in the mock |
| Delegate | Monthly invoicing, to a bookkeeper. Resizing images for a client's social posts, to a junior | Booking a room for the group project, to a teammate who passes the library daily |
| Drop | Redesigning her own logo. Replying to cold agency emails | Rewriting notes in neater handwriting. A third optional reading for a module with no exam |
Look at the Plan row. The portfolio and the revision timetable are the tasks that decide how the next six months go, and neither has a date on it this week. Left unsorted, both lose to anything with a deadline.
When you have nobody to delegate to
The four boxes assume you have someone to hand work to. An employee with no reports, a solo founder or a student may not. The Delegate box still works if you read it as "this is urgent for somebody, and it doesn't need my best hours".
Take an invented employee, Sami, whose urgent-but-not-important list is three items: an expense form due today, a status update for a call he doesn't speak on, and a request to review a slide deck. He has four options, in this order.
- Ask whether it has to happen at all. He asks to be taken off the call and to send two lines in writing instead.
- Give it back with a question. He tells the deck's owner he can look at one slide, and asks which.
- Automate or template it. A saved expense form takes less time next month.
- Batch what's left. He does it all in one half-hour block when his energy is low, so it doesn't break up the morning.
Using the matrix as a team
So far this guide has used the matrix for one person, and it also works as a team exercise when the question is what can wait. Put the team's tasks on a shared board, let each person say which box they'd choose for each task, and discuss only the ones people disagree about.
Those disagreements are useful. If a developer puts "Refactor billing" in Plan and a founder puts it in Do now, the two of them have different information about billing or different goals, and it's better to find that out on Monday. The outcome to aim for is one agreed Do now box, short enough that the team can name it from memory.
Where the name comes from
On 19 August 1954, President Eisenhower spoke to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, Illinois. The transcript has him "quoting the statement of a former college president", who said: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."
So the words were a quotation, and they came with no grid. Todoist's guide to the matrix says Stephen Covey, over three decades later, "repackaged Eisenhower's insights into a simple tool to prioritize tasks" in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The matrix also relaxes the original, because it has a box for tasks that are both urgent and important, which the college president said didn't exist.
You may also have seen the line "what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important". Quote Investigator traces it and finds that the earliest known version, the 1954 speech, has no "seldom" in it.
Eisenhower, impact effort or MoSCoW?
All three sort things into four groups, and they answer different questions.
| Method | What you're sorting | The question | Use it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eisenhower matrix | Tasks already on your list | What do I do this week, and what do I let go? | The list is too long and dates are pressing |
| Impact effort matrix | Ideas nobody has started | Which ideas repay the work? | You're choosing what to take on |
| MoSCoW | Requirements for one release | What goes in, and what's out this time? | A fixed date or budget forces a cut |
If you find you're moving ideas rather than tasks around an Eisenhower board, switch to impact and effort. Few ideas are urgent, so they'd pile up in Plan.
Frequently asked questions
What are the four quadrants of the Eisenhower matrix?
Urgent and important, which you do now. Important but not urgent, which you plan. Urgent but not important, which you delegate. Neither urgent nor important, which you drop.
Did Eisenhower invent the Eisenhower matrix?
Not as far as the record we read shows. In a 1954 speech he quoted a former college president on urgent and important problems, and that transcript has no grid. Todoist credits Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with turning the idea into a tool.
What is the difference between urgent and important?
Urgent is about time: something goes wrong soon if the task waits. Important is about goals: the task moves something you've committed to. A ringing phone is urgent. A hiring plan is important. Payroll on a Friday is both.
How often should you redo an Eisenhower matrix?
We'd redo it once a week, with a short look each morning at the Do now box. Tasks change boxes as dates get closer, so a matrix from last month is out of date.
Can you use an Eisenhower matrix for personal tasks?
Yes. The two questions work the same way, with your own goals in place of the company's. Booking a medical check-up with no date on it is a typical Plan task, and it's the kind that slips for a year.
Sort your own list
Write down every task first and sort them after, so the list doesn't shrink to what you remember. Open the Eisenhower matrix template, clear Dana's notes and add your own. Then give the Plan box its calendar slots before you start on Do now, since that's the step the week is most likely to squeeze out.