Most productivity advice is aimed at procrastinators.
But procrastination isn't the only way to waste a day. You can be incredibly busy - ticking things off a list from 7am to 7pm - and still go to bed feeling like you achieved nothing.
The real culprit is usually prioritisation. Or the lack of it.
Waking up without a strategic approach to your task list means you end up reacting to whatever shouts loudest, rather than working on what actually moves the needle.
That's exactly the problem the Eisenhower Matrix was designed to solve.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a four-quadrant framework for categorising every task on your plate. It's named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was reportedly ruthless about how he managed his time and attention.
The grid works like this:
Every task you have - personal or professional - sits somewhere inside this grid. The quadrant it lands in tells you exactly what to do with it.
Quadrant 1 - Urgent and Important: Do It Now
These are your immediate priorities. Deadlines that are on top of you. Problems that will get worse if left alone. Client emergencies. The fires.
You deal with these immediately. No debate.
Quadrant 2 - Important but Not Urgent: Schedule It
This is the most important quadrant - and the one most people chronically neglect.
These tasks don't shout for your attention. Nobody is chasing you for them. But they are the things that genuinely determine the trajectory of your life and business.
Training three times a week. Working on your long-term strategy. Building relationships. Learning new skills. Writing the content that will compound over time.
None of this is on fire right now. But skip it consistently and you degrade - as a coach, as a business owner, as a person.
The move here is to schedule these activities and treat that time as non-negotiable. Put it in the calendar. Protect it.
Quadrant 3 - Urgent but Not Important: Delegate It
These tasks have a time pressure attached to them, but they don't actually require your skills or attention specifically. Someone else can do them - possibly better and faster than you.
Admin, certain emails, scheduling, some client comms. These things need doing, but they don't need doing by you.
Delegate recurring tasks with a clear brief and a way to check the result. Reserve your own time for decisions that need your judgement.
Quadrant 4 - Not Urgent and Not Important: Eliminate It
Be honest about how much time ends up here.
Busy work. Unnecessary meetings. Scrolling. Tasks that feel productive but don't move anything forward.
The goal is to either eliminate these entirely or, if they truly need doing at some point, move them into the delegate column. You should not be the person spending hours on things that are neither urgent nor important.
The simplest way to get started is with an app called Focus Matrix, available on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
It's clean, lightweight, and maps your tasks directly into four columns: Do, Schedule, Delegate, Eliminate. It also syncs across devices and gives you a weekly breakdown of where your time is going - which can be a useful (if occasionally uncomfortable) reality check.
There's a free version that works well for most people, and a paid tier if you want full cross-device sync.
Focus Matrix pairs well with the Pomodoro Technique, available through an app called Be Focused (made by the same developers).
The method is simple:
Choose a realistic number of work blocks around the other commitments in the day, then review what was completed.
A short timed session can make a tedious task easier to start. Test a duration that fits the work rather than treating one interval as a universal requirement.
One approach that stacks well with all of this comes from Tim Ferriss: spend the first two hours of your day working on the thing that scares you most.
Not email. Not admin. Not the easy wins.
The task that most directly addresses your current business problem.
Do that every single day and - even if the rest of the day descends into chaos - you've already won. You've moved the thing that matters most. Everything else is a bonus.
You don't need the app to try this today. Open a notes document and:
The goal isn't to do more. It's to do the right things - and stop wasting energy on everything else.
Related guide: How to plan a realistic working day as an online coach.
For the wider process, read our guide to planning and managing your coaching work.
Use the planning and business resources to organise your next steps.
Get the free Propane Blueprint *DISCLAIMER: The sales figures stated above and in this training are our personal sales figures or sales figures of our clients. Please understand our results are not typical. We're not implying you'll duplicate them (or do anything for that matter). The average person who buys any "how to" information gets little to no results. We're using these references for example purposes only. Your results will vary and depend on many factors including but not limited to your background, experience, and work ethic. All business entails risk as well as consistent effort and action. If you're not willing to accept that, please DO NOT register for this training.
This site is not a part of the Facebook website or Facebook Inc. Additionally, This site is NOT endorsed by Facebook in any way. FACEBOOK is a trademark of FACEBOOK, Inc.