Eisenhower 2x2 Metrics: Focus On High Impact Work While Eliminating Busywork From Your Life
The best way to identify the high impact work day after day.
In the last essay, we talked about the importance of doing high impactful work. In this essay, we will focus on how to go about doing so.
We all have limited time in a day. We can either spend our whole day either by doing busy work or by doing high impactful work. But how do you figure out whats the highest impact work you can do that day?
By using Eisenhower's decision-making framework. Here's how to use it:
Step 1: Make a list of all the things you need to do.
Step 2: Place them in one of the four quadrants.
Step 3: Start with Box 1
How do you figure out if a thing is urgent or important?
The litmus test for urgency is externally-facing, and importance is internally facing.
Urgent things are often required by people when they are dependent on you. For example, your boss waiting for the report, your bank waiting for the docs to approve the loan, etc.
Important things are required by you and are important for your mission and goal. For example, healthy eating, exercising, writing self-evaluations, thinking about promotion, creating, finding a tribe, journaling, meditating, etc.
The only trick is that we must repeat the Eisenhower method every day as things tend to shift within the boxes as new information reveals itself. I can tell you from my personal experience that if you were only able to finish things in Box 1, the day would feel like a success. And experiencing success five days in a row is addictive.
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