The Eisenhower Matrix Helps You Prioritize Your To-Do List

To-do lists can end up being a pit of endless menial tasks that really don't matter all that much. To ensure you are completing meaningful work, you have to prioritize your tasks and enhance your to-do list so that it constantly reminds you of those high-priority tasks.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once shared his own productivity method, which inspired the Eisenhower Matrix.

"What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important."

Productivity writer David Masters shared the below tool (designed by Cedric Villain of the Noun Project) to help you remember which tasks are of high and low priority. You simply have to draw the tool out yourself or print the copy below and place all your tasks in one of the four categories: urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, neither urgent nor important. Those in the first category are your top priorities, and those in the last are of low priority.

When doing this, keep in mind that urgent means the tasks needs to be completed as soon as possible to meet a deadline, and important means the task is related to your bigger goals.