Eisenscrum
There’s a lot of things to do and limited time. Therefore, there is a need to prioritize things to do. Former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower once said
“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
To classify tasks he used a simple 2x2 matrix along the urgent and important axes. If something is urgent and important it needs to be done immediately, if something is not urgent and not important it should never be done. This simple matrix can already help with decision making around tasks.
A similar 2x2 matrix is used in SCRUM (an agile software development framework) to prioritize tasks. Instead of the urgent axis, SCRUM uses value and effort. Similar to the Eisenhower matrix, if something is high value and low effort, it should be done immediately while low value and high effort tasks must be avoided. More about that here.
SCRUM and Eisenhower have one axis in common which is importance/high value. I believe that the other two (effort and importance) are important as well. Hence, here’s a version that combines the two decision matrices along three dimensions: effort, value, and urgency.
Algorithm for task classification:
1) Is the task urgent? If so, put it in the red circle.
2) Is the task important/has high value? Put it in the blue circle. If 1) was true, put it in the intersection.
3) Is the task easy/low effort? Put it in the green circle and appropriate intersection between 1 and 2.
Everything that is not urgent, not easy, and has no high value must be ignored.
Here’s the Eisenscrum diagram with some real world examples:
And here’s the Eisenscrum diagram with some examples for a software development company:
This brief idea introduces a combination of SCRUM methods and the Eisenhower matrix. If you give it a shot in your next task planning, I’d be curious to hear whether it worked for you or what you would change/improve upon!
