50 real tasks sorted into the four boxes
The Eisenhower Matrix is easy to explain and hard to apply. The trouble starts with the first real task. Here are 50 ordinary tasks, sorted into the four boxes, and what the pattern tells you.
A quick reminder of the two questions. Important means it moves something you care about. Urgent means there is a real cost if it is not done soon. Both gives Do. Important only gives Schedule. Urgent only gives Delegate. Neither gives Backlog, which some people call Delete.
At work
- Fix the invoice a client is waiting on today
- Reply to your manager's question before the 2pm meeting
- Call back the customer whose order went missing
- Write next quarter's plan
- Learn the spreadsheet feature that would save an hour a week
- Book a catch-up with the colleague you will work with all year
- Update your CV while the last project is fresh
- Chase a meeting room for Thursday
- Fill in the weekly status form
- Answer a question someone else on the team knows better
- Tidy the shared drive
- Read the 40 page report nobody asked you about
- Rename old files so they match
At home
- Pay the electricity bill due tomorrow
- Pick up the prescription before the pharmacy shuts
- Ring the plumber about the leak
- Book the dentist check-up
- Renew the passport that runs out in spring
- Set up a standing order for savings
- Plan the week's dinners on Sunday
- Wait in for a parcel, if someone else is home anyway
- Return the library books, if a housemate passes the library
- Order more bin bags, add them to the shared shopping list
- Sort ten years of phone photos
- Repaint the shed
- Alphabetise the bookshelf
Study
- Finish the essay due at midnight
- Revise the topic for tomorrow's test
- Email the lecturer before the extension deadline
- Start the project due in three weeks
- Do one past paper every Saturday
- Go to the office hour about the topic you keep avoiding
- Rewrite your notes into one page per chapter
- Book the group study room, ask whoever is on campus
- Print the handouts, split it with the group
- Find out the exam hall, ask the class chat
- Colour-code every folder
- Rewatch a lecture you already understand
- Compare five note-taking apps
Health and people
- Ring a friend who is having a hard week
- Refill medication that runs out in two days
- Three walks a week, with days named
- Book the eye test
- Plan a visit to your parents
- Sleep by eleven on work nights
- Choosing the restaurant, let the keenest person pick
- Collecting money for the group present, share it
- Research a new gym you are not going to join this month
- Reply to every message in a group chat
- Reorganise the medicine cabinet
What the examples have in common
- Do is short. Every Do task has a real deadline inside a day or two and a real cost if it is missed. If your Do box has ten things in it, some of them are only loud.
- Schedule is where life gets better. Nothing in that box will ever shout. That is why each one needs a date. A Schedule task without a date is a wish.
- Delegate does not need staff. If there is nobody to hand a task to, the box still means something: do it fast, do it badly on purpose, share it, or batch it with other small jobs.
- Backlog is honest. Most of those tasks are fine things to do. They are just not for this month. Writing them in the fourth box is how you stop carrying them around.
The same task can move
Renewing a passport sits in Schedule in January and lands in Do the week before a flight. That is the matrix working. Tasks you schedule early stay calm. Tasks you leave alone turn urgent on their own, usually at a bad time.
So sort again every day or two. It takes a couple of minutes, and it is the part most people skip.
Try it with your own list
Write down everything in your head, then give each task two answers. On paper, the free printable template has the four boxes ready. On Android, the Eisenhower Matrix app asks the two questions and puts each task in its box for you. It is free, with no account and no ads.