Urgent and important may seem like similar words, but when analyzing them in terms of the Eisenhower principle, the difference between the two is crucial. Differentiating between urgent and important within the Eisenhower Matrix can help you identify which tasks you should jump on and which tasks might be better handled by other team members.
Urgent tasks require your immediate attention. When something is urgent, it must be done now, and there are clear consequences if you don’t complete these tasks within a certain timeline. These are tasks you can’t avoid, and the longer you delay these tasks, the more stress you’ll likely experience, which can lead to burnout.
Examples of urgent tasks may include:
Finishing a project with a last-minute due date
Handling an urgent client request
Fixing a busted pipe in your apartment
Important tasks may not require immediate attention, but these tasks help you achieve your long-term goals. Just because these tasks are less urgent doesn’t mean they don’t matter. You’ll need to thoughtfully plan for these tasks so you can use your resources efficiently.
Examples of important tasks may include:
Planning a long-term project
Professional networking to build a client base
Regular chores and maintenance projects
Once you know how to distinguish between urgent and important tasks, you can begin separating your tasks into the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix.
Help Your Team Make Faster Decisions
When should a leader be pulled into a decision, and when can team members move autonomously? Identifying decisions as low risk or high risk and low urgency or high urgency helps to clarify expectations.
Here are the kinds of decisions we chose to put into each category.
Decide without me: Your direct reports should have most of their responsibilities piled under this item. This would include successfully executing the agreed-to strategy, fulfilling the duties of their role, hiring, spending, solving personnel issues, and managing the departments through their dashboard. A leader’s job is to help establish missions, not to micromanage how each person gets there.
Inform on progress: A leader may want to “watch” some matters as they unfold. These include initiatives that have risk, general budget creep, or employee issues that might escalate. Sometimes I ask execs to use the channels of their choice to inform me on projects they are working on that I have personal passion for. This way, I stay informed and don’t need to ask about it but still get the joy of watching it develop. We found that before, when I would proactively ask questions, executives thought I was questioning their performance. In reality, I simply wanted to be informed along the way without taking any action.
Propose for approval: Things that come up during the year that fall outside of our planned strategy or approved funding belong in this category. Most approvals can be addressed in our quarterly planning meetings, but sometimes unexpected issues need faster feedback — like spending money over the approved budget, making major policy changes, or quickly deciding on a large opportunity that has popped up. Depending on the scale of risk, the team might send me a handful of slides making a case for the proposal, which I can simply approve over email. Other topics are meatier and need the input and approval of the whole executive team.
Escalate immediately: This category mostly evolves around high-risk or high-reward areas. These include scenarios where there are major risks to the strategic plan, changes in governance, shifts in the market, threats to data security or physical security, or even an unexpected acquisition opportunity.
Probably the hardest category for me as a company leader is “Inform on progress.” It takes a lot of self-control to remember that being informed is not the same thing as being asked to weigh in. Using the matrix has given my staff a polite way of telling me, “Just informing! You said you’d keep your nose out of it, remember? I’ve got this.”
This model can and should be modified with direct reports quarterly based on how the business ebbs and flows and what becomes important for you or the business to watch. Talking about the model at least quarterly helps keep everyone aligned and moving on the work they are tasked to do.
Models like these are an important step in becoming a more professionally managed company or department. For us, this model created clarity. As the owner/founder, it was hard for me to let things go, and I had developed some bad habits. Now my team kindly calls me out when I cross the line: The matrix has given them permission to remind me to stay out of their day-to-day areas — while illuminating which kinds of decisions I always want to be involved in.
Eisenhower Matrix
Duarte Matrix
Differentiating between urgent and important
Urgent and important may seem like similar words, but when analyzing them in terms of the Eisenhower principle, the difference between the two is crucial. Differentiating between urgent and important within the Eisenhower Matrix can help you identify which tasks you should jump on and which tasks might be better handled by other team members.
Urgent tasks require your immediate attention. When something is urgent, it must be done now, and there are clear consequences if you don’t complete these tasks within a certain timeline. These are tasks you can’t avoid, and the longer you delay these tasks, the more stress you’ll likely experience, which can lead to burnout.
Examples of urgent tasks may include:
Finishing a project with a last-minute due date
Handling an urgent client request
Fixing a busted pipe in your apartment
Important tasks may not require immediate attention, but these tasks help you achieve your long-term goals. Just because these tasks are less urgent doesn’t mean they don’t matter. You’ll need to thoughtfully plan for these tasks so you can use your resources efficiently.
Examples of important tasks may include:
Planning a long-term project
Professional networking to build a client base
Regular chores and maintenance projects
Once you know how to distinguish between urgent and important tasks, you can begin separating your tasks into the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix.
Help Your Team Make Faster Decisions
When should a leader be pulled into a decision, and when can team members move autonomously? Identifying decisions as low risk or high risk and low urgency or high urgency helps to clarify expectations. Here are the kinds of decisions we chose to put into each category.
Decide without me: Your direct reports should have most of their responsibilities piled under this item. This would include successfully executing the agreed-to strategy, fulfilling the duties of their role, hiring, spending, solving personnel issues, and managing the departments through their dashboard. A leader’s job is to help establish missions, not to micromanage how each person gets there.
Inform on progress: A leader may want to “watch” some matters as they unfold. These include initiatives that have risk, general budget creep, or employee issues that might escalate. Sometimes I ask execs to use the channels of their choice to inform me on projects they are working on that I have personal passion for. This way, I stay informed and don’t need to ask about it but still get the joy of watching it develop. We found that before, when I would proactively ask questions, executives thought I was questioning their performance. In reality, I simply wanted to be informed along the way without taking any action.
Propose for approval: Things that come up during the year that fall outside of our planned strategy or approved funding belong in this category. Most approvals can be addressed in our quarterly planning meetings, but sometimes unexpected issues need faster feedback — like spending money over the approved budget, making major policy changes, or quickly deciding on a large opportunity that has popped up. Depending on the scale of risk, the team might send me a handful of slides making a case for the proposal, which I can simply approve over email. Other topics are meatier and need the input and approval of the whole executive team.
Escalate immediately: This category mostly evolves around high-risk or high-reward areas. These include scenarios where there are major risks to the strategic plan, changes in governance, shifts in the market, threats to data security or physical security, or even an unexpected acquisition opportunity.
Probably the hardest category for me as a company leader is “Inform on progress.” It takes a lot of self-control to remember that being informed is not the same thing as being asked to weigh in. Using the matrix has given my staff a polite way of telling me, “Just informing! You said you’d keep your nose out of it, remember? I’ve got this.”
Related Articles The Real Measure of Presentation Success | Nancy Duarte Make Your Case for Communication Upskilling | Nancy Duarte AI Unlocks New Power for Employees: Are HR Leaders Ready? | Josh Bersin The Simple Power of the Slow Reveal | Nancy Duarte Setting up this kind of decision matrix requires you to feel comfortable asking teams for feedback on whether you speed them up or slow them down. To take it even further, you as the leader can ask the team to grade you on how well you’ve stayed out of their business and stuck to the choices about decision-making that you said you would.
This model can and should be modified with direct reports quarterly based on how the business ebbs and flows and what becomes important for you or the business to watch. Talking about the model at least quarterly helps keep everyone aligned and moving on the work they are tasked to do.
Models like these are an important step in becoming a more professionally managed company or department. For us, this model created clarity. As the owner/founder, it was hard for me to let things go, and I had developed some bad habits. Now my team kindly calls me out when I cross the line: The matrix has given them permission to remind me to stay out of their day-to-day areas — while illuminating which kinds of decisions I always want to be involved in.
Resource
https://asana.com/resources/eisenhower-matrix https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/effective-leaders-decide-about-deciding