How to Use a Priority Matrix to Organize Your Life

Does your mile long to-do list have you feeing totally overwhelmed with no idea where to even start?

Your time is important and it’s limited. As a stay at home mom, time management is not an easy to come by skill. We have A LOT to do, for A LOT of people, and it seems there’s never enough time to do it all. Prioritizing your to do list can seem impossible as it’s another task in itself.

The priority matrix will actually allow you to remove items from your to do list, and put somethings off for another time without guilt.

The priority matrix breaks your tasks down into categories based on importance and time sensitivity. I’m going to break this into 3 easy steps for you.

1. Get your matrix ready. Divide your paper into 4 square sections and label them as follows: important & urgent. important & not urgent. unimportant & urgent. unimportant & not urgent.

Dwight Eisenhower used this type of matrix, but he went a step farther and labeled his quadrants as do, decide, delegate and delete.

“What’s important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” – Dwight Eisenhower.

2. With every item on your to do list decide it’s importance and urgency, and graph it accordingly.

3. Do the items that are important and urgent. Decide when you will do the important and non urgent items. Put these in your planner or on your calendar. Arrange to delegate the items that are unimportant but time sensitive (Hello Honey-Do list.).

Lastly, cross off what’s not important or urgent. Feel zero guilt in deleting these items. You’ve established they are unimportant and unnecessary.