Guide
The Eisenhower matrix as an app: important before urgent
The Eisenhower matrix sorts tasks into four quadrants by asking two questions, and it gives each quadrant a clear rule. Learn how the Eisenhower principle works, where it breaks down in practice, and how to set up the matrix as a view in an app that keeps itself up to date.
What is the Eisenhower matrix?
The Eisenhower matrix is a grid with four quadrants. One axis asks whether a task is important, the other whether it is urgent. Every task lands in exactly one quadrant, and every quadrant has a rule. That is what makes the method fast: You don’t weigh twenty tasks against each other; you answer yes or no twice for each one.
The name goes back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a 1954 speech in Evanston, the then US president quoted a former college president as saying that he had two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important; the urgent were not important, and the important were never urgent. Eisenhower never drew the matrix himself. The four-quadrant grid became known as the Eisenhower principle through the time management literature, for example Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”
Important or urgent: the difference
Important is whatever contributes to your goals: It moves a project forward, fulfills a commitment, or takes care of your health or your relationships. Urgent is whatever demands a reaction right now: A deadline is running out, someone is waiting, a notification is flashing.
The problem: Urgent things feel important because they are loud. An email saying “please by today” grabs your attention; the outline for the online course that is supposed to bring in revenue in three months does not. The matrix separates the two, so you can see how much of your time goes to urgent things that aren’t important at all.
The four quadrants and their rules
| Quadrant | Rule | Example |
|---|---|---|
| A: important and urgent | Do it now yourself | Quarterly tax payment due the day after tomorrow |
| B: important, not urgent | Schedule it, with a fixed date | Decide on the course price, set up a training plan |
| C: urgent, not important | Delegate it or keep it short | Compare quotes, pick photos, answer follow-up questions |
| D: neither important nor urgent | Delete it | Articles that have been on “read later” for weeks |
The real lever is quadrant B. What sits there never becomes urgent enough on its own to get done—until it suddenly lands in A as a crisis. If you give B time regularly, you have less in A. Quadrant C, on the other hand, is often other people’s priorities; this is where it pays to delegate, batch, or simply answer more briefly.
Four quadrants
One matrix, three perspectives
Important and urgent
Do it now yourself
- Check the quarterly tax payment
- Confirm access to the course platform
Important, not urgent
Schedule
- Decide on the course price
- Set up a 16-week training plan
Urgent, not important
Delegate
- Pick product photos
- Compare countertop quotes
Neither important nor urgent
Delete
- Read article on weekly planning
- Idea: podcast
Common mistakes with the Eisenhower matrix
- Everything is important. If A and B hold more than C and D, your standard is too soft. Ask yourself for each task: What happens if I never do it?
- Urgency by gut feeling. “Urgent” should mean a deadline, not a stress level. A task without a date is not urgent.
- B never gets scheduled. A list called “important, someday” is a graveyard. Every B task needs a day on which you start it.
- Delegating without following up. Whatever you hand off has to be recorded somewhere as “waiting for,” or it comes back as an A task.
- Sorted once, never looked at again. The placement changes every day because deadlines get closer. A matrix on paper has to be redrawn each time.
How often to look at the matrix
A two-step rhythm works well. Daily, before your first appointment, take a quick look at A and B: What is in A gets done today; from B, you pick one task before the day fills up with urgent things. Weekly, you check the standard itself: Is everything marked as important still important? Is anything missing? Which C tasks keep coming back, and can you delegate or batch them for good? A matrix whose placement nobody questions anymore sorts by how things stood three months ago.
The Eisenhower matrix as a view in TandemLoop
An Eisenhower matrix app should do the redrawing for you. In TandemLoop, you set only one attribute by hand—importance—and let urgency follow from the due date. The date filter calculates relative to today and is evaluated again every time you open the view. An important task due on Friday therefore sits in B on Monday and moves to A on its own on Wednesday.
- Create the tag: In Settings, under Tags, create the tag “Important.” If you set it on a project, it applies to all the tasks in it.
- Define urgent: Decide when a deadline counts as urgent—for example, “due by the day after tomorrow or overdue.” In the view editor, that is the filter Due Date with “on or before” and the value
@today+2d, which recalculates every day. - Create four views: one view per quadrant with the filters from the template below, each with “Status is Active” added.
- Build the dashboard: a view with the layout Dashboard, two rows and two columns. Each cell gets one of the four views, and you see the whole matrix at a glance.
Template: the four filters
| View | Important | Urgent |
|---|---|---|
| Do First (A) | Tags contains Important | Due Date on or before the day after tomorrow |
| Schedule (B) | Tags contains Important | at least one of: Due Date after the day after tomorrow · Due Date is empty |
| Delegate (C) | Tags doesn’t contain Important | Due Date on or before the day after tomorrow |
| Delete? (D) | Tags doesn’t contain Important | at least one of: Due Date after the day after tomorrow · Due Date is empty |
The “Do First” view as a file
name: Do First
layout: outline
filter:
all:
- field: tags
op: contains
value: Important
- field: due_date
op: lte
value: "@today+2d"
- field: status
op: eq
value: activeYou act right from the matrix: Give a B task a do date so it shows up in your view for that day. Set a C task to Waiting and note who you’re waiting for—or assign it to your agent. Drop a D task or set it to Someday. If you also like a board, the guide to the kanban app has the right settings; the overview of the to-do app with your own views shows all layouts and filters.
The agent suggests the placement
Sorting is the tedious part: Asking “important?” forty times for forty open tasks takes time. Because tasks in TandemLoop are text files, an AI agent with file access—Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or another—can read them and suggest a placement. It bases its suggestions on due dates, notes, and the intent and success criteria you’ve recorded for your projects.
Go through all open tasks in my Work area and suggest for each one whether it should get the Important tag and what due date is realistic. Give a one-sentence reason for each suggestion. Flag the tasks you could take on yourself.
Reading open tasks in the Work area…
Confirm access to the course platform—important, tomorrow; uploading lesson 1 is waiting on it.
Compare countertop quotes—not important, but due in three days; I can take it on as a draft.
Should I set the tag and due dates like this?
You go through the list, cross out what’s wrong, and the agent sets the tag and due date for the rest; if proposals are turned on, it submits the changes as a proposal that you approve in the app. Whatever you assign to it, it completes and hands back for review. The page Hand off tasks to AI agents describes how assigning works.
Ask, and the agent also sets up the tag “Important,” the four views, and the dashboard for you.
Frequently asked questions about the Eisenhower matrix
What is the Eisenhower matrix?
A four-quadrant grid for setting priorities. You place each task by asking two questions: Is it important? Is it urgent? That gives you four quadrants, each with one rule: do it now, schedule it, delegate it, delete it.
What is important, and what is urgent?
A task is important if it contributes to your goals, projects, or commitments. It is urgent if a deadline is close or someone is waiting on you. Urgency only tells you when something needs attention, not how much it is worth.
Why is it called the Eisenhower matrix?
It goes back to a 1954 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, in which he quoted the distinction between urgent and important problems. The four-quadrant grid came later, in the time management literature.
Which app works for the Eisenhower matrix?
An app in which you can mark importance as an attribute, derive urgency from the due date, and see four filtered lists side by side. In TandemLoop, that means a tag “Important,” four views with a date filter, and a dashboard with two rows and two columns. Tasks move into “Do First” on their own as their deadline gets closer.
Is there an Eisenhower matrix template?
Yes, this page lists the four filter rules as a template. On paper, a sheet with four boxes is enough. In an app, the placement moves along with the date automatically, and completed tasks disappear.
Can an AI agent prioritize my tasks with the Eisenhower matrix?
Yes. It places each task and explains why—for example, because the task blocks a project or has a deadline. It sets the tag and due date, and it can take on some of the tasks in the Delegate quadrant itself.