# The Eisenhower matrix: how to decide what deserves your time

> Sort tasks by importance and urgency into four boxes: do now, schedule, delegate, drop. How the method works, a worked example and the usual mistakes.

Source: https://priortasks.com/guides/eisenhower-matrix/
Last updated: 2026-11-05

The Eisenhower matrix sorts tasks with two questions. Does this matter for what you are trying to achieve? Does it need to happen soon? The answers put each task in one of four boxes, and each box has its own rule: do it now, schedule it, hand it off, or drop it.

## Where it comes from

On 19 August 1954, in Evanston, Illinois, Dwight Eisenhower spoke to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches. He was US president, and he described how he sorted problems: "The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." He credited the idea to an unnamed former college president, as [Quote Investigator](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/09/urgent/) found when it traced the line.

The grid came later. Stephen Covey drew it as four quadrants in *The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People* (1989) and argued that most of your effort belongs in the box for important work that is not urgent. Quote Investigator could not say whether Eisenhower used a grid himself, so "Eisenhower matrix" is a name, not a record of his habits.

## Why it works

Urgent and important are different things. Urgent is about time: a deadline, a person waiting, a notification. Important is about consequences: whether the task moves something you care about. Urgency is quick to feel. Importance is not, so urgency wins by default.

Experiments back this up. In five studies reported by Meng Zhu, Yang Yang and Christopher Hsee in the *Journal of Consumer Research* (2018), people chose tasks with a lower payoff over tasks with a higher payoff when the low-payoff tasks only looked urgent. The authors call it the mere urgency effect.

The second reason is the box in the top right. Work that is important but not urgent has no deadline pushing it, so it waits until it becomes urgent, and then it costs more. The matrix gives that work a box and a rule: choose a day and a time now.

## How to use it

1. **List what is on your plate.** Everything you could do this week, in one place.
2. **Ask whether it is important.** A task is important when doing it moves a goal you care about, or when skipping it has a cost you would not accept. If you cannot name the goal or the cost, it is not important.
3. **Ask whether it is urgent.** A task is urgent when it has to happen in the next day or two, or someone is already waiting for it. Answer with a date, not a feeling.
4. **Put it in a box and apply the rule** from the table below.
5. **Sort again tomorrow morning.** Dates move tasks between boxes, so the grid is a snapshot, not a filing system.

| Box | Rule | Example |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Do now: important and urgent | Do it today, before anything else. | Send the invoice that is three days late. |
| Schedule: important, not urgent | Pick a day and a time, and protect it. | Write the proposal due in two weeks. |
| Delegate: urgent, not important | Hand it over, answer in two lines, or say no. | A call about a supplier's product that you will not buy. |
| Later: neither | Leave it, or delete it. | Tidy the old downloads folder. |

Here is a Monday for a freelancer with six items. The invoice is three days late and money depends on it: do now. The client's logo files are due tomorrow: do now. The proposal is due in two weeks and decides next quarter's work: schedule it for Wednesday, 10:00 to 12:00. A supplier wants a call about their product: urgent for them, not important for you, so decline politely. Reorganizing old files and a newsletter idea: later. The day has two things to finish and one slot protected for the work that matters most.

## Mistakes to avoid

- **Everything lands in "do now".** If that box holds more than you can finish today, the sort has not done its job. Ask which items would still matter if they had no deadline.
- **Never scheduling the second box.** Give each important, not urgent task a date and a time the moment you sort it.
- **Borrowing someone else's urgency.** A message marked "urgent" is urgent for the sender. Check it against your own goals.
- **Delegating to nobody.** If you work alone, read "delegate" as: shrink it, automate it, or say no.
- **Sorting for too long.** Five minutes is enough. A task that takes a minute to place is probably not clear yet: rewrite it first.

## When it is the wrong tool

- **When the problem is how much you have, not what comes first.** Sorting does not create hours. If "do now" alone fills your week, you are over capacity: cut, move deadlines or ask for help. [Time blocking](https://priortasks.com/guides/time-blocking/) shows whether a week fits.
- **When tasks depend on each other.** The order comes from the dependencies, not from importance. Use a plan or a board.
- **When you do not know what matters.** The matrix cannot tell you. Without a goal, "important" is a guess. A [weekly review](https://priortasks.com/guides/weekly-review/) is the place to settle it.
- **For a short list of routine tasks.** Do them.

## In Prior

Prior sorts for you. Tasks have no "important" or "urgent" checkbox: the matrix reads two fields.

- **Important** means priority P1 or P2. Lists name the priorities Urgent, High, Medium and Low, but in the matrix the priority only says how much a task matters.
- **Urgent** means a due date that is overdue, today or within the next 2 days. A task with no due date is never urgent.

Open **Priority lens** in the sidebar. The page is titled **Priorities** and shows four boxes: **Do now**, **Schedule**, **Delegate** and **Later**. On a narrow screen they stack. If Priority lens is missing from your sidebar, turn it on in **Settings → General → Navigation**.

A few things to know:

- **Tasks move by themselves.** A P2 task due in ten days sits in Schedule. Two days before its date it moves to Do now.
- **Moving a task changes only what the rule needs.** Drag it to another box, or use **Move to quadrant** in its menu. Prior sets the priority to P2 to make it important or P3 to make it not important, and sets the due date to today to make it urgent or to a day past the 2-day window to make it not urgent. A toast says what changed, and Undo puts it back.
- **The + on a box adds a task already in that box.**
- **Active or All.** **Active** shows open tasks. **All** adds the completed ones.

The steps are in [Use the Eisenhower matrix](https://priortasks.com/docs/tasks/eisenhower-matrix/). [Priorities](https://priortasks.com/docs/tasks/priorities/) and [due dates](https://priortasks.com/docs/tasks/due-dates-and-times/) explain the two fields it reads.