How To Have An Eisenhower Matrix Using Notion
Because Decision Matrix and Notion totally worth to use this combination in daily basis.
The Eisenhower Matrix (or diagram), is also known as the Eisenhower matrix, an incredible tool that can help you to prioritise your tasks based on criteria such as urgency and importance. And Notion is an All in One Workspace really powerful that you can use as a Note-Taking App, Todo list, Journal, and many more, it’s up to you how to use it.
I already shared the idea of Time Block your time, based on the Eisenhower Matrix, in which you can split your day into chunks of time, based on each quadrant of the Matrix, as you can see here
Now, I want to focus on how to manage my tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix in Notion. Notion is a powerful tool that you can use however you want, given its blocks and tools within it.
Our Database in Notion
The notion has a great feature that is called a database, which in simple words is a table with the possibility to sort, filter, and link with other tables. Using a Database you will be able to easily manage all tasks you have and also split them into smaller tables by filtering with the parameters you want. Using a plain table, I defined the filter of Important and Urgent, I created 2 properties with names Important and Urgent, with checkbox type, then I could filter based on those properties. It’s quite flexible, but it also might give some margin for errors, anyway, let’s see the example.
Creating our Matrix Using Plain Tables
Then with that, we can easily separate the tasks in other views to easily see what’s important or not, given the Matrix and its properties.
After that, we can create a new page, which we will add a Linked Database, with the table containing all tasks. So, for each new linked database you add, just filter with the correct Quadrant you want.
Easily, it’s possible to see all important or urgent tasks we have to work on. Not only that but with Databases, we can also filter with any property we might have in the table, then it’s possible, for example, to add a filter with tasks with a Due Date with the current date you are. With that, you can see all the important tasks to work on every day. By only adding/editing the tasks in the main database, you will have it all automatically. Not to mention that, if you want to move one ticket from one Quadrant to another, just drag and drop it in the quadrant you believe it belongs.
Creating our Matrix Using Board
I worked a little longer to see if I could create another view of the matrix, using the same database, but instead of using properties to define what is Important and/or Urgent, I use a Select field to filter it. With Quadrant property with the following possible values:
- Urgent and Important
- Not Urgent and Important
- Urgent and Not Important
- Not Urgent and Not Important
After that, we can create a new page, which we will add a Linked Database, with the table containing all tasks. So, for each new linked database you add, just filter with the correct Quadrant you want and using the Board View, to make it prettier and nice to see.
I personally don’t enjoy much creating, a page combining all quadrants in a single page, because it is not easy to keep it “pretty” over time, it becomes messy and ugly, but, anyway I will show here how I did.
Using the same principle as the table, we can define a new property called Due Date, then we can define a new filter in our Matrix, to show all tasks that are with Due Date as Today, then you’ll know what you have to work at the current day you are.
For sure it is just an example and you can use it as it is or you can also adapt, so I shared here the template I created, it is also inspired in another template. Also, I believe we can combine the Notion Matrix with the Time Blocking, which every time your calendar notifies you to work in a specific quadrant, you can focus on the tasks you have in it.
