Eisenhower Matrix applied to an engineering manager's week

The Eisenhower Matrix is simple in theory and routinely abused in practice. Most managers I've watched run it produce a list where 90% of items end up in "Important + Urgent". This worked example shows what an honest run looks like.

The setup

A real engineering manager (anonymized) at a mid-size SaaS company, working through Monday morning planning. Carrying 18 items across her desk:

1. Q3 OKR review with VP today at 4pm
2. PR review for a senior eng's refactor PR (sitting 3 days)
3. 1:1 with struggling junior eng tomorrow morning
4. CTO Slack: "got a sec to discuss the platform migration"
5. Compliance training overdue (auto-reminder #3)
6. Hiring panel debrief for two candidates
7. Incident retro from last Thursday's outage
8. Team's planning poker session Wednesday
9. New laptop request for new hire arriving Monday
10. Vendor invoice approval ($2k, due Friday)
11. Spec review for upcoming feature (eng wants feedback today)
12. Recurring "all-hands" presentation prep for next week
13. Team budget reforecast (quarterly)
14. Direct report's promotion case write-up (target: end of quarter)
15. Slack channel cleanup (15 stale channels)
16. Conference invite to evaluate (talk slot offered)
17. Coffee with peer EM in another org (postponed twice already)
18. Self-development reading: just-published book on platform engineering

The sort

The manager scored each item on (a) urgency = real consequence in 48 hours? and (b) importance = ladders to her quarterly goals? Goals were: ship platform migration milestone 1, retain the struggling junior, hire 2 senior engineers.

Important + Urgent — Do now

• Item 1 (OKR review at 4pm) — non-negotiable
• Item 7 (incident retro) — engineering culture depends on doing these promptly
• Item 11 (spec review blocking eng today) — unblocks team

Important + Not Urgent — Schedule

• Item 3 (1:1 with struggling junior) — central to "retain junior" goal
• Item 6 (hiring debrief) — central to "hire 2 senior" goal
• Item 14 (promotion write-up) — important to direct report's career
• Item 4 (CTO Slack about platform migration) — looks reactive, actually important; book proper time
• Item 8 (planning poker Wednesday) — team velocity, not urgent until Wednesday

Not Important + Urgent — Delegate

• Item 2 (PR review) — sr eng can pair with another sr; not the manager's bottleneck
• Item 9 (laptop request) — delegate to IT directly
• Item 10 (invoice) — finance team has the workflow
• Item 5 (compliance training) — 15 min, do it during a low-energy slot but don't elevate

Not Important + Not Urgent — Drop

• Item 15 (Slack channel cleanup) — no one cares; archive in batch later if free
• Item 12 (all-hands prep) — wait until Friday; over-prepping a 10-min talk is waste
• Item 16 (conference invite) — pass this round
• Item 17 (peer coffee) — keep on the calendar at low cadence, don't agonize
• Item 18 (reading the book) — important for career, not this week; schedule in personal time
• Item 13 (budget reforecast) — has 2 weeks; not this week

What this run revealed

Two things the manager learned:

Items 4 and 6 had been re-categorized for weeks. Item 4 (CTO platform conversation) had been pushed off because it didn't feel "urgent". Item 6 (hiring debrief) had been postponed twice. Both were Important + Not Urgent items — exactly the ones the matrix predicts get ignored without explicit scheduling.

The Drop quadrant was bigger than expected. The manager had been treating items 12, 15, 16, 17, 18 as low-priority but still on the list. The matrix forced an explicit "drop" decision, which felt uncomfortable until she said it out loud: "these are things I would do if I had infinite time. I don't."

Decisions made in 30 minutes

• 4pm OKR review: prepared in 15 min between meetings.
• Tuesday 9am: 1:1 with junior, focus on whether scoping was the issue (not skill).
• Wednesday: 90 min blocked specifically for the CTO platform conversation prep. Marked unmovable.
• PR review delegated to sr eng pairing partner.
• Compliance training: 15 min at 4:45pm after OKR review.
• Items 15, 16, 18 explicitly cancelled. The list ended at 14 items, not 18.

Lessons that generalize

• The discomfort of "drop" is the matrix doing its job. A 4-quadrant matrix where the bottom-right is empty hasn't been used honestly.
• Important + Not Urgent is the quadrant most managers under-invest in. This run identified two such items that would have continued to slip without explicit scheduling.
• 30 minutes is the right time budget. Going longer doesn't sharpen the analysis; it usually produces more reasons to keep items rather than drop them.

Run your own

Open the Eisenhower Matrix worksheet →, or read the full Academy guide for the methodology.