But when that wears off, we realize we’ve spent the whole day doing things that don’t really matter. When we know a deadline is looming, our reactive brain kicks in we put all our energy into completing something simply because it’s “urgent”, and then are rewarded with a brief hit of dopamine for our efforts. It’s in our nature to prioritize urgent tasks. This matrix is basically a way of figuring out what you should be doing, and of learning to approach your commitments more consciously, something President Eisenhower was known to do very well. These two words often seem interchangeable, but there’s a big difference between them-and this difference forms the crux of the time management matrix, which is commonly coopted as the Eisenhower Matrix. When you’re really busy at work, rushed off your feet with tasks, it’s easy to overlook the distinction between what’s “important” and what’s “urgent”. Among other strategies, the time management matrix can help us make better use of our time. Put another way, nearly half of all our time is misplaced and we have a huge opportunity to refocus it on something more valuable. According to a six-year global study of 351,000 people, over 40% of time in the workplace is spent carrying out tasks that ultimately don’t matter. What most people have in common, no matter their profession, is that they commonly prioritize the tasks that shout the loudest over those that are actually the most important.
You probably waste far more time than you realize-almost all of us do.