![]() Gather the team virtually or face to face and walk through the prompts for the different quadrants using Zoom whiteboards, or post-its and flip-charts. This important/urgent matrix can also be helpful when teams are lost and disorganized. We can also explore if some tasks can be converted into a quick win by completing them with reduced effort. For the remaining tasks, determine if postponing is the right call by assessing the negative impact and reversibility of consequences. You’ll want to find ways to close these out quickly. These to-dos can often easily be tackled with the help of others.įinally, the lower left corner is for tasks that are both less important and less urgent. ![]() You can accomplish these tasks by unblocking projects that will enable others to succeed, encouraging autonomy, or pairing up on a problem. These tasks are not central to your goals and are often opportunities for empowerment and teamwork. The lower right corner is for urgent tasks that are less important. Often, if these items are ignored, they will change from simmering on the back-burner to boiling over. Perhaps, you need to create a plan for strategic pivots on the horizon, set up post-launch customer interviews or check-in with a new hire. To prevent them from falling off your radar, schedule a specific time with an absolute, outer deadline. These are tasks that are key for you to reach your goals but don’t need to be done right away. The upper left corner is for tasks that are important, but less urgent. Source: Ellen Auster and Shannon Auster-Weiss Prioritizing When You’ve Got Too Many To-DosĪ 2×2 matrix to help you make decisions. They might be critical customer issues, or supplier inventory deadlines or to-dos that were pushed out from the week before and are now both important and urgent. Rather than talking about doing them again and again, tackle them head-on. These are the top priorities that are time-sensitive and critical to execute on. In the upper right hand corner you’ll place the tasks that are both important and urgent. Then consider how you measure urgency, whether by defining time frames (e.g., this morning, end of day, this week, this month) or consequences or benefits of completing or delaying tasks.įinally, you’ll need to plot your tasks on the matrix. This can include: probability of success, impact (outcome or leading indicators), competitive advantage, value alignment, cost, risk, or must-have versus nice-to-have. First, understand how you measure a task’s importance. Next, take some time to define the two axis. If that’s too overwhelming, try organizing to-dos by different projects, teams or spheres such as work, home, kids. ![]() Get them out of our head and onto some paper. Start by writing out a comprehensive “to-do” list including the tasks that are the hot topic of every meeting to the ones that keep you up at night. When you need to prioritize your assignments, this matrix can help you decide when you can delegate, eliminate, or postpone the less essential in order to focus on what is mission critical. On one axis is importance, and on the other is urgency. Covey popularized a matrix using these criteria which can be adapted for current conditions. In times of crises (as this is) Dwight Eisenhower, former US President and WW2 General focused on two criteria – importance and urgency. With all of this, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, leaving us unsure of where to begin. And now, just as we might be starting to find a rhythm, we need to layer on plans for some form of re-opening. On the home front, we continue to navigate a myriad of challenges: trying to stay productive, caring for our loved ones, and doing our best to stay healthy. It could be shifting to a remote work experience with our teams, struggling to retain and acquire customers, or ramping up to meet an explosion of demand. The coronavirus pandemic has forced many of us into constant and relentless triage of tasks and assignments. This version has been updated to reflect both Eisenhower and Stephen Covey’s popularization of the matrix. An earlier version of this article attributed urgency and importance to Dwight Eisenhower.
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