One of his innovations was to organize information and problems into what’s now called the “Eisenhower Box,” a matrix that orders our priorities by their ratio of urgency and importance. Much that was happening in the world or on the job, Eisenhower found, was urgent but not important. Meanwhile, most of what was truly important was not remotely time-sensitive. Categorizing his inputs helped him organize his staff around what was important versus what seemed urgent, allowed them to be strategic rather than reactive, a mile deep on what mattered rather than an inch on too many things.
