Presidential Productivity to Improve Health, Happiness and Financial Wellness
Dwight Eisenhower purportedly managed the business of the presidency by managing his productivity — and ensuring that only things both urgent and important reached his desk. What has come to be know as “The Eisenhower Matrix” is a 2×2 decision-making grid. There are two axes — importance and urgency — that dictate how we should handle tasks.
Importance reflects an activity’s relationship to your core values. Urgency pertains to the magnitude of the consequences if you fail to take prompt action. Spending quality time with your family is important — scheduling a plumber to fix a leaky toilet is urgent. Saving money for retirement is important — paying your taxes on time is urgent.
According to the productivity matrix, you should do items that are both urgent and important (Quadrant I) right away. Anything that’s important but not urgent (Quadrant II) should be scheduled for later completion. Urgent but unimportant (Quadrant III) tasks can be delegated. And items that are neither important nor urgent (Quadrant IV) should be abandoned altogether. Ideally, you should aim to spend most of your time managing Quadrant II tasks.
We tend to conflate urgency with importance. When you deal mostly with the urgent, you end up living by the “tyranny of the now.” Urgent things often start out as important things that weren’t attended to in a timely fashion (e.g., when an overdue oil change eventually causes your engine to seize up).
Particularly as you start achieving greater success in an area of your life, appropriate prioritization of your time and attention in your personal productivity practice becomes increasingly important. So the next time you feel your schedule tugging at you, think about what’s urgent and what is important and think — and act — inside the box!
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