Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Adding a bit of fun to your Eisenhower matrix

We recently shared an Eisenhower matrix that helps you organize your tasks by importance/urgency. This week’s tip, shared by fabian.kurmann, adds a fun twist: adding some, well, fun tasks into the mix so you enjoy being productive that much more.

I think the Eisenhower method is pretty useful, but what it is lacking is to mix in some fun. Important and urgent tasks are seldom fun, so here’s my suggestion to a revamped Eisenhower matrix applied to RTM so you don’t get grumpy.

I use tasks’ priorities for importance:

• 1 - Due today or very soon and you have to complete the task before going to bed on that day. (Don’t pick too many tasks here.) This is also for unplanned and very important and urgent tasks (buy medicine when sick, etc.).
• 2 - Due whenever they are due, likely postponable, but important
• 3 - Not important but fun tasks, with or without due date
• 0 - lame and unimportant tasks

Urgency is easily managed by due date. If a task is unimportant or important it will show up in the Today view, the This Week view, or your customized time Smart List and automatically be urgent. Set due dates when they are really due, not too early, and certainly not when it’s already too late.

Now if you need a break or some fun, choose one or two (not 10! ;-) ) due or random category 3 tasks between the important stuff. You can subcategorize the fun using tags like #rlyfun, #bitfun, etc.

Set a recurring important task to clear out the lame and unimportant tasks and you are set.

Every day you will achieve some important tasks at all cost, manage some important and enjoy some unimportant. As long as you control yourself on the category 3 tasks, your day will be both productive and entertaining.

Have fun! :-)

Thanks for sharing this tip, fabian.kurmann! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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