Eisenhower Matrix

What this tool does

Eisenhower Matrix is an interactive four-quadrant task board (Do First, Schedule, Delegate, Eliminate) based on the classic urgent/important prioritisation framework, letting you add, move between quadrants, and delete tasks, saved automatically to your browser.

Not every task on a to-do list deserves equal attention, some are genuinely urgent and important, others only feel urgent, and some could be eliminated entirely, but a flat list doesn’t make that distinction visible.

The Eisenhower Matrix sorts tasks by two independent dimensions, urgency and importance, into four quadrants: Do First, Schedule, Delegate, and Eliminate, making priority genuinely visible rather than implied by list order alone.

How to use Eisenhower Matrix

1. Add a task to whichever quadrant best describes it right now.
2. Use the small arrow buttons on a task to move it to a different quadrant if your assessment changes.
3. Work through "Do First" tasks immediately, and schedule time for "Schedule" tasks.
4. Periodically review "Delegate" and "Eliminate" tasks to hand them off or remove them.

Tips for better results

• Urgency and importance are genuinely independent, a task can be urgent without being important (a ringing phone) or important without being urgent (long-term planning), sort based on both dimensions honestly, not just how loud a task feels.
• "Delegate" tasks are urgent but don’t specifically need your personal attention, a common trap is doing these yourself by default just because they’re pressing, when handing them off would be more efficient.
• "Eliminate" tasks are worth questioning entirely, not just deprioritising, if something is neither urgent nor important, ask whether it needs to be done at all.
• Review and re-sort your board periodically, a task’s urgency naturally increases as its deadline approaches, so what started in "Schedule" may need moving to "Do First" later.

Common use cases

• Prioritising a busy day or week’s worth of tasks by genuine urgency and importance.
• Identifying tasks that could be delegated rather than done personally.
• Spotting low-value tasks worth eliminating entirely rather than just deprioritising.
• Teaching or practicing a well-known prioritisation framework with real, current tasks.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Sorting by how loud or stressful a task feels rather than its actual urgency and importance, a task that merely feels urgent (like a notification) isn’t automatically either urgent or important in the framework’s real sense.
• Leaving tasks in "Delegate" without ever actually delegating them, defeating the purpose of that quadrant, if a task belongs there, actively hand it off rather than doing it yourself anyway.
• Never revisiting "Eliminate" tasks to actually remove them, letting low-value items linger on the board indefinitely instead of being dropped.