The Eisenhower Matrix for students in exam season
Exam season puts everything in front of you at once: six subjects, a part-time job, a group project and a room that needs cleaning. The Eisenhower Matrix is a five minute way to decide what gets today.
The four boxes, in student terms
- The exam in two days
- The assignment due tonight
- The topic you cannot explain and is certain to come up
- Exams two or three weeks away
- Past papers
- Sleep, food and exercise
- Asking for help on the topic you avoid
- Booking the study room
- Printing and formatting
- Group chat questions someone else can answer
- Rewriting notes that are already clear
- A new colour system for your folders
- Finding the perfect study app
How to use it the night before each study day
- List every exam and deadline with its date. Dates decide what is urgent, so get them right once.
- Under each subject, list topics, not "revise maths". "Integration by parts" can be sorted. "Maths" cannot.
- Mark each topic: do I know it, half know it, or not at all? Topics you do not know in a subject that counts are important.
- Sort. Close exam plus weak topic goes in Do. Far exam plus weak topic goes in Schedule, with a day beside it.
- Pick three Do tasks for tomorrow. Three finished beats eight started.
A worked example
It is Sunday. Chemistry is on Wednesday, history on Friday, maths the following Tuesday. A history essay plan is due to your teacher on Monday.
- Do: the essay plan, and the two chemistry topics you marked "not at all".
- Schedule: history source questions on Wednesday evening and Thursday. One maths past paper on Saturday. Bed by eleven on the nights before exams.
- Delegate: ask the class chat which room chemistry is in. Ask a friend to share the formula sheet instead of making your own.
- Backlog: retyping your history notes. They are readable. Leave them.
Monday has three clear jobs. Everything else has a day, so it stops circling in your head.
What goes wrong, and the fix
- Everything is in Do. Then nothing is. Keep only what has a deadline inside 48 hours.
- Schedule tasks have no day. Write the day. "Past paper, Saturday morning" gets done. "Past papers" does not.
- Sleep is in Backlog. It belongs in Schedule. Tired revision is slow revision.
- You sort once and never again. Exams move closer every day. Re-sort each evening. It takes two minutes.
Paper or phone
Both work. The free printable matrix is one page, with a US Letter version, and is free for classroom use. If you would rather keep it on your phone, the Eisenhower Matrix app for Android is free, needs no account and has no ads. It has reminders, and a daily review that walks through overdue tasks one at a time.
More examples: real tasks sorted into the four boxes and ten tasks people put in the wrong box.