Prioritizing Tasks - Time Management

One of the important aspects of time management is to prioritize the tasks in hand. This is more of a daily routine one has to perform at the start of the day's work. However, for some prioritizing might be confusing or difficult. That's where the Priority Quadrant comes to the rescue.

The Priority Quadrant, also called the Eisenhower Important/Urgent Principle or Eisenhower Matrix, is a simple rule for classifying the tasks in hand. It is based on the Urgency and Criticality or Importance of the task.

Urgency implies whether the task needs to be addressed at one or the earliest possible

Criticality/Importance means completion of the task is significant to achieving the goal

The Priority Quadrant requires one to classify the tasks based on the following

• Urgent, Important
• Urgent, Not-Important
• Not-Urgent, Important
• Not-Urgent, Not-Important

The classifications themselves should be pretty self-explanatory. The following image illustrates on how to handle each of those category of tasks.

Sometimes, one may find tasks as all urgent and important or have difficulty in categorizing them. In such cases, it would be better to get the help of the superior, who assigned the tasks, to prioritize.

There are a lot of tools available for free that can be use to prioritize the tasks - Microsoft To-Do, Trello, Asana etc.

Initially, getting hang of the priority quadrant might seem a bit tough but over time, it makes life easier.