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How To Prioritize your Time using Eisenhower Matrix

Juan Carlos Olamendy's photo
Juan Carlos Olamendy
ยทMay 27, 2022ยท

2 min read

Building a business as a solopreneur is very hard.

We face complex situation and need to make decisions with limited information.

Mental models help with sharp thinking and decision-making.

Let's talk about "How To Prioritize Time".

There is an important question asked for each Indie Hacker: How to spend my time?

Indie Hackers juggle a dozen things everyday like email, customer support, being at Twitter and Indie Hackers, etc.

They still need to push forward important projects, do marketing and write code to add or improve features.

One important strategy is: Eisenhower Matrix.

Tasks are organized by importance and urgency.

The Eisenhower Matrix comprises of four empty boxes, two by two:

  • First Quadrant (upper left): urgent and important
  • Second Quadrant (upper right): important, but not urgent
  • Third Quadrant (lower left): not important, but urgent
  • Fourth Quadrant (lower right): neither important nor urgent

The four-box tool will help you organize your tasks based on when you'll do them.

1/ You'll put your the tasks you'll do first in the first box: "Urgent and important". Do the task now.

Things like meetings and deliverables.

If they fill up 100% of your time, you're in trouble.

You need to move tasks over to the "Not urgent and important" box.

2/ The tasks you'll schedule for later in the second box: "Not urgent and important". Tasks that must get done, but not necessarily right now.

Things like long-term deliverables that require intermediate attention.

3/ Your delegated tasks will fall in the third box: "Urgent and not important". Tasks must get done, but ideally they don't need to get done by you.

Like reactive, low level, low leverage tasks.

This box is for everything related to delegation.

Delegate these tasks to an intern, an executive assistant, or a freelancer.

4/ And finally, the tasks to be deleted in the fourth box: "Not urgent nor important". Tasks that are a waste of time, and you should try to avoid them.

These tasks should be eliminated, because they take time but offer no return on investment.

That's it for today, folks!

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