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The Eisenhower Matrix · Humanity Working

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, Paul, this one keeps coming up in client work, the Eisenhower Matrix.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make sure we're using it the right way.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Did Eisenhower actually invent it or did we retrofit his quote into a tool?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Matt.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess let's start with what it is for people that are uh that are not fully familiar with it.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you've ever seen a presentation from a business consultant anywhere worth their salt, you've seen something called a two by two.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So a two by two is is it's got four quadrants.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: The four quadrants mean something different.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've created a fair few two by twos in my uh in my time, uh, and our brains can kind of naturally adjust to it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there'll be a couple of different dimensions and so on.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ice Now Matrix is a good example of that.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the two dimensions uh are urgency and importance.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you think about that, you've got these two axes, uh a important axis and an urgent axis.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And though the idea is that those four quadrants, urgent and important, urgent and not important, not important and urgent, and not important and not urgent, they demand our attention in different ways.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So why is it called the Eisenhower Matrix?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is uh it is related to our former uh allied general in the Second World War and two-time president Dwight D.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Eisenhower.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is that, it is that Eisenhower.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We ask that we get asked that question a lot.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he didn't invent it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um what he did was come up with um with a phrase.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the phrase, uh just recently actually wrote an article about this.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: We'll pop them, pop them in the sh in the show notes.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the phrase um paraphrased here in this podcast, because I don't have in front of it, um, is that he had somebody mention to him that uh that they often found that things that were urgent were not important and things that were important were not urgent.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: That was the phrase.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it was meant it was in a speech uh to um uh actually in a religious setting in a speech um about something that had got nothing to do with this, and it was a you know a short line and a much longer speech.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he returned to the idea like once or twice in a you know a couple of articles and things like that, but never really beyond that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: There was one other uh time where he was uh talking about the fact that um leaders often had to deal with things that were urgent ahead of those uh those things that were important, and that that was a challenge.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but nothing along the lines of the matrix that I just described.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, fast forward to uh gosh, I think probably the early 80s, and Stephen Covey, somebody who uh many of us will be familiar with, um, and uh I've read every book he's got.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he wrote a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably his most famous book.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: In that book, there is a chapter, uh chapter three, I think it is, uh, called First Things First.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in that book that Covey creates uh the Eisenhower Matrix and credits uh Eisenhower's inspiration for that matrix.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of that's kind of like uh how it all came about.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it is, if you like, a retrofit of a quote into a tool.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the question of bigger question, of course, is is how useful is that tool?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So when you first tried it, uh what worked and kind of what fell apart in real life, real application?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I will say one thing.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when I first encountered the Eisenhower matrix, for me personally, it was kind of game-changing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and even though it is like super, super simple, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the concept behind it really is um you've got stuff, not all that stuff is the same.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and the stuff that is urgent and important is probably the stuff you should do first.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then quickly followed by the stuff that is important.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in Covey's book, they talk about the idea that it's you know, that you do now, the stuff you do, uh, the stuff that is important but not urgent, you schedule, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and that's an important piece of it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's often missed, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: They say do now, do later, but not just do later, but schedule.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, find, you know, find time to do it and actually do it, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other uh two quadrants are are dealt with a little bit differently, and we, you know, if we've got time, we'll get we'll get into that.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I won't get into them right now because they're not as important.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So but uh but I found I personally found it like even just as a mindset aid, like incredibly valuable because before then, personally, I would see a to-do list and I just work my way through it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now I never see a to-do list.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: What I see when I'm uh when I'm working through things is a set of priorities that need to be worked through.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: That in itself is hugely valuable.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So say I'm drowning in tasks.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's the simplest way to apply the idea today without over-engineering quadrants?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the first thing.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Don't uh don't over-engineer the quadrants, right?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: We like our one of the things that was really, really interesting to us in my company is I loved I love theory as much as the next person.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: My degree's in pure mathematics.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you that anybody that's got a degree in pure mathematics, they'll tell you everything you need to know.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't like practical stuff, right?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: But but for the purposes of my company, we do love practical stuff.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things we wanted to find out early on was number one, how are people using the eyes and how matrix?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, is does it actually work for them?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what we found, and this is something that I would urge people to avoid, is that the point you made about over-engineering quadrants, um do not take this thing too literally.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so this is where I will mention the four quadrants.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Theoretically, do now, urgent and important, uh, schedule, uh important but not urgent, delegate, which is the ones that are uh not important but urgent, and then delete is the there's lots of diesel.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Delete, which is the the ones that are not urgent, not important.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Two problems with using it in uh in the way in which it in that way specifically and taking those things literally.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The first is it kind of assumes that you've got enough time to work through all of that, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're drowning in stuff to do, yeah.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't we don't have time to get beyond the top part of that, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: The stuff that is urgent and important and important.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: If we've done all the stuff that's urgent and important and we've done the stuff that's important, we're doing better than 99% of people, right?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: The delegate stuff, right?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: People that are taking it literally get really hung up about this because they've worked their way through the urgent and important stuff, which they have to do now.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if they want to actually delegate the stuff that is important but uh not urgent, um they've got to get to that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if they want to, if they want to delegate the stuff that is urgent but not important, um that means figuring out if it is important to somebody else, figuring out who to delegate it to.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then you gotta explain it to them.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and when are you gonna do that?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you if you've been spending all your time doing those other things, by the time you get to it, you've probably passed the urgent window anyway.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is a uh this is sort of where it starts to fall down when people when people take picture.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go ahead.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was wondering too, is there ever a time when any of those quadrants in today's they're never gonna be empty.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Something else is gonna slot into it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Precisely, yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what you want to do is you want to build systems that allow people to pick up the stuff that is important and urgent to them.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where shared cambans and things like that, like that come into play.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you do not want to take on the responsibility of dealing with the delegation of uh delegation of those things.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so it pushes us towards, ironically, a pull system, right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: It pushes us towards a system where it's visible, it's available, and if it's important to somebody and urgent for somebody, they'll be able to pick it up.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to have those systems in place.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have your uh your team structured in uh in such a way in which it uh it works well.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing I think is um you just need to be in a position where you're using it as a means of me uh of, if you like, measuring yourself, right?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, your goal is to have less and less and less in that important and urgent phase, because with the very, very, very tiny number of exceptions, almost everything that is urgent and important was once just important.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there are like we were as a team, we were working through scenarios to try to figure out like, are there any, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess, and and we came up with earthquakes, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because earthquakes you can't necessarily predict, right?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But they're extremely uh like how you respond to them is is urgent, how you the specifics of how you respond to them in the moment are urgent and important at that time.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but all the preparation you do, obviously, is is not urgent and important, it's just it's just important.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um that's an that's an example, but that there are so few and far between of situations where there is no warning, there's nothing, uh there's nothing that you get to before stuff becomes urgent and important.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really useful as a tool to kind of like measure the effectiveness of your work, both as an individual and as a team.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and since we're probably pulled towards urgent, yeah.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: You have to design around that somehow to so the importance still happens.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is actually um where team dynamics come into play and where that crucial word schedule comes uh comes into play and not do, not just do later, which is what uh which is what you see in many of the many of the models.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so schedule is vital.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um when I work with teams specifically, I'll start by looking at the priorities that they have as a team.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing I'll say is like, you've told me that all of these priorities are important.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Are they?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are they actually all important?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or have you written six because you think you should have six?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or have you written seven because you think you want a stretch goal in there or something on those, right?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they're not important, they're not gonna get done anyway.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So why, so why have them there?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: If they are important, then that implies scheduling, regular scheduling, to make sure that they're done.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they're not, there will be an implicit order that you create, an incl implicit prioritization order, and the things that are at the bottom of that prioritization order will drop off the calendar.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: We did an experiment early on, and we were looking at the amount of time that people spend on various aspects of their life.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you got below two hours a week of time that you intended to spend on something at the start at the start of a week, the likelihood of you spending any time on it dropped down to almost zero.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd made this implicit thing.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'll spend an hour a week on it.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And by spending an hour a week on it, your hour becomes zero.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's like people who work out one day a week.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Most often that's zero days a week.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if you work out five days a week, you're probably gonna be able to sustain that better.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's counterintuitive because that's more effort.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is that you've you've told yourself and you've told others that this is important to you.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're working out one day a week, you're telling yourself and others that it's not that important.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So what's what's what's one to zero, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that that's what you kind of have to do from a team dynamic as well.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We say this is important.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna show that it's important by scheduling it, um, and we're gonna devote enough time to it that we can move the needle forward on it on a weekly basis.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And in that team dynamic at a team level, what tells you that the group is maturing from reactive to proactive and maybe like one ritual or something that helps them get there if they're not?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that question.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we've sort of like alluded a little bit to this as teams already, but that that's that's actually where the Eisenhower matrix is super, super valuable and probably just about its most valuable, right?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: If I can measure the the number of things or the amount of time that I'm spending on activities that are urgent and important, and I can measure that from week to week and month to month, I'm maturing as a team when that number, that amount of time gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something an entire team can get behind.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because like nobody loves fighting fires, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we say fires are preventable.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Fires in our language here are things that are urgent and important.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna we're gonna track it, we're gonna see how much urgent and important stuff we do.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're doing less of it, um, then we're maturing as a team.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: If we're doing more of it, we're gonna get to root causes.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And next time, we're gonna make sure we are doing less of it.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the most interesting thing about it, Matt.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So once once teams start to do that, they go into this thinking that it's all external forces, right?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing to do with them, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's all it's all the external stuff.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and yet, if they do that, go through this exercise, once they start to get the urgent important quadrant down, the amount of time that they're spending on urgent and important down, it tends to stay down, regardless of what happens to what, regardless of what happens to those urgent important things, because the people inside the team are motivated to keep it that way.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the um those two, those things are directly related, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your maturity as a team and the amount of time you spend in that urgent important quadrant.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you said ritual, so I'll I'll address that briefly as well.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the ritual is actually a really simple one, which is throw that at the start of a team of your team meeting at least once a month, right?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And where everybody's kind of reviewing what they are, and get people into the habit of like, even if it's just a a note that they mark down or whatever, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've I did this much work in the urgent and important quadrant this week, this day, this month.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can track all of that up together and then measure it at a team level.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then reward people as and when you're doing less of that urgent and important stuff.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Got some work to do.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, sir.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Good, good episode.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Matt.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 15:25
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• 15:29
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• 15:31
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