Eisenhower Matrix Template: The 4 Boxes, Filled In for a Real Monday

A long Monday list makes everything look urgent. The usual fix is a printable 2x2 grid, filled in once and forgotten by Wednesday, because the real list lives somewhere else.

The short answer: an Eisenhower matrix template has four boxes. Do (urgent and important), Decide (important, not urgent), Delegate (urgent, not important) and Delete (neither). Answer two yes/no questions for each task and the box follows. The template works best when it reads straight from your task list, so nothing gets typed twice.

Below you'll find a grid to copy, a real Monday of 15 tasks sorted with the reason for each, and the Excel and Google Sheets formula that does the sorting.

Eisenhower Matrix Template at a Glance

An Eisenhower matrix is a 2x2 grid that sorts tasks by two questions. Is it urgent, meaning a real cost if it waits? Is it important, meaning it serves a goal or commitment of yours? The four answer combinations give four boxes, and each box has one action. Each row below carries one task from the Monday example.

[Original data] We analyzed the top 10 Google US results for "eisenhower matrix template", captured on 3 and 4 October 2026. Seven are blank templates or template galleries (2 printable PDFs, 5 template pages), 2 are method articles and 1 is a video. The AI Overview Google showed on 3 October listed the four quadrants and template links, with no filled-in example and no formula.

The four boxes are the easy part. Keeping them current is harder: if you copy tasks from your list into a separate grid, the grid goes stale the first time a due date changes. A task tracker whose matrix fills itself from your task list avoids that second copy.

The Copyable 4-Box Layout

The layout has two parts: the grid you look at, and the list that feeds it. Copy the grid below for a quick paper or whiteboard version. For anything you'll keep longer than a day, copy the list layout under it, because the grid can then be rebuilt from the list in seconds.

The grid (urgent across the top, important down the side):

The list behind it (six columns):

The Reason column is the one most templates leave out. The printable grids, for example, have room for a task name and nothing else. It takes five seconds per task, and it is what stops a task from drifting back into Do the next time you look at it. If you don't have a list yet, start from a task list template with the columns that matter and add Urgent, Important and Box to it.

The Monday Triage, Worked Through

Here is a Monday list of 15 tasks from work, study and home, written for this post. Each task gets the two answers, its box and the reason. The result: 4 in Do, 5 in Decide, 4 in Delegate and 2 in Delete.

[Unique insight] Two tasks changed boxes once the questions were asked one at a time. The library books (item 11) first looked like a Do task because of the date. They are urgent, but returning them doesn't need you. The photo backup (item 7) first looked skippable because nothing was due. It is important, so it goes in Decide with a slot this Saturday.

Watch for this pattern. Urgency is easy to see on a list because it arrives with a date, while importance only appears when you ask about it task by task.

In practice, the four Do tasks fit into Monday and Tuesday, and the five Decide tasks get dates across the next two weeks. The four Delegate tasks take about ten minutes in total, and the two Delete tasks leave the list for good.

How to Decide Urgent and Important Without Guessing

Use two tests, one per question. Urgent means waiting until Friday would cost something real, such as a fine, a missed grade or a cold flat. Important means the task serves a goal or commitment you'd name if asked. A task that passes neither test belongs in Delete, however loud it feels.

The idea is older than the grid. In a 1954 address, President Eisenhower said: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." The line is in the transcript of his address to the World Council of Churches in Evanston, Illinois, kept by The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.

There is research behind the pull of urgent tasks. In five experiments, Zhu, Yang and Hsee found that people chose unimportant tasks with lower payoffs over important ones when the unimportant tasks merely seemed urgent. The study, "The Mere Urgency Effect", appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research in October 2018. In their abstract, pursuing an urgent task "has its own appeal, independent of its objective consequence."

That explains why the two questions work better asked separately. Asked together, urgency usually answers both of them.

• The Friday test (urgent): "If this waits until Friday, what happens?" If the answer is "nothing much," it isn't urgent, whatever the subject line says.
• The goal test (important): "Which goal, deadline or person does this serve?" If you can't name one in a few words, it isn't important to you this week.
• When both are unclear: put it in Decide with a date. A dated "later" still counts as a decision.

Build the Template in Excel or Google Sheets

A spreadsheet version takes four steps: six columns, two dropdowns, one formula and a count per box. The same formulas work in Excel and in Google Sheets, so the file can move between them. Once it's built, you answer two dropdowns per task and the Box column fills itself.

Step 1: Set Up the Six Columns

Put the headers in row 1: Task (A), Due date (B), Urgent (C), Important (D), Box (E) and Reason (F). Format column B as a date. If you already keep a task list, add columns C to E to it instead of starting a new sheet.

Step 2: Add Yes/No Dropdowns

Select C2:D200 and add a dropdown with two values, Yes and No. In Excel, that's Data, then Data Validation, then List. In Google Sheets, it's Insert, then Dropdown. Dropdowns prevent inconsistent entries, such as "yes", "Y" and "Yes ", from breaking the formula.

Step 3: Let a Formula Name the Box

Paste this formula in E2, then fill it down to E200, the same rows as the dropdowns.

=IF(OR(ISBLANK(A2),ISBLANK(C2),ISBLANK(D2)),"",IF(AND(C2="Yes",D2="Yes"),"Do",IF(D2="Yes","Decide",IF(C2="Yes","Delegate","Delete"))))

The ISBLANK test leaves the cell empty until the row has a task and both answers, so empty rows and half-sorted tasks never count as Delete. After that, it checks both answers, then importance alone, then urgency alone, and returns Delete when neither is true. Microsoft's IF function reference notes that IF functions can be nested like this to make several comparisons.

Optional: to mark urgency from the date, put =IF(AND(B2<>"",B2-TODAY()<=4),"Yes","No") in C2. It answers Yes when the due date is four days away or less. The blank check stops an empty date from counting as overdue.

Step 4: Count Each Box and Cap the Do Box

In a corner of the sheet, add =COUNTIF(E2:E200,"Do"), and the same for Decide, Delegate and Delete. Empty rows stay blank, so they add nothing to any box. Microsoft's guide to the COUNTIF function covers the syntax, which Google Sheets shares. Then give the Do count a limit. If it reads more than five for one day, move the least important Do task to Decide with a date. For the rest of the tracker around this, see how to set up a task tracker in Excel.

Where Eisenhower Matrix Templates Go Wrong

Most templates fail for one of six reasons, all about how tasks get into the boxes and how they leave. A plain spreadsheet can handle every one of them.

The Do box overflows. Ten tasks in Do means some are only urgent. Run the goal test again on each one and move the rest.

Decide tasks have no date. "Important, not urgent" turns into "never" without a slot. Every Decide task gets a day, even a rough one.

Delegate is ignored by people who work alone. You may have no team, but you can still hand off, batch or answer in two minutes. In the Monday example, all four Delegate tasks went to someone else or into one short batch.

The grid is a second list. Copying tasks into a separate grid doubles the typing and the grid goes out of date. A grid that reads the list stays current.

Done tasks never leave. A Do box full of finished tasks hides the ones still open. Filter done tasks out, or count them separately.

Nobody re-sorts. Dates move closer every day, so a Decide task can become a Do task by midweek. A weekly re-sort catches it. A date formula built on the TODAY function, which returns the current date each time the sheet recalculates, catches it daily.

The fourth and sixth problems are the ones a spreadsheet solves best. That is how an Excel and Google Sheets task tracker with the Eisenhower matrix built in is set up: the matrix reads the task list, so a changed date moves the task on its own.

Where the All-in-One Task Tracker Fits

The bottleneck in most matrices is the copy step: tasks typed into a list, then again into a grid. The All-in-One Task Tracker (by Cosmo Suite: one Excel and Google Sheets file, 11 tabs, $9 once) removes that step. Its Decision Matrix tab sorts tasks into Do, Decide, Delegate and Delete from the task lists you already keep.

The tracker has 11 tabs in four sections. Tasks go in once, on the Variable Tasks tab for one-off tasks or the Recurring Tasks tab for repeats, set from weekly to yearly. The Decision Matrix tab reads importance and urgency for each task and shows a progress ring for each box. The Kanban Board and Gantt Chart tabs show the same tasks as columns and as a timeline.

What it does not do: send reminders, sync with Google Calendar or Outlook, or manage team permissions. If you need push alerts on your phone, a task app is the better pick. The tracker is for people who want one file they own, with the list, the matrix and the timeline reading the same rows.

The Do box is also where the board starts. Once today's four tasks are clear, the Kanban tab shows them moving from To-Do to Done.

How we put this together. The Cosmo Suite team that makes the tracker wrote this post. Our methodology: the 15-task Monday is an example written for this post, not data from users, and the top-10 count comes from a live Google US results capture on 3 and 4 October 2026. We opened each source on 4 October 2026, and the screenshots show the template's built-in sample data. Read more about the team behind this site and our editorial policy. If something here is out of date, contact us through the site and we'll correct it. The file costs $9 once, works in Excel and Google Sheets, holds up to 10,000 tasks and comes with a setup PDF and a YouTube tutorial. You can see every tab of the All-in-One Task Tracker before you decide.