What is The Eisenhower Box?
Good evening folks young and old. I hope I find all well and productive.
Today I’m here just to show you one thing called “The Eisenhower Box.”
By Justin Brooke, on productivity vs. activity.
I found this in g mail inbox this morning and thought I would share it with you all, seem very interesting to me.
Justin Brooke Nov 28, 20153 min read
Get More Done By Shrinking Your To-do List
Feel like you need more hours in your day?
Then let’s talk about productivity vs. activity.
Seems a lot of people don’t know the difference between those two words. One means doing more and the other means producing more.
Now re-look at your to do list and mark each task with a P for productive or an A for active. The productive tasks are ones that actually produce something. The ones with an A are just activities you’re doing.
Doesn’t mean an activity is not important. But if you’re trying to be more productive, then you need to focus more on the P’s, than the A’s
How do you choose which ones to drop and which to keep?
Simple.
Draw a big square…
Now draw a vertical line down the middle and another horizontally…
On the left side of the top left box write “important” and on the left side of the bottom left box write “unimportant.”
Now across the top write “urgent” on top of the top left box and “non-urgent” on top of the top right box.
Maybe you’ve heard of this?
It’s a decision making tool called “The Eisenhower Box.”
Image Source: James Clear
It’s a framework for making tough decisions when you’re unsure of what to do.
Use it to filter the items on your to do list that are just activities. Making room or more time for productive items.
Almost done.
Now let’s talk about “SP” tasks.
SP stands for super productive. Something that is super productive is a task that you do once and it increases production over and over again.
Like writing an email follows up series. It continually helps you and you only have to do it once.
Or using Zapier.com to connect your blog to your social profiles so each new blog post gets instantly promoted.
Or hiring a virtual assistant who repeats that one task for you over and over.
Re-look at your to-do list now and see if you can convert any of the items with a “P” next to them, into super productive tasks. This way it never re-appears on your list again, but still gets done over and over and over again.
If you commit to this process every day for 1 month, your to-do list will shrink while you get more and more productive. It will seem as though you have 36 hour days while everyone else still has just 24.
Sort your to-do list into productivity and activity tasks. Use the Eisenhower box to filter your to-do list. Convert productive tasks into super productive tasks. Give it 30 days real commitment. Watch your life change dramatically.
Sorry I didn't have time to put the pictures in for you, I'm my way to lay down for the night.
You know the drill with the button. lol.
Your friend on internet marketing,
Tim.
Recent Comments
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Thanks, my question has to do with priory. Take the morning emails. When I opened up I had 36. I'll get a dozen more before I read them. This was the 1st. I read it and responded. It's important. But where would it fit in an Eisenhower box? Thanks
My takeaway is that only you can determine the importance of each item. My feeling is that responding to this email was an action, not a productive task. However, if your goal is to move up in rank at WA, and responding to blogs is part of the process, then, yeah, you could absolutely consider it productive. So in this case, you get to chose either one.
Great tool. I have seen this before but did not know it was called the Eisenhower box. Great blog. Thanks for sharing.
I like the box. I especially like repeating tasks you only have to do once. Thanks. Geoff. The friendly fisherman :)
I saw that website.
The lower right-hand box,, Social media; i say use it to do business and get referrals , and definitely, loose the TV.
A great reminder...I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, but forgot how to do it and what it's called....haha...only remembered seeing a box that helped you organize....you don't even want to know what happened when I tried to Google for it....hahahaha...anyway, thank you for this....now I'm going to put it into action!
To search for it in google you would have to have “The Eisenhower Box.” in the search box to get the results.
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This is great. I never heard of the Eisenhower box before, but I am going to try this immediately. I've made to-do lists before or drew a line down a sheet of paper to create pros and cons columns. But this really helps drill down to the importantly tasks. Thanks for posting!