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Do you ever find that you’ve done sooo much work? And yet, you still have a really important task hanging over your shoulder? One that needs to be done by tomorrow?
The Eisenhower Box may be just what you need…
In this post, you will learn:
What is the Eisenhower box?
The Eisenhower Box is a system used to determine which tasks are most important, which tasks we should delegate, and which task we simply shouldn’t do at all.
It is a system created by Dwight. D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the US.
How do you use this box?
There are 4 boxes. These are:
- Important and Urgent
- Not Important and Urgent
- Important and Not Urgent
- Not important and Not Urgent
These four boxes tell you what to do with each task.
Tasks in Box 1 should be done immediately, but any Tasks in Box 2 should be delegated. Tasks in Box 3 should be Scheduled for a later time. Most Tasks in Box 4 should be deleted, as they are not important enough for anyone’s time, but some of these tasks probably do need to be done at some point.
What are the pros and cons?
Pros
- It helps to prioritise tasks, as it determines which tasks need to be done right away.
- It will allow you to have more time to do things, as that time is not taken up by unnecessary tasks.
Cons
- When in school, we don’t have anyone we can delegate tasks to, so we have to do them ourselves.
- You can hardly get someone else to do your studying for you!
- It is a lot of effort to set up every day, and often there aren’t enough tasks for it anyway.
What do I do – I can’t delegate!
Unfortunately, you’re going to have to do these tasks yourself, because, after all, someone has to do them!
You can prioritise these tasks depending on how urgent they are, and then categorise them depending on importance.
Example
I have 5 tasks to do; under the Urgent boxes: Maths Homework (due in two days), English Homework (due tomorrow), History Revision (due tomorrow), Science Revision (due in three days) and I have to train for Athletics (due in 4 days).
Here’s how I would organise these:
- English Homework
- History Revision
- Maths Homework
- Science Revision
- Training for Athletics
I always do my Homework before I revise, because the consequences of not doing my homework are greater than that of not revising for an End of Unit test.
Conclusion
The Eisenhower Box is a great planning technique, but it isn’t for everyone. Personally, I have used it a few times, and it does work, but i often don’t have time to make the box.
In this post, you have learned:
- What the Eisenhower Box is
- How to use it
- The Pros
- The Cons
- What to do if you can’t delegate tasks
Thank you for reading this quick but important post! I try to post twice a week, every week, but sometimes life gets in the way and I can only post once! Don’t miss out!
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