010 | The Eisenhower Matrix: How to Customize this Time-management Tool for Teachers' Needs

From Chaos to Clarity: Organizing Your Teaching Tasks with Purpose

Are you struggling to manage your ever-growing to-do list as a teacher? Do you find yourself constantly tackling easy tasks while neglecting the important ones that truly matter? It's time to revolutionize your approach to productivity with a powerful tool: the Eisenhower Matrix.

In this episode of the Productivity for Teachers podcast, we explore how this simple yet effective strategy can help you prioritize tasks, focus on what's truly important, and reclaim control over your time.

Download the Productivity for Teachers version of the matrix: https://www.productiveteacher.academy/resources 

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Transcript

Hi teacher friends. Dr. Sarah here. Thanks for joining me today. I am really happy that you're here. Today we're going to talk about one strategy you can use to make sense of your to do list and focus on what matters. So here is a common issue. When we just have a to do list without a way of categorizing or prioritizing the tasks on that list, then it is difficult to know where to start. And in that kind of situation we are often tempted to go for the low hanging fruit, the easy stuff to check off the list. But it is often those easy tasks that do very little, if anything at all to move us forward and to move us forward on working on our long term goals. The things that really matter. Here's an example. I often hear people around me talk about email. Email is time consuming and it can be overwhelming. I totally get it. Unfortunately, writing and answering emails is also part of our professional duty. In my humble opinion, the quickest way for others to lose respect for us as professionals is when we stop taking care of our email inbox. Email strategies will be the subject of a future episode, but the point today is when we don't have a system in place for categorizing and prioritizing our to do list, we tend to go for the easy stuff first. Answering emails, for the most part, is easy and we know we need to do it. We are being professional, so that's where we often start our day. We tell ourselves we are doing what needs to be done, and it is true, it does need to be done. But if we start with something like email, which is usually neither particularly urgent nor especially important in the grand scheme of things, we do very little to move things forward in truly important areas like big projects and complex tasks. The Eisenhower Matrix does not advocate neglecting your email inbox. That's not what we're talking about today. Absolutely not. But it does help us figure out when we should work on things like email and for how long. So let's jump in. The Eisenhower Matrix is roughly attributed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He said in a speech in 1955, I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. So Stephen Covey, the famous Author of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, took those words and developed what is now known as the Eisenhower Matrix. So the matrix helps us categorize and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance. And later in this episode, we will reframe those words to make a little bit more sense for Our teaching lives. But the basic Eisenhower matrix is represented by important and not important and urgent and not urgent. So if you will imagine with me a matrix with four quadrants where the vertical axis is important and not important and the horizontal axis is urgent and not urgent. Then the quadrant in the upper left becomes urgent and important. So that is the do first or the do now quadrant. Then the quadrant in the upper right is the important but not urgent quadrant. It is the schedule that tasks or those tasks quadrant. I prefer to think of it as the four focus my attention here if possible quadrant. And then the bottom left quadrant. A lot of people who use the Eisenhower matrix call this quadrant the delegate quadrant. And that's not really possible for us teachers. But for now we'll go with that. And I'll tell you later how I like to think of it. But that quadrant is the urgent but not important quadrant. And then the quadrant in the lower right is labeled by some the delete quadrant. And I also kind of disagree with that. So we'll talk about that in a minute. But that quadrant is the neither urgent or important quadrant. So it is the least kind of important quadrant of the four. So again, the top left left is urgent and important. Top right is important but not urgent. Bottom left urgent but not important. And bottom right is neither urgent nor important. So let's talk a little bit more in detail about each quadrant. So quadrant one is kind of like the crisis quadrant, right? It is the do now quadrant. It is the I have to take care of this right now quadrant. And we definitely can't afford to ignore anything that is in that quadrant. And so that might be. Your students just took exams and grades are due in two days. Yeah, you gotta get to grading. You couldn't do it before they took the exam. Right. But now they've taken the exam and the grades are due in 48 hours, you're going to be focusing on grading for sure. Those are examples of things that are in quadrant one. Other things that we have procrastinated on often end up in quadrant one as well. Now quadrant two is why I love the Eisenhower matrix so much. These are the things that are long term projects. They are really important, they are aligned with your long term goals. And we often push them off because they often involve complex tactics tasks. A lot of deep thinking, a lot of uninterrupted time is required to complete these tasks. A lot of focus time is what we need. And all of those things are difficult to come by. So we tend to kind of push tasks like that off from day to day until they become urgent and end up in Quadrant one. So Quadrant two is those really important things. And we'll talk in a minute about how we can kind of shift our mindset so that we spend more time in Quadrant two, which eventually will then reduce the tasks that we have in Quadrant one. So if you are using the Eisenhower matrix effectively and you've been doing it for a while, then Quadrant one will usually get filled with things that others kind of dumped on you or things like the grading example that we just used, things that you cannot do ahead of time and they have a very short turnaround. And obviously those are the things you need to take care of right away. But using the matrix effectively means that you are working on and prioritizing in things Quadrant two every day, those long term projects, those things that are aligned with your big, big goals. You are prioritizing them every day so that you can do them well, you can give them your undivided attention, you can really move them forward before they end up in Quadrant one. In other words, if you focus on Quadrant two first, or you at least spend some time every day in Quadrant two, then Quadrant one becomes more manageable over time and you will spend less time in crisis. So those are the two quadrants at the top. They are both really important. Right? That's why they're at the top of the matrix. And I think it's, for the most part easy to understand what needs to go in Quadrant one and what needs to go in Quadrant two. I think it can be a little bit more difficult to figure out what to put in Quadrant three, where things are urgent but not important, and Quadrant four, where things are neither urgent nor important. So let's talk a little bit more about Quadrant three and four then. They are a little murkier for sure. So Quadrant three, not important, but urgent. Some people call this, like I said, the delegate quadrant. And I don't know about you, but I can't delegate things for the most part. Right. I'm a teacher, I am not a manager, I'm not a CEO. I don't have somebody I can delegate things to. So I don't think that the delegate label for this quadrant works very well for us teachers. And then Quadrant four is not important and not urgent. And some people, like I said, call that the delete this tasks or these tasks quadrant. Well, I struggle with that as well, because if something ended up on my to do list to begin with, then I can't just delete it. I mean, it's there For a reason. I can hopefully delete it after I've completed it. But it is there for a reason. It does have some importance or some value or some reason that I need to do it. So I don't really like the delete label either. So you can see the bottom half of the matrix. It's just a little murky, a little vague. So here are some ideas for how we can reframe how we look at the bottom half of the matrix. I think the phrase not important for the whole bottom the Quadrant three and Quadrant four. I think that is where the problems start. Because like I said, if it's on your list, it probably has some importance to begin with. And obviously some things are more important than others. But everything on my list is there for a reason. So the bottom portion of the matrix works better for me if I think of it as less important instead of not important. So then how do I determine if something goes in Quadrant three, which we'll now call the less important and urgent quadrant, versus Quadrant four, which we'll now call the less important and not urgent quadrant? Well, here's where I think we can change another word too. Instead of urgent in the bottom half of the matrix, I prefer to look at things from a long term goal perspective. In other words, if a task is tied directly to my long term goals or it moves the needle forward in something, then I think it should be in Quadrant three. In other words, it has some kind of urgency to it. And if we have filled out the matrix effectively, the things in Quadrant three are less important and urgent, meaning they are tied directly to our goals but are not complex tasks. Those complex tasks are likely in Quadrant two. So complex tasks are then in the upper half. So rather than call Quadrant three the delegate quadrant, I prefer to call it the less focus required quadrant. Now I know that's a lot of words, but it works for me. You're going to have to figure out how to label the matrix for yourself. This is what works for me. I call Quadrant three the no focus required or less focus required quadrant. Those are the things that I can do when I'm likely to be interrupted. The tasks in Quadrant 3 do not require deep focus and quiet and deep thinking time. I can do them in a coffee shop or when my kids are running around the house or the dog is barking or my students need assistance. Those things, those interruptions are okay when I'm working in Quadrant three, the environment does not need to be pristine for me to finish the things on my Quadrant three to do list. So that is how I like to think of Quadrant three. Now, Quadrant four, like I said, we're thinking of it as not urgent and less important. And it really is the most vague of them all, for reasons we've already discussed. These things ended up on my to do list for a reason, so they are somewhat important. The things that end up in Quadrant four are usually routine tasks and things that other people need from you. As far as I'm concerned, this cannot be called the Delete Quadrant. That won't work. Instead, I prefer to call it the Low Energy Quadrant. We all have those times of day when we are more energetic and times when our brains are not at their best. And if I have filled out the matrix correctly or effectively, Quadrant four is filled with things I can complete when I am tired or my brain is fried. We all have those tasks, unfortunately. So let's do them when we are not at our best. Let's do those less important and not urgent things when we are tired, when we have had a long day. One other thing to consider about the Eisenhower Matrix is that it's not just things in Quadrant 2, the important and not urgent quadrant, that can end up in Quadrant one if we have neglected them. Anything from any quadrant can end up in Quadrant one if we have neglected it. So we cannot neglect any of our quadrants. So let's talk about how we can use the matrix now that we have removed some of the ambiguity from that bottom half. So before we start filling out our matrix, it would be helpful for you to actually have one in front of you. So you could either draw one yourself and it's really easy, you just have two axes, or you can go to my website, which is www.productiveteacher.academy, and click on Free Resources. And one of the things you'll see there is the Eisenhower matrix. So that's www.productiveteacher academy. And click on Free resources. Okay, so now you have a matrix ready to go. Whether you drew it yourself or you downloaded it from my website, I use the matrix weekly. It is, however, only effective if you update it regularly. So while I don't use it daily, I use it weekly. I update it every week. It is part of my weekly review. Sometimes I have to add Things to Quadrant 1 throughout the week because those can be the things that kind of get dumped on me sometimes. The do now crisis quadrant. But for the most part, the other three quadrants, once I have filled them out for the week, they don't really change. And you might be thinking, well, Dr. Sarah, you said quadrant two is really important and it's not urgent. What if my boss gives me a new long term project? Well, when something like that does get assigned to you, since it is not urgent yet, you can wait until you fill out your next matrix at the end of the week or the beginning of next week when you do your weekly review and add it to your matrix at that point. So for the most part, like I said, the matrix stays the way it is, except for maybe a few additions to Quadrant one throughout the week. So the first step to filling out the matrix is to look at your big to do list and figure out what needs to be in the matrix this week and what doesn't. Try not to overthink this step. Is it something that you need to touch or work on this week? Then let's put it in the matrix. So in the beginning you will likely have quite a few items in Quadrant one. This is normal. You might be used to working in crisis mode all the time. While it's not a fun place to be, it does provide a lot of motivation. Right. Things need to get done today, so don't hesitate to put something in Quadrant one if it needs to be there. The longer you use the matrix, the shorter the list in Quadrant one will get. So don't fret if your Quadrant one is really full. Well, at least you know what you're dealing with and you can work on all of those things this week. Quadrant 2 on the other hand should not have many items in it. These are the projects that move you forward, so be realistic. Take this quadrant requires the most concentration and brain power. We can only handle one or two of those at a time. So it is better to have fewer of those in this week's matrix and complete high quality work on them than to have too many of those big big projects in your matrix and hardly work on them at all, or do less than ideal work on them. So if possible, and this might not be possible in the very beginning, but if possible, I like to use the two to one rule for Quadrant one and two. For every two tasks I work on in Quadrant one, I work on one task in Quadrant two or for every two hours I spend in Quadrant one, I spend one hour in two. And over time, like I said, it'll get easier and easier to get there. So if writing exams and grading are in my Quadrant one and I work on both of those things today, then I also commit to working on at least one thing in Quadrant 2 today, like mapping out the next semester or researching a new textbook. So that's how I decide to put things in quadrant one and two and how I work on them. Remember to make the system work for you and customize it to your situation. The only thing I would say is just don't ignore Quadrant two. That is the whole reason we're working with the Eisenhower matrix. It's the reason why the Eisenhower matrix is so effective. But you do have to put in some time in Quadrant two. It is the most important quadrant of them all. All right, now let's come back to the bottom half now of our matrix. It tends to get really full of tasks. I usually have a lot more in quadrant three and four than I do in Quadrant two and even in Quadrant one. But hopefully these tasks require little time and little effort. Here is my top recommendation. Resist the temptation to start your day in the bottom half. This is what I was talking about at the beginning of the episode. Every morning is typically when our brains are at their best and we should use that time to focus on the upper half. Any time that is hectic or full of interruptions is an ideal time for Quadrant three. And any time your brain will be tired is perfect for Quadrant four, like right after lunch. So back to my email example from earlier. Working on emails should never be in the top quadrant. Now, if somebody emails you with an important task that is no longer an email task, that is now something that either needs to be put in quadrant one or two or maybe quadrant three or four, but it is no longer email. When I'm talking about email, I'm talking about answering emails, responding to them. And then if something needs to be done, if you have an action item, then that goes in your to do list. So that routine processing of email is a bottom half task. Now, whether it should be in quadrant three or quadrant four depends on your situation. Have you struggled in the past to stay on top of emails and do you want to improve maybe that professional reputation by being better at email? Then it should definitely go in quadrant three. Are you already good at processing emails every day and people know they can depend on you to respond in a timely manner? Well, then email can go in quadrant four. That doesn't mean that you're neglecting email. I'm definitely not advocating for that. I'm just saying that's where it can go. And you can work on email during that time when your brain is really tired. The important thing is to prioritize and set time aside for everything in the upper half while still attending to the things in the bottom half during less than ideal times. So here are a few other strategies I would recommend. Items in Quadrant four are those ideal candidates for automation, like file automation and email automation, so stay tuned for future episodes on those topics. Also, remember that the whole idea is to devote significant time and focus to Quadrant two. Like we said, this might be really hard in the beginning as you might have an overload in Quadrant one. So be patient and gentle with yourself and recognize that even just 15 minutes a day in quadrant two is better than doing nothing in quadrant two. Nothing is perfect and no day is ever perfect. We definitely know that. Another tip is to remember that the number of tasks in Quadrant 2 should be limited so you can do your best work there. Spending even just 15 minutes, like we said, will yield big results in the future. So Teacher Friends, I hope this deep dive into the Eisenhower Matrix was useful. I encourage you to try it out and I would definitely commit at least six weeks to using it before you decide whether it's for you or not. It really takes time to learn what works best for you and which quadrants you should assign tasks to. And it also takes time for Quadrant one, that dreaded crisis quadrant, to have fewer items in it as you increase your time in Quadrant two. So you know, I'm going to say it again, be gentle with yourself and recognize that some weeks are just one big urgent crisis. Sticking to something like the Matrix over time will yield the results, even if some weeks are not the best. So that's it for this week, Teacher Friends. If you want to use the Matrix I created, please go to my website at www.productiveteacher.academy and click on those free resources. I would love to hear from you how the Matrix is working for you. You can find the links to my Facebook page and Instagram in the Show Notes. It would make my day if you would leave me a comment and share your successes with the Eisenhower Matrix with our teacher community. I hope you have a great week, Teacher Friends and I will see you next Tuesday.