Increasing productivity with “Eisenhower Box”

Dwight Eisenhower is the 34th President of the united state of America. He is among the people I believed to lived a very productive life. He did a couple of things and that significant. I will talk about that, but let’s have a look at something.

Many people struggle with productivity. They set out their Todos to ensure they have a good plan, but it ends to be just an alarm. This has happened to me several times and sometimes I pick up on the wrong task. Many factors determine success in life and productivity plays one of the major roles.

Dwight Eisenhower served two terms in the United state presidential office. During his time, America launched the DARPA, NASA and other significant programs. Before he becomes the President, he was a five-star General in the United state Army. He also had some great accomplishments in the united state, and all this was a result of a great plan for productivity.

Eisenhower did not have a great productivity of months or years, he had decades of tangible productivity. His story was great, and it is valuable to know how he did it. Remember, everything isn’t about luck, hard work and planning are important.

Who would like to use the same matrix on the box? If you do, read on. Eisenhower showed the matrix. It is just four powerful ways to divide your tasks.

1. Urgent and important (tasks you will do immediately).
2. Important, but not urgent (tasks you will schedule to do later).
3. Urgent, but not important (tasks you will delegate to someone else).
4. Neither urgent nor important (tasks that you will eliminate).

^{I designed this image, but there are many versions on the internet}

These are great ways to divide your tasks. It could be yearly, monthly, weekly or daily. I think it is important we focus on daily productivity.

Urgent and important tasks are those that need to be done ASAP. There are important tasks that are not urgent. I tend to try to do exercise daily because it is pretty important for my health. Aside from the facts that exercise is generally good for everyone, it is imperative for me to exercise because of some minor health challenges.

So, sometimes, when I have more tough tasks, I ignore the exercise for the end of the day and focus on the more important tasks. This has been part of me for long before I knew about the Eisenhower box.

There are some urgent tasks that we feel we have to react to, like phone calls, messages, a news feed, Facebook feed and the rest. They are urgent but not important.

Have you ever find yourself replying a message and you get a pop-up status of one interesting video or feed, and you will get distracted and before you realize 40 minutes of your time has gone.

Eisenhower box idea provides clear ways for productivity. Among all factors that determine success, consistency place a huge role and a hard part.

According to Kevlin Henney- “There is no code faster than no code.”

^Pixabay

This means there is no faster way to get things done than not doing at all. Sounds lazy? It is not laziness; it is a fast way to decide on the things you want to do. If it is not important, dump it; if it is, takes up and finish it.

Productivity leads to success. The Eisenhower box made me realize that no task is meant to be busy on. Been busy something is laziness. When you are busy with things that you could push to the delete section. If you can identify the things you waste time on daily, then you will record great days of productivity.

There may be some flaws in the Eisenhower concept, but when you apply it, you will notice more productivities in your task and the way you manage things. I don’t believe that anything is 100% perfect. Even some expensive codes still have bugs. When the rate of quality is high, then it worth to check.

I hope you find this useful. Have a productive week.