Eisenhower Matrix

For small business owners, there is never a shorter of tasks to complete. It can sometimes be overwhelming to try to decide which task should be first on your list. Below, I’m going to walk you through a useful prioritization method called the “Eisenhower Matrix”.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a great option for thinking about the priority of your tasks. The idea behind this strategy was created by former American president Dwight D. Eisenhower as a way to manage the never-ending high stakes work of the presidency. The basic idea was then transformed into a task management by author Stephen Covey who wrote the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” (You can learn more about the history of the Eisenhower Matrix here, if you are interested. )

The Eisenhower Matrix divides tasks by answering two basic questions -

1. Is it urgent?
2. Is it important?

For urgency, you’ll want to think about how quickly a particular task needs to be completed. Does it matter if it happens today or two weeks from now? For importance, you’ll really want to think about the big picture. Is completing this task something that has a major impact on your business?

After answering those two questions, you’ll be able to place your tasks on a basic grid.  Now, the grid is broken down into four sections - “urgent and important,” “not urgent, but important,” “not important, but urgent, and “not important but urgent.” You can see what I mean in the grid below:

Now, actually saying “Not important, but urgent” or “Urgent, but important” is kind of a mouthful and hard to remember. So instead, these four categories can be broken up into four basic ideas based on their urgency and importance “Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Delete.”

As a small business owner, your time is precious. The Eisenhower Matrix is designed to encourage you to prioritize those urgent and important tasks in your “Do” category and not get bogged down by tasks in the other categories. It’s especially helpful for those “not urgent, but important” tasks which are easy to put off in favor of tasks that feel more immediately important but aren’t actually that important.

Now, as great as the Eisenhower Matrix is, it isn’t the most practical in an increasingly digital world - you probably don’t want to fill a million post-it notes with your tasks. But we can adapt the Eisenhower Matrix to work with LACRM.

So, to use the Eisenhower Matrix with LACRM, you’ll start by creating four new calendars in LACRM to help organize your tasks:

Name these calendars after the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix (Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Delete.) Or customize the wording to suit your preferences. You’ll want to leave your original calendar as a sort of inbox for unsorted tasks.

If you aren’t sure how to create new calendars in LACRM, take a look at this tutorial.

After creating the calendars, navigate to your task report. Then, simply run through your task list, keeping the idea of urgency and importance in mind. Quickly run through the list, toggling your tasks to the appropriate calendar.

Once you’ve run through your list, you’ll have an ultra organized task list on your workspace. (And a bunch of tasks under the “delete” section” that you can just get rid of!)

I especially recommend this technique to anyone who has a long list of overdue tasks in their CRM. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things you want to get done! This idea will also help give you an idea of the tasks that aren’t actually that vital to your business - you’ll notice if there is a type of task you keep creating and then keep transferring to the “Delete” calendar.

While this technique worked for Eisenhower, you aren’t limited by these four categories! For example, “delegate” doesn’t make much sense if you are someone who works solo. The idea is simply to think critically about the importance and urgency of each task so you don’t end up focusing on things that don’t really help you and your business. You can learn about more ideas for using your calendars to sort your tasks here if you are interested.