Eisenhower Matrix Template with Time Blocking (PDF) and How to Use It
Do you feel like urgent tasks are taking over and you can never get anything important done? The Eisenhower Matrix Template is a tool for task management to help you organize tasks according to their urgency and importance. This tool will help you to prioritize your to-do list, as well as to identify and ignore time-wasting distractions.
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This Eisenhower Matrix Template includes an integrated Time Blocking Template to help you block time for the completion of high and low priority tasks, as well as a stand-alone Time Blocking Template for separate use. This article will walk you through how these tools can help you prioritize your day and both are included in the bundle below.
How the Eisenhower Matrix is set up
The Eisenhower Matrix can be thought of as a graph with “urgency” on the x-axis and “importance” on the y-axis. Urgency increases from left to right and importance increases from bottom to top. Urgency and importance are both increasing from the bottom left to the top right, as shown in the figure below.
To the graph, you can add a four-quadrant matrix.
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Eisenhower Matrix quadrants
If you consider the increasing urgency and importance along the graph axes, you can then label the quadrants based on where they fall on the graph.
- Quadrant 1: Both urgency and importance are the highest in the top right corner of the graph. This makes Quadrant 1 the high urgency and high importance quadrant.
- Quadrant 2: Quadrant 2 lies at the top of the graph, so it has high importance. But it also falls on the left side of the graph, so it has low urgency.
- Quadrant 3: Quadrant 3 is the opposite of Quadrant 2. Quadrant 3 is on the right side of the graph, so it has high urgency. But since it is at the bottom of the graph, it has low importance.
- Quadrant 4: The lowest urgency and importance are at the origin of the graph in the bottom left corner. This makes Quadrant 4 the low urgency and low importance quadrant.
Eisenhower Matrix task priority levels
Let’s look at how these four quadrants can be used to prioritize your tasks and to-do list. By categorizing to-do list items by urgent or non-urgent and important or not important, you end up with four categories of tasks.
- “Top Priority” tasks: Tasks in Quadrant 1 are both urgent and important and are your “Top Priority” tasks. These are the tasks that need to be worked on right now or today. These are the ‘drop what you’re doing to focus on’ tasks. They immediately jump to the top of the to-do list. There won’t be that many tasks that fall into this category. Most important tasks will fall into the second quadrant.
- “Second Priority” tasks: Quadrant 2 tasks are important but not urgent and are your “Second Priority” tasks. Most to-do tasks fall within this category, and therefore you will focus most of your time and energy on this quadrant.
- “Schedule for Later” tasks: Quadrant 3 tasks are urgent but not important and are your “Schedule for Later” tasks. These are the ‘trap’ items that we often prioritize above the items that are actually important (the Quadrant 2 items). In reality, Quadrant 3 items are “urgent distractions” that we should schedule for later.
- “Ignore” tasks: Quadrant 4 tasks are neither urgent or important and are your tasks to “Ignore“. These items are neither important nor urgent but can be very alluring. These “non-urgent distractions” can waste a lot of your time if not kept in check. During the time you allot working on high priority tasks, you should ignore these Quadrant 4 tasks. However, Quadrant 4 tasks can still be enjoyable and valuable activities in your off time.
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Priorities and distractions
From the above priority levels, you can further classify your tasks as priorities and distractions. Important tasks can be considered priorities. While tasks that are not important can be considered distractions. These distractions can take away your time from your priorities. While it is not realistic to only focus on priorities and completely ignore distractions, we can choose how we allocate our time with time blocking. With time blocking, we can choose to focus on priorities at certain times of the day and schedule distraction tasks for other times of the day. We will take a closer look at time blocking later in this article.
How to categorize your tasks
Categorizing your to-do list items using the quadrants and associated task priorities may seem straightforward. But how you categorize your tasks is subjective. Each task may have a different level of importance or urgency depending on how you feel, and the situation. Let’s take a look at some examples.
Example 1: Fix roof leak
- Catherine has a roof leak in her home. She is looking at her to-do list for the day and is wondering how to prioritize fixing the roof leak.
Fixing the roof leak is most likely important, as water can cause a lot of damage to a structure. Therefore she chooses to categorize it as important. It may also be urgent because of rain scheduled for later in the week, so she also choses to categorize it as urgent. She places the “fix roof leak” in Quadrant 1 of her matrix and categorizes it as a top priority. Since it is a top priority, she works on this task first before tasks in any of the other quadrants. - Edward has a roof leak in his home. He is looking at his to-do list for the day and wondering how to prioritize fixing the roof leak.
Edward knows that during the next rain his home and belongings can be damaged by water. He, therefore, categorizes this task as important. But he also lives in the Arizona desert and there is very little rain in the current season. Because of this, he chooses to categorize it as not urgent. He places the “fix roof leak” in Quadrant 2 of his matrix and categorizes it as a second priority. He will work on this task after first completing his top priority tasks.
As you can see categorizing each of your tasks is subjective based on your individual circumstances. Here is another example to highlight how changing circumstances can affect your chosen task priority level.
Example: Wash laundry
- Catherine has laundry to wash. She is looking at her to-do list for the day and is wondering how to prioritize.
Catherine knows that she currently has plenty of clean clothes. She, therefore, categorizes this task as not important and not urgent. She places the task in Quadrant 4 of her Eisenhower Matrix template and chooses to ignore it for the day.
Four days later, Catherine is running low on clean clothes. She, therefore, categorizes her “wash laundry” task as important but still not urgent. She places the task in Quadrant 2 of her Eisenhower Matrix and works on it as a second priority.
The next day, Catherine is all out of clean clothes. She did not get to the laundry the day before because she had higher important tasks. This day, however, laundry becomes very important and she now prioritizes it into Quadrant 1 as a top priority. Since it is now a top priority, she works on this task before any tasks in the other Quadrants. - Edward has laundry to wash. He is looking at his to-do list for the day and is wondering how to prioritize.
Edward knows that while he has plenty of clean clothes, the laundry that needs to be washed is wet and if he leaves it wet for too long it will get moldy. He, therefore, chooses to categorize this task as urgent but not important. He places it in Quadrant 3 of his Eisenhower Matrix and schedules it for later by setting a reminder on his phone for 7 pm that night to wash laundry. He does not let this urgent task overtake his high important tasks during his workday and schedules it for a later time.
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Additional examples
Here are some possible additional examples for each of the quadrants/priority levels. However, how you would choose to categorize them will depend on your circumstances. Keep in mind that for each of the possible examples below, your circumstances may be different and you may choose to categorize them differently.
Quadrant 1: Important and urgent (Top Priority)
Here are some possible examples that could be considered urgent and important.
- Crying baby
- Important meeting
- Broken down car
- Looming deadline
Quadrant 2: Important (Second Priority)
Here are some possible examples that could be considered important, but not urgent.
- Project with a long-term deadline
- Planning for the future
- Exercising
- Meal preparation
- Relationships
- Self-care such as meditation, gratitude practice, etc.
Quadrant 3: Urgent (Schedule for Later)
Here are some possible examples of tasks that could be considered urgent but not important.
- Ringing phone
- Text messages
- Limited time sale on the car of your dreams
Quadrant 4: Not urgent or important (Ignore)
Here are some examples of tasks that may be considered not important or urgent.
- Anything with a constant scroll such as Facebook, Twitter, news feeds, etc.
- Anything that cues up the next video to watch such as YouTube, Netflix, TikTok, etc.
- Things that aren’t important to you but you think that you “should” do them such as cleaning the garage, organizing your closet, washing your car, etc.
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A closer look at Quadrant 3 – the “urgent distractions”
The urgent-but-not-important quadrant is the area where the Eisenhower Matrix shines by encouraging a paradigm shift, or change in approach to task management, in which you do not allow urgency to overtake importance.
When an urgent-but-not-important task arises, your first impulse may be to switch your focus to that task. Let’s revisit the possible examples of urgent but not important tasks to see how these urgent distractions can interrupt your focus on important tasks.
Urgent distractions with first impulse
- Ringing phone → you may be working on a top priority task but when the phone rings, you answer it.
- Text messages → you may be working on an important task but when a new text comes in you check it.
- Limited time sale on the car of your dreams → you may have decided that purchasing a new car is not urgent this year but when the car you love goes on sale, you decide to buy it.
Now let’s take a look at these same possible urgent distractions but employ the paradigm shift in which you do not allow urgency to overtake importance.
Urgent distractions prioritized as “schedule for later”
- Ringing phone → let the call go to voicemail and check voicemail at a prescheduled interval
- Text messages → while working on important tasks, turn your phone over and check texts at prescheduled intervals
- Limited time sale on the car of your dreams → schedule a time to assess whether you want to change the urgency level of purchasing the car or note the time of year that cars usually go on sale and prioritize it as important for that time next year
Key takeaway
The key takeaway is to take and keep control of your time. Focus on important tasks and don’t allow distractions (both urgent and non-urgent) to take over your time.
Categorizing your tasks with the Eisenhower Matrix helps you to recognize these distractions. It is a tool to help change your mindset by helping you to categorize your tasks. It helps you to give priority to importance over urgency.
But it is not realistic to think that you can always focus on priority tasks. We are all human and strive for balance in our days. Let’s take a look at time blocking next to see how we can take it one step further and find that balance.
Time blocking template
Because it is not feasible to focus on top priorities at all times, this time blocking template can help to find balance between high and low priority tasks.
1. High priority time blocking
Designate certain time blocks during the day that you will commit to focusing only on important tasks.
During this time, focus on high-priority, important tasks in Quadrants 1 and 2.
2. Low priority time blocking
Next, designate certain time blocks during the day to low priority tasks that allow you to relax and unwind, and reward yourself with some of the not-important items that you enjoy doing. Quadrant 4 items can make good rewards. You can also use this time to schedule some of the tasks from Quadrant 3.
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Putting it all together: The Eisenhower Matrix Template and Time Blocking Template
If you are looking for a template that can help you both with the Eisenhower Matrix priorities and time blocking, below is a PDF bundle that includes all of the following:
1. The Eisenhower Matrix Template
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2. Eisenhower Matrix with Time Blocking Template
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3. Bonus: Time Blocking Template
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4. Bonus: Weekly Planning
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5. Bonus: Goals Planning