A new application of the Eisenhower Principle

A few years ago, when I was working as a project manager, I developed a variation on this system which introduces more granularity into the list, providing a more accurate guide on what order to tackle a long list of tasks (it works particularly well for to-do lists of over 100 items).

Also, rather than prioritising important tasks at all times, it recognizes that urgency is itself a form of value, and weights it equally with importance.

Here’s how it works.

Start with your flat list of tasks. Create three columns next to the list. Let the first column be “importance”, let the second one be “urgency”, and let the third one be “priority”.

Step 1

First, go through and rate each task from 1 to 5 for importance. 1 is most important, and 5 is not important at all. Remember what importance isn’t. A task doesn’t become important just because it becomes urgent: it has the same importance regardless of when it is due.

Essentially, what we are asking when rating importance is this: which task would matter the least if it didn’t get done at all? Here’s an example:

Step 2

Next, go down the list again and rate for urgency, again using 1 to 5: 1 is most urgent, and 5 is least urgent. This is, by definition, a rating of how urgent these tasks are right now: depending on the kind of work you do, you might need to re-score for urgency weekly, daily, or maybe even twice daily. But once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s a very fast exercise.

Step 3

Finally – here’s the crucial bit – fill out the third column by multiplying the importance and urgency scores together. In the resulting list, you’ll have values ranging from 1 to 25. Simply do the lowest numbered items first!

Take control of your tasks

The advantage of this more granular system is that it recognizes that, in the real world, there is sometimes a need to do urgent tasks even when they’re not that important. Sometimes deadlines are non-negotiable, regardless of what we think of the work at hand.

This is particularly true when you are primarily accountable to the expectations of someone else (e.g. your boss, or a client) rather than solely to your own assessment of how valuable a task or project is.

In the version above, importance and urgency are given equal weighting, which is intended as an improvement on the reactive, urgency-dominated way in which most of us have learned to work. However, you could also choose to weight them differently.

“Hang on,” you might say, “at this rate I will never got to the stuff rated 20 or 25!”

Well, exactly. But surely that's better than never getting to the important stuff – which is how many of us spend our days, leading us too often into exhausting and unfulfilling patterns of work. There is another way!

Drowning in deadlines?

Download our free task prioritization template! Take a copy of the doc and use it to organise your work (and life). Instructions are included.

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