Time Management Tips: 4 Quadrants of Time Saving, How to Set Your Priorities while Studying

By Trupti Thool|Updated : December 24th, 2021

Managing time effectively is very important for students/ aspirants as it allows them to be more productive in less time, keeps the work organized, helps in stress reduction, and ultimately have a positive effect on health.

Today, we will share one such effective tool to improve your time management skills viz. Eisenhower Matrix, which is popularly known as Time Management Matrix. This matrix was created by the 34th President of the United States of America Dwight D. Eisenhower during his presidency. The Eisenhower Matrix is a productivity tool that students/ aspirants can use to become more productive at the same time by prioritizing the tasks that they need to complete each day.

Benefits of Eisenhower Matrix

As mentioned earlier, the Eisenhower matrix will help you to be more productive each day, here are some benefits of this matrix:

  • It will help you prioritize the tasks that you need to complete each day
  • It will help you understand that some tasks provide a substantial outcome while others do not provide a significant outcome
  • It will help you determine which tasks you should focus on by creating two categories which are ‘Urgent Task’ and ‘Important Task’

The Four Quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix

The below graph highlights the four quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix:

byjusexamprep

Quadrant 1 – Important and Urgent

The first quadrant in the Eisenhower matrix is referred to as the ‘Quadrant of Necessities’ and these must contain those tasks that are both urgent and important. These are the tasks that you have to deal with instantly.
As an aspirant on exams perspective, you should prioritize the tasks that you have to deal with instantly such as solving previous year question paper, analyzing your performance, working on the basic concepts of the topics, and the chapters which need regular practice along with the revision of topics such as NCERT concept, CSAT topics, Quant, English etc. You can decide your urgent and important topics/ lessons by first solving the previous year question papers and then identifying your strong and weak areas.  

Quadrant 2 – Important but Not Urgent

The second quadrant is referred to as the 'Quadrant of Quality. These are the tasks that will help you maintain your quality of preparation. This includes planning for the days ahead and evaluating your performance to see if you are doing what you have planned, also analyzing your strong and weak areas.
From an exam preparation perspective for an aspirant, in this quadrant, you can put topics of Polity, History, Geography, Economy, Environment, important formulae, important lectures that you have to watch, and important articles which will help you in your preparation.

Quadrant 3 – Not Important but Urgent

The third quadrant according to the Eisenhower matrix comprises tasks that aren’t important but urgent and these tasks won’t help you that much in accomplishing your goals. For aspirants who are preparing for an exam, this quadrant will help them to be selective in their preparation regarding what to study? how much to cover? and what not to study? In this quadrant, you can put topics/ chapters of Art & Culture, Miscellaneous etc. All these chapters/ sections are quite vast and in State PCS and Subordinate Exams, only important events and matters are asked from these sections. Hence, instead of covering all the chapters, you can analyze the pattern of the previous year question paper and study accordingly. Remember, State PCS and Subordinate Exams follow their previous year question pattern.

Quadrant 4 – Not Important Not Urgent

The fourth quadrant is called as ‘Quadrant of Waste’ and this contains tasks that are neither urgent nor important. These tasks do not add any value to your daily progress, either you can try to eliminate these tasks or try to minimize them.

From an exam preparation perspective for State PCS and Subordinate Exams aspirants, these tasks include watching TV shows, & Netflix series, messaging and texting, spending too much time on social media or engaging in gossip, etc. These tasks take away your precious time and as an aspirant, you must avoid them. Remember, what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

How to Make Your Priority Matrix?

To make your priority matrix, download the PDF version of the Eisenhower matrix here and list down the tasks based on their priority. Try to follow the priority matrix diligently. 

More from us 

Free Study Notes (Hindi/English)

Current Affairs (Daily/Weekly/Monthly) PDF

NCERT Books/Summary PDF (Hindi/English)

Comments

write a comment

Follow us for latest updates