Eisenhower matrix · IN SHORT
The Eisenhower skill sorts a task list by urgency and importance, then gives each item a concrete next action. It also makes space for important work that has no immediate deadline.
Your brief
A fictional client proposal is due tomorrow, while a useful service page has no deadline. A colleague could organise the archive, and irrelevant newsletters consume time each morning.
Possible draft
The proposal needs action before the deadline. The page needs a protected block; the archive needs agreement with the colleague; the newsletters can be dropped. Each choice still has to fit the actual working day.
01 / THE FOUNDATION
You receive four quadrants with reasons and actions, a pattern in the list and a proposed start for tomorrow.
02 / SEE HOW IT WORKS
A fictional client proposal is due tomorrow, while a useful service page has no deadline. A colleague could organise the archive, and irrelevant newsletters consume time each morning.
The proposal needs action before the deadline. The page needs a protected block; the archive needs agreement with the colleague; the newsletters can be dropped. Each choice still has to fit the actual working day.
The skill does not edit your calendar or assign work to a colleague. You must check obligations, available time and what can really be delegated.
03 / GET STARTED
Make urgency and importance explicit: which deadline is real, and which task serves your goals?
Doing gets a time block, scheduling a date, delegation an owner and deletion a clear decision.
The skill spots the pattern in your list and proposes three 90-minute blocks, including at least one for important work without urgency.
04 / MAKE IT YOURS
The English ZIP contains the SKILL.md instructions and is free to download without an account. The file declares the MIT licence; retain its source and licence notices when adapting or sharing it. Need help applying this skill? Book a call.
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File language: English
Explore the details at your own pace.
You paste your overloaded task list, calendar or inbox summary into Claude and you get it back sorted into the four quadrants of the Eisenhower matrix: do, schedule, delegate or delete, with a reason of at most twelve words per task and a concrete action. The coach then tells you honestly which quadrant is eating your week, and closes with a day start for tomorrow: three blocks of 90 minutes, at least one of which is for the work that really matters. Not a minute-taker who retypes your list neatly, but a coach who dares to delete.
the lines above come from the zip on this page · SKILL.md is 8,201 bytes
This is the worked example that sits in the SKILL.md itself, shortened here. The input is a sentence as you would say it to a colleague, not a tidied-up list. Watch what happens to your mother's router: important for the relationship, but not your expertise, so quadrant 3 with a solution that leaves the relationship intact.
The AI Eisenhower Matrix Coach is a free skill from the skill library of TheSEO. A skill is an instruction file, SKILL.md, that gives an AI assistant a fixed method for one task. Not an app you have to keep up, no subscription, no link to your calendar: one text file of 1,364 words that tells Claude how to place every task, decision or project in the Eisenhower matrix and then go straight on to concrete action.
You download the zip at the top of this page, put it in your Claude environment, and from that moment on Claude sorts your work according to this logic. What such a file is exactly and how it works, you can read in what Claude skills are.
The problem the skill solves is one you feel at the moments you need it most: everything looks urgent, the list grows faster than it shrinks, and at the end of the week the important work has once again not been done. The mechanism underneath is old and well described: urgent things push themselves forward, important things do not. Anyone without a system to separate the two lets the calendar be filled by whoever shouts loudest. Eisenhower's matrix is that system, and this skill makes it applicable to any list you care to paste.
The role the file gives Claude is worded strikingly precisely: a strict but warm prioritisation coach, who does not work as a minute-taker but as a coach who chooses, dares to delete and forces you to look honestly at your week. You notice that difference in the output. A minute-taker sets your list out neatly; this coach says your quadrant 3 is too big, that you are carrying somebody else's agenda, and that the work you called important has been slipping for weeks. It does not judge, it shows, and that is exactly how the file puts it.
It belongs to the skill library that we give away from our AI and automation service, with no account, no newsletter and no sales email afterwards. We would rather you used it and never called than sat through a demo first. And for anyone who wants to understand the model itself before putting an AI on it: the full explanation of the matrix, with background and examples, is in our article about the Eisenhower matrix.
A task list without judgement is a dumping ground, and the method of this skill reads like an analysis of everything that goes wrong in such a dumping ground. Four patterns keep coming back.
Everything feels urgent. Without a definition the feeling wins, and the feeling says the same thing at every email and every phone call: now. Which is why the definitions come first, in step two, before a single task is placed. Urgent is a time limit within 48 hours or a direct deadline set by others. Important is a contribution to a goal, a value, revenue, health or a long-term project. And behind that sits the strictest sentence in the file: not everything is important.
The list has no consequence. Putting a task on a list feels like progress, but nothing changes as long as there is no action attached. So every quadrant gets a fixed action attached: quadrant 1 gets a time block today or tomorrow, quadrant 2 a specific day and time in the week, quadrant 3 a name or an automation, and quadrant 4 is deleted.
The important work always loses. Quadrant 2, important but not urgent, is where the growth sits: strategy, health, learning, relationships. It is also the only quadrant without a deadline, so it slips endlessly. This coach pushes back actively: if quadrant 2 is empty it says so honestly and proposes three quadrant 2 tasks that have to go in the calendar this week.
Somebody else's priorities disguise themselves as yours. Many meetings, ad hoc requests and phone calls are urgent for somebody else, not important for you. That is quadrant 3, and the file names it: other people's priorities disguised as the user's own. The counting step makes it visible: if most of your tasks sit in quadrant 1 or 3, you are living reactively or carrying somebody else's agenda, and you get told so.
In diff form: what goes out and what comes back in its place.
Below sits the matrix from the example in FIG.01, drawn as four terminal panels. The tasks slide into the place where the skill puts them, each with the reason in at most twelve words as a comment underneath. The blue panel breathes deliberately: quadrant 2 is where the skill pushes you, because that is where the growth sits. And in the grey panel you see what deleting means: the task is crossed out, not saved for later.
A skill is only as good as its instructions, so we simply describe them here. The file opens with frontmatter that says when Claude should pick the skill up, and that list is broader than you would expect. Not only at Eisenhower matrix or quadrant analysis, but above all at the sentences people really say: what should I do first, I have too much on my plate, everything is urgent, I never get to deep work, what do I drop, what do I delegate. Overloaded weeks, firefighting and the feeling of running behind are named as triggers too. Say something like that to Claude while the skill is loaded and you get it automatically.
Then comes the role description that sets the tone for everything: a strict but warm prioritisation coach, not a minute-taker. The four quadrants are fixed and the file explicitly forbids inventing extra quadrants or half labels. Quadrant 1, urgent and important: do it, now, yourself, and too many tasks here means you are living reactively. Quadrant 2, important but not urgent: schedule and protect, because this is where the deep work, the strategy, the health and the growth sit. Quadrant 3, urgent but not important: delegate or automate, other people's priorities in disguise. Quadrant 4, neither: delete, no excuse to keep it.
The method counts six steps and the file says pointedly: skip no step. First ask for the input, and with vague input ask two sharp questions, not five. Then set the definitions of urgent and important explicitly. Then place every task, with one line per task: the task, the quadrant number and the reason in at most twelve words. Then the action per quadrant. Then point out the pattern: count how many tasks sit in each quadrant and say honestly what that says about your week, including three proposals for quadrant 2 if it turns out to be empty. And last the day start: three blocks of 90 minutes for tomorrow, of which at least one block is quadrant 2.
The output format is fixed in a template you can copy straight into a note or a dashboard, with fixed headings for the definitions, the four quadrants, the pattern of the week, the top three actions for tomorrow and one question back. The tone is nailed down too: direct, short sentences, saying honestly when quadrant 4 quietly fills the largest part of the week, no over-the-top motivational language, no long disclaimers, and no lists with more than five items unless you give a lot of input yourself.
It closes with a complete example of input and output, the same example you saw above in FIG.01. Want to learn to write such an instruction file yourself? The method is in writing a SKILL.md.
The matrix is the thinking, the day start is the consequence. Step six of the method closes every sorting with a mini plan for tomorrow: three blocks of 90 minutes, at least one of them for quadrant 2. That turns the skill into a ritual you can run daily: list in, sorting out, tomorrow is ready. Making that ritual hold beyond the first fortnight is a craft of its own, and the AI Atomic Habits Coach is the skill for that part. The middle block breathes for a reason: that is the protected block.
The SKILL.md names its sources and instructs Claude to acknowledge them if you ask. The basis comes from a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, in which he divided his problems into two kinds and added the observation that, in his words, "the urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent". That is the heart of everything this skill does: urgency and importance are two different axes, and anyone who mixes them up lets their calendar be filled by fires while the real work is left undone.
The matrix as we know it now, with the four quadrants, comes from Stephen R. Covey. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from 1989 he worked Eisenhower's principle out into the quadrant model, with an emphasis this skill adopts one to one: quadrant 2, the important but not urgent work, is where the growth sits, and it is at the same time the quadrant that always loses without protection. There is a nod to the modern explanation by Brett and Kate McKay from 2013 as well, as an accessible way in to the model.
Anyone who wants to get to the bottom of the model before putting an AI on it can read our article about the Eisenhower matrix: that holds the full explanation with background and examples, without your having to install anything. This page and that article are deliberately two sides of the same subject: there the framework, here the skill that carries the framework out for you every day.
And an honest note belongs with it. What you have here is a sorting model, not science about how your brain works. Its strength is in the simplicity: two questions per task, four possible outcomes. That also means the quality of the sorting depends on how honestly you answer the question whether something really contributes to your goals. That is why the skill sets the definitions in advance and is strict about them, because without that strictness everyone sorts everything into important. To find out which part of your work delivers most, you can supplement the sorting with the Pareto Analyst, which goes looking for the small group of tasks with the biggest impact.
You can improve your week with the model without installing the skill as well: define urgent and important before you sort, give every task a quadrant and an action, and protect at least one block a day for quadrant 2.
The rules from the SKILL.md, written out as the conversation in which you meet them. Every rule is a request you could make, with the response the coach gives according to its own instructions. A coach who goes along with everything is a minute-taker with a fancier name.
The zip contains one folder, ai-eisenhower-matrix-coach, with the SKILL.md inside it. Installing is a matter of putting that folder in the right place, and that place differs per environment. SKILL.md has been an open standard since December 2025, so the same skill also works in Codex, Cursor and Gemini CLI. You are therefore not downloading a Claude file but a working instruction that any modern AI assistant can read. The full guide per environment is in installing Claude skills.
~/.claude/skills/ (or .claude/skills/ in your project)./ai-eisenhower-matrix-coach.AGENTS.md in your repo.AGENTS.md.After that, use is simple: paste your list and ask for priority. That may be a task list, a calendar, a project, a summary of your inbox or a list of decisions; the rawer the better, because the coach asks the two questions it needs to make it concrete. If you are new to skills and want to understand how this kind of file works first, the knowledge base holds the broader explanation of working with AI.
At its strongest it is on the days when more is coming at you than fits in a day: the start of the week with a list that has run over, the return from holiday with a stuffed inbox, the project that suddenly has three deadlines at once. The file names the cases itself: task lists, projects at company level, weekly planning, summarising a full inbox and decisions where several choices compete for attention. In all those cases the method is the same: definitions first, then sorting, then the pattern, then the day start.
There are also situations where you are better off leaving it alone, and the file is explicit about them: purely creative sessions, brainstorms and emotional conversations. A different framework fits there. A brainstorm precisely does not want a judgement about what is important, and a conversation about how someone feels is not a list you chop into quadrants.
For processing everything that comes at you into a reliable system there is the Getting Things Done Coach, and for actually protecting your deep work blocks the Flow State Coach: those three complement each other instead of replacing each other. And for the part the matrix cannot do at all, making the quadrant 2 block happen week after week instead of only being scheduled, there is the Atomic Habits Coach.
The most important limit is the same as with every prioritisation system: the matrix sorts what you supply, it does not know your obligations. If you do not mention a deadline, the coach cannot see it, and if you say of every task that it contributes to your goals, even the strictest definition sorts everything into important. Asking on and defining strictly catches a lot, but honesty about your own week stays your work. What it does guarantee: what you supply comes back as a list you can start on tomorrow instead of a list you stare at again tomorrow.
This skill is the free do-it-yourself version of work we also deliver as a service. It stays complete and free of catches, but understand what a skill is: it teaches your AI how to do something, while every new session starts empty. A skill is not the engine and not the memory. You prompt, you paste your list again every day, you watch whether the quadrant 2 block really happens. Anyone who wants that differently has two next steps: hand over the engine, or sort out the memory.
Step 3 deserves more than a paragraph, because this is the difference between a clever chat and a system you can build on. Jarvis is the organisation brain: it remembers what your AIs need to know, divides the work and keeps track of what happened. For a prioritisation skill the difference is immediately noticeable: priority depends on goals and agreements, and that is exactly what the brain holds on to between sessions.
We have been running on this system ourselves for months, which is the only reason we dare recommend it here. Every agent session, every task and every decision is logged in it and can be read back. A new session therefore does not start blank: it first fetches the recorded decisions, the running projects and the latest changes, and carries on where the last one stopped. So we are not describing a promise but the way we work every day.
All plans are at jarvis/pricing. You pick your own plan. Paying online opens as soon as the last checks are done; until then we set your account up on request. For business agreements and bespoke work there is a conversation.
Prioritising is one link in a bigger chain: work comes in, it gets sorted, it gets done. These skills from the same library each take a different piece of that chain.
Sorting is step two. These two handle the step before and the step after.
Getting Things Done CoachCatches everything that comes in and processes it into a system, before you start sorting.SKILL Flow State CoachProtects the quadrant 2 block once it is in your calendar: deep work without fragmentation.SKILLThe matrix is personal. For roadmaps and backlogs with several voices there are other frameworks.
RICE PrioritisationScores features and projects on reach, impact, confidence and effort, for product choices.SKILL MoSCoW Prioritisation CoachDivides requirements into must, should, could and will not, for projects with a deadline.SKILLFirst understand the framework, then measure where your time really pays off.
The Eisenhower matrix explainedOur article about the model itself: background, examples and how to use it on paper.DOC Pareto AnalystLooks for the small group of tasks with the biggest impact, as a supplement to the sorting.SKILLWhere this skill comes from and what else there is.
The whole skill libraryAll free skills in a row, sorted by subject.HUB AI and automationThe service behind it: from separate skills to working automation in your business.SRV AI trainingIf your team wants to learn to set up this kind of work themselves.SRV Knowledge baseArticles about SEO, AI and online visibility, searchable.DOCNothing. The skill is free, falls under the MIT licence, and you do not have to create an account or leave an email address. You download a 3.7 KB zip containing one folder and a single file, SKILL.md, and that is the complete skill. There is no paid version and no sales email follows.
Yes. SKILL.md has been an open standard since December 2025, so the same file works in Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and other tools that follow the standard. In Codex you unzip it into .agents/skills/ in your project, or into ~/.agents/skills/ for all your projects; Codex has supported SKILL.md directly since the open standard of December 2025. Pasting the contents of SKILL.md into your AGENTS.md still works too. The instructions are plain readable text, so any assistant that accepts instruction files can handle it.
The skill sets the definitions explicitly before any sorting happens, and that is step two of the method. Urgent means a task has a time limit falling within 48 hours or a direct deadline set by others. Important means the task contributes to a goal, a value, revenue, health or a long-term project of yours. And the file adds a strict rule: not everything is important. It is that strictness which makes the sorting usable.
Delete it, with no detour. Quadrant 4 is not urgent and not important: scrolling, idle news, old lists nobody uses. The file is explicit about it: no excuse to keep it. The skill also says honestly when quadrant 4 quietly fills a large part of your week, because seeing that is the first step to changing it.
Yes. Step one of the method names the input broadly: a task list, a calendar, a project, a summary of your inbox, a list of decisions or even projects at company level. If the input is vague, the skill asks two sharp questions to make it concrete, not five. The four quadrants and the actions per quadrant stay the same in every case.
The fixed closing of every sorting: a mini plan for tomorrow with three blocks of 90 minutes, at least one of which is for quadrant 2. That way the analysis ends not in an overview but in a concrete beginning, and the important but not urgent work is guaranteed a place in your day instead of a place on the list.
For purely creative sessions, brainstorms and emotional conversations: a different framework fits there, and the file says so itself. A brainstorm precisely wants room without judgement, and an emotional conversation is not a task list. The skill is made for moments when many things are competing for attention at once and you have to choose: overloaded weeks, stuffed inboxes and lists that keep on growing.
There is a good chance that something like finally tackling the website or becoming more visible sits in your quadrant 2, because that is exactly the kind of important work without a deadline that gets left. If you want to know how pressing that block really is, the free SEO scan shows in a few seconds where your site stands. And if you want to talk further about what AI can do for your business, from separate skills to full automation, we simply do that in a conversation.
