As a result of Covey’s work, the Eisenhower Matrix has become a widely used time-management and decision-making framework in business.īelow is a sample Eisenhower Box taken from another of Covey’s books, First Things First. He used it to help him prioritize and deal with the many high-stakes issues he faced as a US Army general, then as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Forces, and eventually as president of the United States.ĭecades later, author Stephen Covey popularized Eisenhower’s framework in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. President Dwight Eisenhower himself developed the concept behind what would later be called the Eisenhower Matrix. What’s the History of the Eisenhower Matrix?

Then, group the items on your list into one of the four boxes, with the Urgent-and-Important box in the upper left requiring your immediate action.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a productivity, prioritization, and time-management framework designed to help you prioritize a list of tasks or agenda items by first categorizing those items according to their urgency and importance.Īlso called an Eisenhower Decision Matrix, Eisenhower Box, or Urgent-Important Matrix, this approach consists of drawing a four-box square with an x-axis labeled Urgent and Not Urgent, and the y-axis labeled Important and Not Important.

Blank priority matrix template