Portable Wisdom

The Urgent vs. Important Matrix

Source: Stephen Covey

This is a tool to help manage the allocation of resources to tasks.

You will also sometimes see this referred to as the Eisenhower Matrix, and will sometimes see it credited to Stephen Covey, who helped to popularize it.

The four quadrants of the model are formed along the two dimensions of importance and urgency.

Let’s review what we mean by the two key terms here.

So, with these definitions in mind, what can we recommend for tasks that fall into each of the quadrants?

Of course, the typical challenge here is to limit the volume and frequency of urgent items in order to focus necessary resources on the items that are important but not urgent.