You have many demands on your time as a nonprofit. Without good time management techniques, you have a hard time accomplishing your goals and fulfilling your mission. The Eisenhower Square is a method you can use to determine the most important tasks to tackle yourself. Less urgent duties should be delegated to others in your organization or set aside.
Using the Eisenhower Square
Divide a square into four quadrants. Label them Do First, Schedule, Delegate, and Don’t Do. When you put together your to-do list, consider which category it fits in. Your Do First tasks should be those that have the highest urgency. For example, you can answer time-sensitive donor emails or hold a meeting to go over an outreach campaign.
Schedule tasks are those that are important for you to do personally, but they have more flexibility in when you can check them off your list.
Anything that falls under the Delegate quadrant are duties that don’t require your personal touch, but they do need to be finished within a short period. Ideally, you can find other people in your nonprofit organization to take on these duties.
Finally, the Don’t Do section involves tasks that aren’t that important or essential. A normal to-do list makes it tempting to write down every single thing that you want to achieve, but the Eisenhower Square helps you realize whether they’re truly a priority or not.
Eisenhower Square Apps
Several mobile apps make it easy to get started with the Eisenhower Square method.
- Focus Matrix Task Manager for iOS
- Eisenhower Matrix Web App
- Eisenhower Matrix for iOS
- Priority Matrix for Android
Discuss the Delegation Section
Many nonprofits lack the people or resources to effectively delegate everything that falls into that category. Talk to the executive director or the board to determine whether tasks in this section should move into the Don’t Do quadrant. You can probably throw out more things that you anticipated when you take a critical look at your to-do list.
The Eisenhower Square is an excellent way to make the most of the time you have available. Most nonprofit staff fill up their plate and then some with things to do, so make sure that everything is important and necessary for you to do and keep on putting out the magical unicorn magic!
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