Prioritizing and Completing Tasks

Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th President of the USA, was one of the most accomplished individuals. He had led the United States Army in WWII, five-star general, NATO Supreme Commander, and launched DARPA (which created the internet), NASA, and the Interstate Highway System in the USA.

For many decades, he consistently accomplished his goals, and his methods of task management have helped many.

His prioritization method is called the “Eisenhower Matrix.” I have been using this method with a small variation.

Create a box like in the diagram above. In these four boxes, important and urgent tasks go in the top left box. Important but not urgent tasks - tasks that need to happen regularly or long-horizon tasks go in the top right box. You should delegate urgent but not important tasks to leaders in your organization. This small variation that I employ daily transfers tasks from the top right into this box and empowers individuals in my organization that could accomplish them. This process helps me grow the Solvative team mentor the upcoming leaders in the organization. Tasks that are not urgent or not important should be reduced or eliminated. For example, social media is top on this list. You are known by the company you keep. Follow the right accounts on social media, and you are good. Avoid engaging with trolls on social media.

Another way to read the plan labels is: Do now, decide when to do it, delegate it to your organization and mentor for success, and defer or delete it the task.

Urgent and important may look similar at first. Urgent tasks must be done while important tasks directly contribute to the long term success of the organization.

The best way to get something done is not to do it at all. Categorizing the tasks at hand in these four blocks helps eliminate the non-critical tasks.

For the tasks that are delegated, please keep track of them in weekly or monthly meetings. Please provide feedback and let the team iterate over them.

Please create a new matrix every few weeks and keep it updated. This matrix helps me put things in perspective, and I hope it does the same for you.

Let me know what productivity hacks work for you over @kunjanshah