Tool details
Eisenhower's Principle
A tool helping you to identify which tasks and activities you should focus on and which yo should delegate and ignore.
Tool category:
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When to use
Anytime in a project.
Why you should
Prioritise and determine which of your activities are important and which could be deemed as distractions.
What you get
Priority list of your tasks.
Steps to take
List all your tasks and projects.
Divide your tasks into important and urgent. Important activities have an outcome that leads to achieving your goals. Urgent activities demand immediate attention and are associated with achieving someone else’s goals, they demand attention because consequences are immediate.
Put them in one of the four categories (listed below)
Further reading
The four categories to sort your tasks in are:
- Important and urgent – leave some free time in your schedule to handle those activities and look for patterns within. Avoid leftover tasks by better planning ahead.
- Important but not urgent – they help to achieve goals, ensure you have plenty of time for these.
- Not important but urgent – they prevent you from achieving your goals, can you reschedule or arrange a regular time to do them?
- Not important and not urgent – distracting and doesn’t contribute to goals, avoid them if possible.