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How to create an Eisenhower Matrix in Confluence
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How to create an Eisenhower Matrix in Confluence
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What is the Eisenhower Matrix?
Is the Eisenhower Matrix effective?
Create an Eisenhower Matrix in Confluence
Discover how the Eisenhower Matrix helps you cut through the noise and focus on the tasks that matter.
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the number of tasks on your to-do list? Sadly, this kind of work overload isn't uncommon today. It hurts our productivity and can impact us mentally and emotionally, leading to stress and burnout. But thankfully, we can turn a humble Confluence page into a framework that highlights the tasks that matter.
Five-star general and US president Dwight D Eisenhower understood the challenge of juggling a lot of commitments and famously said:
"I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."
This quote birthed the Eisenhower Matrix: the time-tested framework that makes decision-making easy.
What is the Eisenhower Matrix?
The Eisenhower Priority Matrix is a simple but effective decision-making tool. The matrix is split into four sections (quadrants) that rank tasks by urgency and importance.
The Eisenhower Priority Matrix assigns a different priority level depending on which quadrant your task falls into.
Each quadrant assigns a different action for your task:
- Urgent and Important: These are critical and take priority over all others. Do these first.
- Examples: Meeting a critical project deadline, resolving a customer complaint that needs immediate attention
- Examples: Meeting a critical project deadline, resolving a customer complaint that needs immediate attention
- Important but Not Urgent: These can wait for now—schedule time to address them.
- Examples:Â Long-term strategic planning, building relationships with important clients
- Examples:Â Long-term strategic planning, building relationships with important clients
- Urgent but Not Important: These need immediate action but don't help your long-term goals. Delegate them or outsource them (if you can).
- Examples: Routine administrative tasks, non-essential calls
- Examples: Routine administrative tasks, non-essential calls
- Not Urgent and Not Important: Ditch these and free up space for more meaningful work.
- Examples: Reorganising your email inbox, unnecessary meetings
Assigning tasks to each quadrant makes it simple to visualise where you should focus your energy at work, helping you drop distractions that don't matter.
Is the Eisenhower Matrix effective?
The research says yes! According to research by Acuity Training, the Eisenhower Priority Matrix is the best time management tool. Users said they felt in control of their work at least four days a week.
How to create an Eisenhower Matrix in Confluence Cloud
Looking to prioritise tasks in Confluence? No problem. You can create an Eisenhower Matrix of your own with the help of the table element.
- Go to an existing Confluence page or click Create > Page (you can also choose Live Doc if you want to be able to edit your priorities freely).
- In the toolbar, click the arrow beside the Table icon. Choose 3x3.
- Add "Impact: High" and "Impact: Low" to the two top-left cells, then "Urgency: High" and "Urgency: Low" to the two bottom-right cells.
- From left to right, top to bottom, write "Do", "Schedule", "Delegate", and "Delete" at the top of the top-right four cells.
- Colour code the top-right four cells to correspond to each cell's urgency and impact.
See below for an example:
That's it! Now you can add your tasks to the appropriate cell and gauge which need to take priority.
Looking for another tool to help you make team decisions?
Check out our Confluence template for the DACI Decision Documentation framework and learn how to ensure clarity and accountability across your team.
Learn more about our engaging Confluence DACI template, included with Mosaic: Content Formatting Macros & Templates:
An Eisenhower Priority Matrix gives you a fresh perspective on your workload. With a powerful decision-making tool at your fingertips, it's easy to focus on what matters.
An app that's flexible, highly visual, user-friendly, and built to save you time? We think Eisenhower would approve.
Take control of your workweek
When you can visualise which tasks matter, you can say goodbye to anything that won't benefit your long-term goals. In short, you take back control of your work.
A manageable workload is vital to feeling happy and motivated at work. And if this approach benefited the Commander in Chief, the Eisenhower Priority Matrix could do wonders for you too.
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