Welcome to the new Manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim Nickel. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well. This is episode 200 of the New Manager podcast. It's also the last episode of the year 2024. We we only have a couple of days left and then we're moving into a new year. And so for today's episode, I wanted to talk about the Eisenhower Matrix. This is a tool that's been around for a long time. It's named after Dwight Eisenhower.
And he used to be president of the United States long, long ago. And he also was a general during World War 2. So he's a guy who was making a lot of decisions, who had a lot of problems to solve. And there is a quote that is attributed to him. And he said, apparently I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and
the important are never urgent. And so from this quote, we have now this tool that has four quadrants and they are combinations of urgency and importance. And it gives us a lens through which we can consider all of the things that are on your To Do List, all of the things that are asking for your attention. And it can help you decide just by organizing tasks, it can help you decide what to give your attention to. So on one quadrant, we have things that are urgent and important.
These tend to be a bit rare because truly important things tend to not be like what's in our in our field of view. The urgency, though, we sometimes conflate with importance. If something seems urgent, it can be assumed or people might think, oh this is urgent, therefore I must address it right now. But just because it's urgent doesn't mean that it's also
important. So in this box of things that are urgent and important, it's going to be something that needs immediate attention and it has an impact or an effect on longer term goals, something that will matter down the road in the quadrant that is not urgent. But yes, very important. Those are going to be tasks that are relevant to those longer term goals and needs, but they don't need immediate attention.
There's no urgency. And the danger when anything is not urgent is that it's simply going to fall out of mind, fall off the radar. Because, I mean, I think we're just in such a flood of urgency. There's always something that you could be doing now. And it can be difficult to discern when everything seems urgent. We want to really discern between what's the level of importance and who decides if something is important.
Other people might think something is very important and put a lot of urgency on it. Maybe in your estimation, that doesn't line up. So you want to be thinking like, who decides if something is important? We have another quadrant, which is things that are urgent but not important, and those are tasks that need immediate attention, but they're not that important for the long term.
And then we have the quadrant, which are things that are not urgent and not important, and those are often described as tasks that can waste time and should be eliminated. And so the idea is that once you have those four quadrants, you can then make decisions about how you are going to use your time and attention and resources to address them.
Now, one of the nuances to using this tool comes into play when we think about like, what do we know about neurodiversity and the way that different people and different brains process things differently. So for example, when something is not urgent or it's not important, according to this tool, you shouldn't even do it. It's not urgent, it's not
important, why do it? But if we think through the lens of neurodiversity and we think about, well, what is it that brains need, then it could be that the thing that is not urgent and not important is actually a thing that you already know how to do. And so it feels satisfying to do it, which gives you a feeling of reward and a sense of kind of regulating yourself in a chaotic environment.
Like if you're feeling overwhelmed with new things that you don't know how to solve, you know your brain wants to do what it knows how to do. It will feel successful when it's doing something familiar. And so you might find yourself doing things that are not urgent and not important, and they should be crossed off the list, and yet you find yourself there. Instead of beating up on yourself, just consider what other need is being met. That I am spending time here.
Am I avoiding a difficult conversation? Am I feeling satisfied by a feeling of accomplishment? Is it giving me something that feels productive? Like it's not urgent and it's not important, but I get a feeling of satisfaction or completion in completing this thing. Get curious about, like, what is it that's going on that's keeping you there?
And the other reason why it's helpful to think in these terms is the more you understand about yourself, the more you can apply tools like the Eisenhower Matrix in a way that will best serve you. So the Eisenhower Matrix, you know, people will say if it's something is urgent but not important, then that's the thing. You should delegate. OK, so then you need to ask what do I need in order to delegate things? Do I have the right people in place?
Do I need to communicate things or train people? Like what is it that I need to be willing to let go of? And maybe it's the willingness to let someone else be bad at something that you are very good at that can be so painful when you think it would just be faster and easier if I did it myself because I can do it faster. But if it's urgent, not important, it might be time to
delegate it to someone else. You're going to want to understand what is it that you're feeling about that that has you questioning whether you're ready to delegate something or not. And then we have this quadrant where things are not that urgent, but they are important. Those are the things that you want to schedule because if they don't get scheduled, they won't get done.
And one of the things I think about as we come into the end of the year and start thinking about the new year, what are the things that you are going to schedule? Another way of thinking about it, what are the things that you will create and protect time for? Because let's face it, there are lots of things to do to do lists are very full and they kind of have this infinite scroll
effect. Like there's plenty of stuff that you could put on that list to do, but you're having to make decisions about what you use your time for, how you use your energy, your attention. And so if you don't make the time for those things that are not so urgent but they are important, then they won't happen. I feel like the end of the year always brings us collectively to a place of reflection and also intention setting.
What happened this year and what is the intention that you are going to bring into the year ahead? What will be different in the year ahead? How will you direct your energy, your time, and your attention? How are you going to grow and how is your organization going to grow? How is your organization going to be better because you are growing? I don't know, but I think those are all good questions to pause and reflect on. And it can be hard to do in the
daily demand of everyday life. So a big part about being a manager and being a leader is stepping into the willingness to step back and take that bigger picture, to take time to reflect. Because if you don't choose to do it, it probably won't happen. It might feel weird. If that's something you haven't done before, then that's OK.
You know, just see that as a sign of growth, that you're now coming into the stage of the discomfort of strategic perspective, the discomfort of choosing to say no to things that you're good at because that's not the best use of your time or your energy. Maybe now it's time for you to be solving problems that other people are not going to be able to solve. Maybe it's a problem that hasn't happened before for you or for your organization.
And if that's true, then you're really going to need your creativity, your resourcefulness, and the internal sense of like commitment to trusting yourself in your decisions so that you can move forward, learn from what's happening, and stay in the moment. They can be so easy to freeze and try to whiteboard every potential outcome and then just feel scared and overwhelmed by not knowing which decision to make or which path to take. As you go into the year, just be mindful of this.
If it helps to use the Eisenhower Matrix, then do so. Draw that grid and look at those 4 quadrants, look at each of those different categories and bring the lens of your own self-awareness to it, how you understand yourself. And don't use it as a way to kind of beat up on yourself, right? But just use it as a a useful tool that might help you gain some perspective and make some decisions about how you're going to use your time.
One of the other reasons I wanted to talk about this with you today as we're coming into the end of the year is I have also realized that I have been so in the flow with this podcast that I'm now 200 episodes in. And what I really want is to take a step back, to give myself a break so that I can think about what's next. You know, it is so easy to get in a flow and just continue on and on and on.
And what I am choosing now is I want to take a pause, take a step back and really think about how can I make this podcast useful for you? What's next? What do I want to do differently with this show? And so I am going to give myself some time to do some reflection, some thinking, maybe some experiments, try and create some things that might be a little bit different, and then bring that back here. I don't know exactly how long I'll be away, but the good news is you've got 200 episodes.
You've got an entire audio library to go through when you need or want a little boost, a little bit of support. And if you want to learn with me real time, then you're going to want to join my course. My course starts on January 7th. There's still room if you'd like to join and if this is not the right timing for you, no problem. Just get on the wait list and you'll be notified the next time I offer it. And I also have some other classes that I'm planning for Q1.
They haven't been scheduled yet, but to find out more about those you want to get on the wait list. So that is what I wanted to share with you today. You know, it's kind of wild. I feel like coming into December, it always feels like a surprise, like we're here in December already. Where did the time go? Indeed, Where did the time go? The time goes where it always goes. It goes away.
But what we can do is we can practice placing our attention in the moment so that when you're here, you're really here. And we can practice making decisions and committing to them and moving forward and then letting things go so we can arrive in the new moment without carrying the baggage of self doubt or hesitation with us. And that's something that takes some practice. The good news is that you're really good at learning. You could not have lived to
adulthood if that were not true. So I know you've already got that in you. That is what I wanted to share with you today. Thank you so much for listening. I will be back. I just don't know when. But follow me on LinkedIn, connect with me, stay in touch, and I will be back when I will be back. Have a beautiful, peaceful and joyful New year and I'll talk to you again next time. When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your life.
And when you're happier in your life, you're more effective at work. I can help. Go to my website, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.