Use the simple Eisenhower Matrix for effective time management

Eisenhower once said the urgent decisions are rarely the most important ones.  How many urgent things do you need to get through every day? Are they really urgent, we all have 101 things we need to do and not enough time. Use the simple matrix to help break down daily, weekly and monthly activities.  The “to do” list might be urgent but not important, use delegation wisely to free up your time. Make sure you deal with important tasks before they become urgent, apply this simple Eisenhower Matrix to help keep the mind uncluttered and to stop procrastination.

Consider keeping a daily tracker of a list of projects in an excel sheet with a column for the urgency and importance. You can also add a RAG rating to have a quick visual reference. I like to keep both an excel tracker and a One Note workbook, the excel sheet is used to give updates when I’m required to give a project status update, I don’t need to panic about the time to write something up or scrambling around for information because it’s always available at the click of a button.

One note is used like my paper notebook but instead, everything is online. It means the retrieval information is a lot quicker and easier to find.

Spend 5 mins a day working through the decision matrix to keep on top of the workload.

I once worked with a colleague who went to a lot of meetings and eventually got buried under a tonne of emails, he stopped answering them and his work started to suffer because he couldn’t see the wood for the trees. This happened to a highly competent individual with a sharp mind, poor time management can happen to any of us, act now it’s never too late!