Eisenhower matrix

About this tool

Eisenhower matrix: what it is and how to use it

The Eisenhower matrix sorts tasks by two questions: is it urgent, and is it important? The two answers give four boxes. This free tool lets you add tasks to the boxes, move them as things change and tick them off, and it keeps your list in your own browser.

Where the grid comes from

The four-quadrant grid is the tool Stephen Covey teaches in Habit 3 of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). His argument is that the most valuable time goes to things that are important but not urgent, such as planning, creative thinking and learning, and that those are easily crowded out by things that only feel pressing.

The Eisenhower name comes from a saying. On 19 August 1954, speaking in Evanston, Illinois, Dwight Eisenhower quoted a former college president: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." Quote Investigator, which traced the saying, writes that it does not know whether he used the matrix, and we did not find who first gave the grid his name.

In five experiments published in 2018, people were more likely to do unimportant tasks over important ones when the unimportant ones merely looked urgent. An independent replication published in 2026 found the effect again, smaller once more controls were added. That supports the idea behind the grid; it does not show that sorting a week into quadrants makes people more effective. More in our 7 Habits summary.

How to use it

1. Type a task, choose one of the four boxes and press Add task.
2. To choose, ask: does this need doing soon, and does it matter for what I am trying to get done? The action names on the boxes (do now, schedule, hand off or keep short, drop) are our suggestion, not Covey's wording.
3. When your view of a task changes, drag it to another box or use its move button.
4. Tick a task when it is done. Clear done removes finished ones; Delete everything empties the board.
5. Once a week, look at the important but not urgent box and book a block of time for one task in it.

An example

Monday's list is long. A form the landlord needs today goes in urgent and important. Learning the software a new role uses goes in important, not urgent, with an hour booked on Wednesday. A request to reorder the office playlist goes in urgent, not important, and gets a two-line reply. A pile of unread newsletters goes in the last box.