The Eisenhower matrix: sort tasks by urgent and important

The Eisenhower matrix sorts your tasks by two questions, is it urgent and is it important, so the loud tasks stop winning by default. Some tasks shout: the ringing phone, the email marked urgent, the form due by five. Others whisper: exercise, the conversation you've been meaning to have, the savings plan. The shouting ones usually win.

Where it comes from

The name comes from Dwight D. Eisenhower, the general and later US president. In August 1954, speaking to the World Council of Churches at Northwestern University, he passed on a remark from an unnamed former college president about two kinds of problems: "The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." The smoother version people quote today, with "seldom", came later.

Eisenhower never drew a matrix, and there's no record of him sorting tasks into four boxes. The grid was made widely known by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). He drew it as four quadrants and argued that most of us spend too little time on the important but not urgent ones. The version with the labels Do, Schedule, Delegate and Delete came after that, and it's the one usually called the Eisenhower matrix.

How it works

Draw a square with four boxes. One side asks "Is it important?" The other asks "Is it urgent?"

1. Do: important and urgent. A deadline today, a real emergency. Do these first.
2. Schedule: important but not urgent. Health, learning, planning, relationships. Give these a day, or they never happen.
3. Delegate: urgent but not important to you. Someone needs it soon, but it doesn't need you. Hand it on.
4. Delete: neither. Let it go.

Then go through your list and put every task in a box.

Why it works

• "Is this pressing?" and "Does this matter?" feel like one question. Splitting them is most of the value.
• It protects the second box. Covey's point was that important, not urgent work is where life improves, and it's the box urgent things crowd out.
• A whole box called Delete gives you permission to drop things.
• It's quick. Sorting ten tasks takes about two minutes.

Where it falls short

• Delegating needs someone to delegate to. Many people, especially outside work, have nobody. That box often ends up as "do it later, quickly".
• On a bad day everything feels important. If every task lands in Do, be stricter: important to your goals, not to someone else's inbox.
• Four boxes say what kind of task something is, not which one to do first. You still need a ranked list.
• A task in Schedule today may be in Do next week, so sort again now and then.

Each box in Noodle

Noodle's Plan is a short ranked list per day, not a grid. The sorting happens on paper or in your head, and each box becomes an action in the app.

Make it a habit

• Sort once a week. A Sunday or Monday sort is enough for most people; on other days, just rank.
• Watch the Schedule box. If it's empty, you're living in Do. Give one important, not urgent task a day this week.
• A task showing "Carried 3 days" that never becomes urgent is often a Delete in disguise. When Reschedule or drop appears, consider Drop it.
• Your most dreaded Do task is a good candidate for eat the frog.

For a built-in filter that drops tasks as they slide, see bullet journal migration, and daily planning methods, compared for every method side by side.