Category Archives: Planning

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix

Goal Achievement, Planning, Reflection

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix (below) is a great tool to use to help decide on and prioritize tasks by importance and urgency. It helps us consider which of our activities are important and which are distractions.

Eisenhower Decision Matrix
The Eisenhower Decision Matrix – Keep focussed on taking important actions!
Journaling

I have kept an electronic journal since the year 2010.  It is part of my morning routine each day to write my reflections in my journal.  As part of my daily journal routine I time travel back to see what I was doing on this date last year.  Then I look at the year before and travel all the way back to 2010.  I am building up a data set on my own life!  What I have learned is that our memories are a poor way to record what is happening in our lives.  In time our memories become fuzzy and we can completely forget what happened.

One of the things that I have learned by looking backward in my diary is just how much time I have spent working on things which turned out not to be very important.  What I realise now is that I need to spend more time vetting what I am doing.  I need to make sure that my time is spent doing what is important.  Some things are just a waste of time.  If I had reflected more on this then I would have saved myself so much time and effort which ended up being wasted.

Eisenhower Decision Matrix

Through experience I have realised just how important the Eisenhower Decision Matrix really is.  Are you already familiar with this matrix?  Right now I am working through my projects and tasks and categorising them according to the matrix.  Most importantly before taking on new activities and projects I need to evaluate them according to the matrix and learn to say NO more often.  Otherwise our lives can just be a busy trap where we actually achieve nothing of importance.  This document (written for Life Coaches) explains more about the Eisenhower Decision Matrix (Thanks to Kain Ramsay, Strategic Life Coaching  for his permission to share this).

Best wishes,

Tom

Measurement that Creates Problems

Book Review, Business Book, Planning

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Albert Einstein

This week we continue our look at the knowing-doing gap and how it relates to our personal lives and not just to businesses.

Measures need to be about developing knowledge and turning knowledge into action. Measures by their nature focus attention.   There is an old saying that what gets measured gets done and what is not measured gets ignored.  We have to be very careful therefore what we measure. For example in business if there is a quarterly focus on results then this will divert the focus away from long term results to short tern actions.  Another problem with measurements is that they can become too complicated.   Remember to Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS).  If you are trying to measure too many things at once (e.g. performance indicators) then people cannot focus and are likely to give up.  Measurement systems need to be simple enough to focus attention on key elements and also be objective.   Attention also needs to focus on in-process measurements and not on outcomes.  If I am sitting for exams I should not focus on the final results but focus on how many hours of study I did today (that is an in-process measurement).   Focusing on in-process measures of performance is much less stressful.   Measures should also not be fixed in stone – they need to evolve and be refined depending on the needs of the business.

So what can we learn?

What can we learn to apply in your own life?  How do you measure your own performance?  Choose carefully what you measure because that is where your attention will be.   Keep it simple – if its too complicated you will likely give up.   An example is writing three key things to get done today and doing them.  That is simple and actionable.  Focus on what you can do today because you can only live in today.  Make each day great and you will have a great life!  These are your in-process measurements of performance – your inputs today.  If you are writing a book don’t focus on having the book written by X date.  Focus on how many pages you will write everyday.  Don’t focus on the outcomes (the book).  Finally is what you are measuring serving you?  If not change what you are measuring.  Your weekly AAR (After Action Review) is a good time to reflect on that question.

Next Week:  When internal competition turns friends into enemies.

Ref: ‘The Knowing-Doing Gap – How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. Harvard Business School Press, 2000