The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
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The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
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Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#2I’m to the point where if you can’t explain your point in a couple of paragraphs on a clickbaity title I’m gonna exit and then dismiss it as AI generated SEO slop and that’s what this feels like. Can anyone summarize?
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#3I’m to the point where if you can’t explain your point in a couple of paragraphs on a clickbaity title I’m gonna exit and then dismiss it as AI generated SEO slop and that’s what this feels like. Can anyone summarize?
Yes.
Divide a square into four quarters. Mark two rows as important and not important. And two columns as urgent and not urgent.
Try to bin all your tasks into these categories, and focus on the urgent and important ones. The rest can be decided later, delegated or thrown away.
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#4I’m to the point where if you can’t explain your point in a couple of paragraphs on a clickbaity title I’m gonna exit and then dismiss it as AI generated SEO slop and that’s what this feels like. Can anyone summarize?
Quoted:
Here’s a breakdown:
Do (urgent and important). Ng says these tasks are at the core of your job. They are the things you were hired to do and have an upcoming deadline attached to them. Make these your most important tasks.
Decide (not urgent but important). These tasks are core to your job and goals, too, but their deadline is much further out. Decide if you have the time to advance them, but only after you’ve finished your more urgent tasks.
Delegate (urgent but not important). These tasks have a deadline but aren’t core to your job responsibilities. Paperwork and office surveys live and breed in this quadrant. If you can, delegate these tasks to someone else. If not, don’t spend a lot of time on them. And if you find yourself running out of time, move them to the delete quadrant when possible.
Delete (neither urgent nor important). Ng says it best, “[These] are the things to get rid of because they’re just crowding out your desk space, your drive space, your head space and causing you to not be able to focus on what really matters.” Delete, and don’t look back.
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#5Everything that is needed to understand this concept:
https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/AdobeStock_4...
If you look at it thinking it would never work in practice for your situation...you're probably right. There's a lot of underlying assumptions, and as any simple and catchy idea, it only helps as much as nudge for you to find your own system to deal with your issues.
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#6I’m to the point where if you can’t explain your point in a couple of paragraphs on a clickbaity title I’m gonna exit and then dismiss it as AI generated SEO slop and that’s what this feels like. Can anyone summarize?
Quoted: Here’s a breakdown: Do (urgent and important). Ng says these tasks are at the core of your job. They are the things you were hired to do and have an upcoming deadline attached to them. Make these your most important tasks. Decide (not urgent but important). These tasks are core to your job and goals, too, but their deadline is much further out. Decide if you have the time to advance them, but only after you’v…
Seems like the obvious approach everyone would take...
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#7I’m to the point where if you can’t explain your point in a couple of paragraphs on a clickbaity title I’m gonna exit and then dismiss it as AI generated SEO slop and that’s what this feels like. Can anyone summarize?
Quoted: Here’s a breakdown: Do (urgent and important). Ng says these tasks are at the core of your job. They are the things you were hired to do and have an upcoming deadline attached to them. Make these your most important tasks. Decide (not urgent but important). These tasks are core to your job and goals, too, but their deadline is much further out. Decide if you have the time to advance them, but only after you’v…
> Delegate [...] Paperwork
The funny thing in real life is that paperwork and "boring" tasks can rarely be delegated or will need a cost/benefit analysis that becomes in itself a task.
For instance taxes. Will you pay an accountant for your taxes ? Either you have enough money to not care, either it's a non obvious trade-off and you need to decide how much you'd be paying vs how much your own time costs and what opportunity you'd lose/gain from there (including not getting fine grained knowledge about how your taxes work)
Or for our field, PR/MR reviews. where do they fall, and will you spend time on them or pass the bucket ?
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted: Here’s a breakdown: Do (urgent and important). Ng says these tasks are at the core of your job. They are the things you were hired to do and have an upcoming deadline attached to them. Make these your most important tasks. Decide (not urgent but important). These tasks are core to your job and goals, too, but their deadline is much further out. Decide if you have the time to advance them, but only after you’v…
Seems like the obvious approach everyone would take...
People aren’t born with this knowledge. Everything we know is learned…
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that everything I’ve learned is something younger or newer people are learning or haven’t learned yet.
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#9This is not a productivity hack.
It is how you're supposed to do things. Indeed, it is how most people on Earth accomplish every single task in their life whether they realize it or not.
I wish I was morally bankrupt enough to be a productivity guru. I could, like, charge $50k to stand behind a podium in a hotel ballroom and spout nonsense at desperate people in an attempt to get them to buy my book and planners. It would be awesome.
Re: The "Eisenhower matrix" productivity hack
#10This isn't really an Eisenhower thing.
Eisenhower's approach, as both a general and president, was to assemble a very good staff and delegate, while monitoring how things were going. Staff, not line. Line managers in the military are unit commanders at various levels. Staff officers, derided though they tend to be, are extensions of the commander for whom they work. They have to be very competent but less ambitious than line commanders.
"The Hidden-Hand Presidency" (1982) is the best overview of how Eisenhower got things done. Eisenhower was probably the only person ever to be overqualified for the US presidency. Holding the Allied coalition together while winning WWII in Europe was a tougher job. As president, he was fairly relaxed and not overworked, while accomplishing an incredible amount.
He wasn't as laid back as people thought at the time. He wrote clear, incisive directives for his staff and Cabinet. It took a long time before Eisenhower's work was properly analyzed, partly because the Eisenhower Library is in Abilene, Kansas, and few historians wanted to spend a few years there going through the files.