The Eisenhower Matrix: the best way to handle priorities and keep away from stress. A psychologist explains the way it works
Sometimes, accumulating an extended checklist of issues to do could make us really feel like we now have misplaced management of the state of affairs and even trigger a psychological breakdown that makes us unable to determine the place to begin. It can occur in any context, from work to house, to private. No matter how easy the duties are, there’s all the time the chance that they accumulate and, once they attain some extent of saturation, paralyze us, forestall us from shifting ahead, with nice harm to our psychological well being.
The significance of building priorities
Where do I begin? This is a crucial query, which should be checked out systematically, not following intuition, as we regularly do. Psychologist Laura Palomares says: “We are likely to do our jobs with out distinguishing between what is basically essential and what’s not, that’s, with out setting priorities.” “The downside is that, when the issues to be carried out exceed a sure restrict, our actions turn into much less stimulating, make us really feel depressed and create anxiousness, which in its most excessive degree can paralyze us and create a state of psychological block”. For this motive, it is very important be taught to categorise our duties based mostly on their significance, as a way to discover the suitable order to do them.
What is the Eisenhower Matrix
But the best way to set up a scale of priorities? In this case, the psychologist factors out, the approach generally known as the “Eisenhower Matrix” will help us. The title is derived from a well-known aphorism coined within the Nineteen Fifties by the thirty fourth president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower: “The essential isn’t pressing and the pressing isn’t essential”. Palomares explains: “The Eisenhower Matrix is a piece administration instrument that helps us set up our duties and provides them the suitable priorities based mostly on two parameters, urgency and significance. It has many followers as a result of it is extremely efficient and straightforward to make use of. It helps handle time and duties constantly, makes work simpler and creates a way of order and psychological stability.”
How does this work
But how does the Eisenhower Matrix work? If you are a kind of individuals who wish to put collectively an extended checklist of issues to do, step one will likely be a variety of enjoyable for you. In truth, it includes drawing an inventory of all of the duties that have to be carried out whereas we’re ready. As Palomares factors out, “this is not going to solely assist to cut back the psychological load as a result of we are going to now not be pressured to recollect each single job, however it might convey us some aid, making us uncover that there will not be many issues that we now have to do as our thoughts needed us to imagine that they had been. Yes, as a result of, typically, the thoughts might be our best enemy.
Once we’re conscious of all of the duties that we now have to do, the psychologist explains the following step: “We have to separate the “pressing” duties from the “essential” duties, remembering that significance is an unbiased idea – what’s essential for me might not be essential for one more and what’s essential immediately might not be essential for one more time -, whereas urgency it’s an goal idea, as a result of it relies upon solely on the flexibleness of time and due to this fact applies to these duties that require a direct motion or nonetheless, in a really quick time. By combining the 2 parameters we get the 4 quadrants that make up the Eisenhower Matrix.”