The task matrix (Eisenhower matrix) is one of the most popular time management tools. It is believed that the founder of this matrix is US President Dwight David Eisenhower (1953 - 1961). The tasks matrix helps you manage your affairs by assigning your tasks to 4 groups according to priorities according to two attributes of the task: importance and urgency. 15-Days Free Trial!!! One of the best methods to know what deserves your attention is the Eisenhower Matrix productivity system. It spawned several other matrices for tasks as well. And they all come together in the neat and nifty Prioritize web app. This web app needs no registrations, and the browser cache will remember your tasks till you delete them.
The Eisenhower matrix just isn’t working for you.
Originally created by President Dwight Eisenhower, the graphic helps you prioritize tasks based on urgency. While most people use it for work, I’ve expanded it to include everything I do in a day. How it work s: Get a piece of paper and divide it into four quadrants. Label the sections like this: Graphic by the author. The Eisenhower Matrix is a recipe for long-term problem solving and avoiding the Mere Urgency trap every project is bound to fall into. The magic of “NO” Along with learning how to use the Matrix, you will have to brush up on your rejection skills. Dwight is a simple, easy to use task management web app based on the Eisenhower Matrix, a decision-making method that divides tasks into the following categories: urgent and important, urgent but not important, important but not urgent, and not urgent nor important. Categorizing your to-do items this way greatly increases your productivity.
It might be because you have too many “urgent and important” tasks to do, or you work alone so you simply can’t “delegate” jobs.
Maybe you just don’t like drawing out a grid everyday.
Whatever the reason, you want an alternative method.
The four best Eisenhower matrix alternatives are personal kanban, eat the frog, time-blocking and planning your day using the Pareto principle. These four productivitytechniques allow you to effectively organise your taskswhile avoiding some limitations of the Eisenhower matrix.
If you want to know how you can use them, this article is for you.
Eisenhower Matrix alternatives
1. Personal Kanban
Explanation
First up on the list of Eisenhower matrix alternatives is personal kanban.
Personal kanban is a simple and easy to use tool which helps your manage your personal and professional tasks.
The technique was popularised by productivity experts Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria in their book, Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life.
Its ultimate goal is to help you focus on the things you should be doing and controlling the amount of work you take on at one time.
How does it work?
The first step is to create a personal kanban board.
This is otherwise known as a table with three columns; ‘to do’, ‘doing’ and ‘done’.
My poorly drawn example looks like this:
You can create this table on a whiteboard, a piece of paper or on your phone.
Once you’ve got it made, you can start adding your tasks to it. You can either write them in directly, or make labelled sticky notes and place those into the columns.
Initially, everything will be in your to-do column.
As you progress, you move tasks across into ‘doing’ and ‘done’.
Personal kanban has one main rule:
Limit work in progress (WIP) – you’re only allowed up to three activities in your ‘doing’ column at any one time.
Benefits
This organisational method almost seems too simple to be effective, but it has some very real benefits.
1. Visualisation
Personal kanban is based on the premise you can better manage what you can see.
It’s why the technique requires you to draw a table and physically place tasks in columns, moving them along as they progress.
It acts as a constant reminder of what you need to do (and how much you’ve done).
Losing track of how much work needs doing can’t be a problem if it’s always right in front of you.
It can also be satisfying seeing your “to-do’s” end up in the final column of “done”, providing you with an extra motivation boost to keep going.
2. WIP limit works wonders
The one rule of person kanban is that you must limit the tasks in your ‘work in progress/doing’ column to three tasks.
This is to ensure you don’t get overwhelmed.
When you limit your current projects to just three, you’re not taking on more than you can handle.
You’re also not working on too many things at once.
That means you can provide each task with the full amount of attention necessary to get it done right the first time around.
It allows you to reduce the inefficiencies associated with multi-tasking.
In contrast, the Eisenhower Matrix lets you have an unlimited number of activities in any subsection (which can feel a bit suffocating).
3. You can customise it
Another benefit of personal kanban is the method’s flexibility.
You can customise it to suit how you like working.
For example, you can colour code the sticky notes of different jobs.
Similarly, you could choose to use it for only professional activities, personal activities or both.
Issues
One criticism of personal kanban is that it doesn’t help you determine which tasks should be your priority. To combat this, look at your to-do’s and start with your three most important/urgent tasks.
Another problem with kanban is it doesn’t help you schedule your tasks into the day.
To avoid losing track of time, estimate how long each task will take and make sure you’ve got enough time.
2. Eat that frog
Explanation
The second Eisenhower matrix alternative on our list is called ‘Eat the frog’.
It’s another technique which entered the mainstream thanks to a book about it; in this case, Brian Tracy’s bestseller ‘Eat that frog‘.
The technique is based on this famous quote from Mark Twain:
“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day”
In our case, a frog is a metaphor for your biggest and worst task – and it’s the one you should do first.
The system follows a few simple steps:
1.Write out your tasks
Write out all the things you’ve got to do for that day (either the night before it, or the morning of).
2. Organise your tasks into ABCDE
With all your tasks laid out in front of you, the next step is to assign them a letter between A-E.
Which letter you give a task determines its priority:
A – grade-A tasks are your frogs. They’re the most important and urgent jobs you need to do, and failure to do them will lead to immediate consequences. You should do grade A tasks first.
B – if A jobs are frogs, B jobs are the tadpoles.
They’re still important to do, but the consequences for not doing them are minor.
You shouldn’t move onto them if an A-grade task still need doing.
In other words, you shouldn’t move onto tadpoles when there’s still a frog on your plate.
C – a C job is something that is nice to do, but it makes no difference whether you do it or not.
D – D tasks are ones that can, and should, be delegated.
E -if it’s unimportant and unnecessary, you should give it an E (which stands for eliminate).
Once all your tasks are labelled, the only thing left is completing them.
Benefits
Helps you prioritise
Similar to the Eisenhower Matrix, eat the frog centres around you completing tasks in the order of highest urgency and importance to lowest.
That means you focus on completing the things which progress you towards your goals. It makes sure you work on activities which have the biggest return for your time investment.
In contrast to the Eisenhower matrix, eat the frog has an extra category. That makes it an ideal strategy if you feel the subcategories of the Eisenhower matrix are too vague.
Takes advantage of biological peaks
Eat the frog requires you to begin your day with your most difficult and important task. Luckily enough, you have the most energy in the morning – so you’re best placed to tackle your frog.
As the day goes on, your energy levels decline.
The system accounts for this by reducing the importance and complexity of tasks as you progress.
So you deal with the most challenging tasks when your brain is at peak performance, and as your concentration levels decrease, so do the difficulty/importance of your activities.
Issues
Time Consuming
Using this method to organise your day isn’t the quickest, especially if you’re new to it.
You need to write out all your to-do’s, understand what the letters ABCDE mean, and then organise your tasks and schedule accordingly.
It can lead to you spending too much time planning, and too little doing.
More professional than personal
Eat that frog works great for sorting out your professional tasks, but it doesn’t work as well with your personal ones.
The method solely focuses on getting stuff done, rather than living a productive life as a whole.
3. Time blocking
Explanation
Next up on our list of Eisenhower matrix alternatives is time blocking.
There’s no book which made this technique famous. Instead, it was it’s billionaire advocates like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
Time blocking is a time management technique.
It requires you to organise every single task you’ve got to do into specific blocks.
You then insert those blocks into your schedule.
Eisenhower Matrix Applications
The idea is to have every minute of your time accounted for.
That way, you know exactly what you’ve got to do, and when.
When you’re working on a particular block, the tasks in it become your sole focus. You’re not allowed to multi-task and you’ve got to keep distractions to a minimum.
How to time block
Time blocking is quite easy to do when you follow these simple steps:
- Make a to-do list
Write out all the tasks you’ve got to do, both personal and professional.
2. Block your tasks
With everything you need to complete laid out in front of you, organise them into blocks based on their similarity.
Most people use 3-5 blocks so they don’t become overwhelmed.
Let’s say you’ve got a project to do, and you need to research it + make a presentation on it. You could organise these tasks into one block under the heading “project”.
If you’ve also got to reply to some emails, complete an application form and do some paperwork – that block could be called “admin”.
3. Schedule your day
With everything you need to do packaged into blocks, you can schedule the blocks into your day.
Get any fixed commitments down first, then work your schedule around them.
Once that’s done, you’re ready to start your day.
4. Review
Once your day is done, you can take a look back at what you managed to get through.
Anything you didn’t get around to can be blocked for tomorrow.
Benefits
Provides certainty
Unlike the Eisenhower matrix and the other methods mentioned so far, time-blocking forces you to schedule out every minute of your day.
It allows you to benefit from what psychologists call ‘implementation intention’ – the fact that when you schedule a specific time and place to complete a task, you’re significantly more likely to follow through with it.
It also makes you more aware of what you can realistically get done with the time available to you.
You’re less likely to under or overestimate your abilities.
You get more done in less time
Time blocking allows you to take advantage of Parkinson’s law.
The law states; “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”.
For example, if you have two months to complete a project, it’ll take you two months. However, if you only had two weeks to do the same project, you’d have it done in two weeks.
The amount of work didn’t change, only the time you had to complete it.
As a result, you were able to get more done in less time.
Time blocking allows you to take advantage of this concept.
When you time block, you set specific time frames to get tasks done rather than leaving them open ended.
Applying this concept, you’ll get through tasks a lot faster in the blocks you set for yourself.
More aware of your time
Another benefit of time-blocking is you become more aware of you how you spend your time, and the value of it.
When every hour of your day is accounted for, you realise how valuable each one is.
It becomes harder for you to get distracted from your schedule when you recognise the importance of it.
Issues
Restrictive
Some people can find time-blocking too restrictive.
It involves scheduling every hour of the day in advance, and might not be suitable for everyone.
To make the technique more flexible, it’ suggested you use your schedule as a guide rather than a must follow list.
If something comes up and you need to rearrange, you’re more than able to do so.
Doesn’t help you prioritise
Similar to personal kanban, time blocking doesn’t help you prioritise which tasks are the most important for you to work on.
4. Pareto principle
Explanation
The final Eisenhower matrix alternative isn’t really a technique at all.
It involves you using the Pareto principle to plan out your day.
The Pareto principle states the majority of results, come from the minority of causes. In other words, the majority of outputs come from the minority of inputs.
It’s become known as the 80:20 rule – since 80% of causes come from 20% of effects.
To help you understand, here are some examples of the rule:
- The majority of music you listen to comes from a minority of artists
- A minority of products make up a majority of a companies sales
- A minority of the population hold the majority of the wealth
How can you use it?
This principle can also apply towards how you organise your daily life.
You should prioritise the minority of tasks which provide the most value progressing you towards your goals.
If you’re a student, it could be focusing on the 20% of core content which makes up 80% of an exam.
For an entrepreneur. it could be strengthening your relationship with the few clients that make up most of your revenue.
Decide which tasks have the biggest impact for you, and prioritise accordingly.
Benefits
Helps you progress
When you use the Pareto principle to analyse and prioritise your tasks, you focus on the things which have a tangible impact on your progress.
You do the things which move the needle closer towards your goals.
You get the best return for your time.
Eisenhower Matrix App Android
Issues
Uncelar
There is no criteria for applying the Pareto principle.
Eisenhower Matrix App Mac
Sure it’s ideal to work on the things which lead to the greatest output, but what are they?
The process of figuring this out can be time-consuming and your answer might not always be correct.
Conclusion
The four methods discussed are all effective alternatives to the Eisenhower matrix.
Each will help you organise your day and get more done.
Which you pick will depend on what suits your lifestyle, personality and the way you like to work.