How to stop wasting time

Ever feel like you’re doing stuff and yet not moving forward? Dwight Eisenhower has tips to help get out of that situation.

Leonard: Wait, what have you been doing for the past six months?

Rajesh: You know, checking email, updating my Facebook status, …

The Big Bang Theory, Season 3, Episode 4

If you’ve ever spent a day doing things, and yet not getting anywhere, Raj’s feeling in The Big Bang Theory should be familiar. And I assume that if you’ve worked ten days in your life, at least one must have been spent in such a restless and yet useless way.

On a personal level, doing things and not moving forward can mean doing trivial tasks all day long: answering emails, updating documentation, and so on. The same happens on an organizational level too: whole companies can be working hard on a product, delivering features, and yet not moving forward. This is often due to confusing urgent tasks for important ones, and focusing on the former at the expense of the latter. The Eisenhower Matrix can help solve that problem.

The Eisenhower Matrix

In 1945, Dwight Eisenhower had around 1.5 million troops under his command, so it’s fair to assume he knew a thing or two…