Eisenhower Matrix (Urgent vs Important Task Sorter)

About the Eisenhower Matrix (Urgent vs Important Task Sorter)

Paste or type your task list and sort it with two questions — is it urgent? and is it important? — into four quadrants: do now (urgent and important), schedule (important, not urgent), delegate (urgent, not important) and drop (neither). Answer the questions one task at a time, or drag the tasks between the quadrants; add a due date, the day and time to do a scheduled task, and the person a delegated one goes to.

The matrix counts what is in each quadrant and says what the list shows: how much of it is urgent but not important — work to hand over, batch or refuse — and how little is important but not urgent, the planning and prevention that stop tomorrow’s crises. Everything is kept in this browser.

Without a pass, the list, the questions, the quadrants and the counts work in full and the printable page shows as a free preview. A Pro pass unlocks the one-page PDF and printing, the calendar file (.ics) of your scheduled tasks, the CSV, the text and the hand-over of the rest to the To-Do List.

Common uses

• Sort a long Monday-morning list into what to do today, what to plan and what to hand over.
• Check how much of your week goes on urgent but unimportant work.
• Prepare a one-to-one with your manager about what you could delegate or drop.
• Put the important work you keep postponing into your calendar.

Urgent or important?

• Urgent depends on time: it needs doing soon, there is a deadline, or someone is waiting. As FranklinCovey’s page on Habit 3, “Put First Things First” puts it, whether something is urgent depends on how soon it needs to be done.
• Important depends on what it moves forward: your goals, your values, your responsibilities. A ringing phone is urgent; an important task is often quiet.

Answer each question on its own. A task that feels pressing is not important just because it is urgent, and an important task does not become less so because it has no deadline.

The four quadrants

• Do now — urgent and important: crises, deadlines, problems that cannot wait. Do them first.
• Schedule — important, not urgent: planning, prevention, learning, relationships. Give each a day and a time, or it waits until it becomes urgent.
• Delegate — urgent, not important: interruptions, many requests and meetings that someone else can handle. Hand them over, batch them, or say no.
• Drop — neither: busywork and distractions. Remove them, or leave them for last.

The layout is the time management matrix of Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which puts the best return on time in the important-but-not-urgent quadrant.

Why it is called the Eisenhower matrix

The name comes from a remark of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in an address in Evanston, Illinois quoted a former college president: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” The remark has no grid in it: the four quadrants are the matrix built on the same two questions, known under many names — the Eisenhower box, the urgent–important matrix, the priority matrix.

What happens to each quadrant

• Do now tasks and delegated ones (as “Follow up with …”) go to the To-Do List, with scheduled tasks that have no day yet.
• Scheduled tasks with a day go to your calendar as events: with a time, at that clock time wherever you are; without one, as all-day events. You can add the due dates of the other tasks as all-day events too.
• The CSV has every task with its quadrant, answers, dates and person, for a spreadsheet.
• The page shows the four quadrants with their open tasks, landscape on one sheet.

Limitations

• Urgent and important are your own judgements: the matrix sorts by your answers, it does not judge the tasks.
• Tasks are kept in this browser on this device: save a backup to move them, and there are no reminders other than the calendar file’s events.
• Up to 200 tasks. The page holds what fits in each quadrant and says how many more there are; the CSV holds everything.
• The PDF draws Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Vietnamese letters; text in other scripts shows as “?” there. The CSV and the text keep it.

Privacy

On this device; its files download once

Everything happens in your browser. Your tasks are kept in this browser’s storage on this device and are never uploaded.