Prioritizing your business using a modified Eisenhower Matrix
Master your priorities with my own version of the Eisenhower Matrix: a simple tool to focus on what truly matters.
Hi,
Every year since I started my business, I have taken December off to do a complete audit of my business and reflect on the previous year. I plan new initiatives for the following year and scrap anything that doesn’t serve me anymore.
One of the best tools I use is a modification of an Eisenhower Matrix, one of the single best prioritization tools I’ve ever found.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful time management tool that helps you prioritize tasks by dividing them into four distinct quadrants: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither urgent nor important.
Building one for yourself allows you to focus your energy on what truly matters, ensuring that essential tasks are addressed promptly while avoiding the trap of busywork that often feels pressing but yields little value.
My process isn’t exactly an Eisenhower Matrix, but it’s very, very close. If you’ve never done one before, then I highly recommend taking taking some time to audit your business.
Here’s the exercise I do every year.
Write down all your responsibilities and tasks, no matter how small, either on a notepad, a spreadsheet, or a whiteboard. Really it doesn’t matter where you write it down, but try to make it comprehensive.
Create two new columns with headers NECESSITY and ENJOYMENT. The necessity column deals with how important a task is to the day-to-day functionality of your business. The enjoyment column deals with how much you like doing that task.
Now, rank each of your tasks on a scale from 1-10. Something with high necessity can be monetary or functional, but not always. Some admin tasks are critical for a business, even if they don’t add any revenue to your business. Meanwhile, some monetary tasks might not be very necessary at all. The enjoyment level should be self-explanatory. Here’s the rub. You can’t use the number seven as an answer. Seven is the default when you don’t want to make a hard choice, so you can’t use it here. You must choose either a six or an eight, for reasons that will be clear very soon.
Once you have your list, it’s time to make a hard break between 1-6 and 8-10. This is why you can’t use seven. Everything on the 1-6 side falls on the DON’T LOVE/DON’T NEED side of the barrier. Everything 8-10 falls on the LOVE/NEED side of the barrier depending on the column.
Draw a grid with four quadrants. Mark the X-AXIS as ENJOYMENT and the Y-AXIS as NECESSITY. Everything you LOVE and NEED should end up on the TOP RIGHT QUADRANT. Everything you NEED but don’t LOVE should end up in the TOP LEFT QUADRANT. Everything you DON’T NEED and DON’T LOVE should be in the BOTTOM LEFT. Everything you LOVE but DON’T NEED should end up in the BOTTOM RIGHT. It should end up looking something like this when you are done.
Now, you assess. What is in the top right quadrant? Those should be your core products and offerings. You might even find some new services you could offer that more align with your passions. What is in the bottom right quadrant? How can you make those more important to your business? What is in the top left quadrant? How can you outsource those, or change them so you love them? What ended up in the bottom left quadrant? Cut those things ASAP.
What you should find are the things in your business that bring the highest return and provide a high level of satisfaction. You should immediately find ways to double down on those parts of your business. The more time you can spend doing those, the more your company will grow.
By consistently applying this matrix to your business, you can reduce stress, enhance productivity, and maintain a clear vision of your goals, ultimately leading to more meaningful and impactful work. This method isn’t just about managing your day-to-day tasks; it’s about shifting your mindset to work smarter, not harder, by dedicating time to activities that align with your long-term objectives.
Once you finish this exercise, you might be interest in guidance on what your next goal should be, which you can find here.
What do you think?
How do you prioritize your business tasks?
What tasks bring you the most satisfaction?
Let us know in the comments.
Thank you, that was interesting. Just to make it more complicated, I added a third category, Time-Sink, gauging the time impact for a 3-way tit-for-tat. ;) Self-inflicted wounds, since getting LibreOffice to plot that 3 ways proved aggravating.
Writing and my new translations create new product. Duh, priority. Yet not-duh, audio doesn't make the cut. While I'm trying to get the translations biz off the ground, ignore audio as much as possible. There are rare opportunities there. Don't jump at the ones that aren't.
And when I saw them, I realized some other things amount to "operations - do them better." Ads, new covers, better blurbs, makee-learnee.
One of my longstanding confusions has been when to kill a lot of time reimplementing my old Drupal author website into WordPress. That's a big job, that has not yet made the cut. I wasted 2 weeks on it once, with nothing to show for it. Not so tempting. Would I rather write and publish another book, or build a new website? That's a duh.