It’s Monday morning, you’ve just sat down at your desk and reviewed your tasks for the week ahead.
The list feels overwhelming and you’re not sure where to start – but thankfully there’s a simple method to save the day.
Here, our Office Manager Hannah looks at the Eisenhower Matrix and how this tool could help you manage our never-ending lists of things to do.
Prioritising your workload is not only a great way of being more efficient, it can also help reduce stress by reliving some of the pressure to have everything done right now.
The matrix helps you identify which tasks are:
Good question!
In our face paced world, everything can feel urgent. But remember, just because a task is urgent to one person, it may not be urgent to you.
The matrix tells us to see all urgent tasks as something which needs to be done that day. If a task can wait, it is not deemed as being urgent. This is vital to remember if you have a task which you have moved to later in the week.
Of course, things are always changing so an “important but not urgent” task may change category. However, if this isn’t the case, good communication with your team/client/supplier (whoever!) on when they can expect to receive an update will help build and maintain good relationships.
Once you’ve figured out which part of the matrix each task belongs in, the following actions can be applied. These are called the “Four Ds of Time Management” and can be cross referenced with the matrix to help you decide which tasks you can delegate.
Having been a manager for (scarily) over a decade now, I still have moments where I’m not sure what to prioritise, what to delegate and what really doesn’t need to be on the list at all.
Being a visual learner, using a diagram of the matrix helps me to look at my list and decide which category each task belongs to.
While the way I use the matrix as an Office Manager will differ to your specific role, hopefully how I set out my day should prove a good example to help you better understand it.
As a general rule, my tasks relating to finance belong in “urgent and important”.
Facilities management and reviewing or updating policies and procedures belong in “important but not urgent.” This is because the work is proactive and has scheduled review dates throughout the year. That said, any reactive facilities management tasks like a leak at the office would be “urgent and important” as it must be dealt with the same day!
Buying milk for the office while urgent is not important, although I may disagree with that if I haven’t had my morning coffee! Therefore, this is something that can be delegated.
The way you use the matrix will be unique to you. Experimenting with it should help relieve that Monday morning stress.
If daily tasks like social media management are proving too stressful, why not delegate them to us?
Contact us today to learn more about how Prominent can help you focus on what you do best.
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