The Eisenhower Matrix
What you’re about to read is a practical study of creative processes, which does not involve theory or philosophy. However, there is one simple concept that I urgently and importantly need to cover from the start. Here it is: The Eisenhower Matrix
The matrix is the foundation of my project, and of the paper you’re reading now. As you see, it’s a tool for discerning between importance and urgency. When I stumbled upon it a while back, I realised that it was the element I was missing in structuring my project. It added a lot of direction to the work, and this is why Eisenhower on Drums has become the title.
The four quadrants:
Quadrant 4 - Not important and not urgent.
This is where most of us find ourselves when we’re loosing focus. We can have a lot of fun in this zone, but in a perspective of development, whether artistic, personal or spiritual, we are often wasting our time in Q4, doing things like watching Free Willy - behind the scenes, buying guitar equipment that won’t make us play any better, masturbating, etc.
Quadrant 3 - Urgent, but not important.
Many of us, I’m afraid, live entire professional lives in Q3. This is where, out of a sense of urgency, we check our email 20 times daily, and when we finally get mail, we spend an entire afternoon writing the response. Quadrant 3 activities often times work as a trap, feeding off of our proud sense of responsibility. We can’t keep people waiting, can’t have unpaid bills in the drawer or unwashed pants lying around.
Quadrant 1 - Things important and urgent.
There’s a deadline for it, and you’re improving yourself and your future doing it. This is the zone you’re in when you’re working on a project that feels meaningful. This paper is written mainly in Q1.
Quadrant 2 - In this rare space, things are important in the bigger perspective, but there’s no sense of urgency. This is where I really want to be, where innovative work is done. And it’s the most difficult place to stay. It’s all about “what would I really like to be doing in three years”. What questions should I really be asking myself right now? This is where you put in the ‘pondering time’ that John Cleese is talking about in this brilliant lecture on creativity. It’s about looking at things with open eyes: How are my patterns operating? How does this affect myself and others? And it’s the only place where play is a possibility as a way of growing. All this is not urgent, but it’s super important and very often, Q2 matters are neglected in the lives of a lot of people, including myself.
Here’s Dwight Eisenhower’s guide to each of the quadrants:
Q1 - Do it now
Q2 - Decide when to do it
Q3 - Delegate it
Q4 - Delete it
And here is my guide to myself regarding the quadrants:
Q1 - Do it now, or decide when to do it
Q2 - Do it every day
Q3 - Decide when to do it, and do it fast and efficiently
Q4 - Do it for fun, or as a reward, or as a way of tricking yourself into Q2
This report should make it clear why my own guide differs from Eisenhower’s.
I’ll be using the matrix in walking you through the project, starting in Q1, moving on to 2, 3 and 4.
The important quadrants Q1 and Q2 are the only two you must read, and if you get bored, you may take a detour in Q4 and read about unimportant and non-urgent aspects that might be more fun.
I will begin each section with briefly asking:
Why is this important / not important?
Why is this urgent / not urgent?
Lastly, a note to the reader - If you’re hired by the conservatory to read this report and assess it together with my concert, you may find yourself in quadrant 3 while spending time with me here. If you find that this is the case, I hope you will consider switching your mode to Q1, and I look forward to your feedback as to how your’e getting yourself into Q2, and whether this project has any relevance for you in that respect.
Ok. Let’s begin in quadrant 1
Introduction in self help book style
Video of sketches, depression, drums, voice, movie, BRICKS, monkeys, mirrored writing, etc
Does all this fit together?
Dear reader. With good reason, I guess that you are involved in artistic work. I also bet you have encountered some difficulty on your way toward realising your creative ideas. That’s what this project really is about: Dealing with creative difficulties, and finding one’s own ways of working in the face of these.
It’s important to point out from the beginning that this paper is as much a result of failure as of successful project leadership. It is a direct outcome of a sense of inadequacy, and experiences of severe stress and depression. A key to understanding this project, is an attitude that failure is viewed as equally important as success; that the paths leading us to real beauty often goes through awkwardness, even ugliness.
We all have our own stuff to deal with, and in my case the challenges relate to time management, structure and sustained focus. But the specifics are not important, it could really be anything; I don’t suppose anybody can make a career in the arts without obstacles, and I assume that the subjects dealt with here will have some relevance to most creatives.
Let’s talk about you for a second. In your work, I suppose you have also sometimes felt restrained or blocked. Perhaps you have worked for long times on realising something, expecting some kind of reward at the end of that journey. Perhaps the work didn’t satisfy you in the end, or it was misunderstood or ignored. Maybe you pushed your body too much, experiencing some degree of burnout. These situations would be painful for anybody in any field, and they can seem like an inevitable and recurring part of being an artist.
I believe that a fair amount of crisis is fundamental in any kind of development, and not least in the artistic field. In this paper, instead of pushing the difficulties aside, I want to look at them for a while, see what significance they bear, deal with this in a direct way, and try to move beyond it.
If any of the above sounds familiar, this project might be relevant for you. In any case, I hope you’ll enjoy the read and the listen, and I look forward to the concert on may 28th.
This project is written in english in order for me to be able to discuss it with my Greek, Polish, Italian, French, American and German classmates.
The version you are reading now is for the purpose of my exam.
After graduation, I will change things written specifically for this occasion,
keeping this page alive as a reflection of the evolving project.
Contents
Introduction in self help book style
A short personal foreword
The Eisenhower Matrix
Foundation of the project
Q1
This section is written in a chronological structure. Starting with the background
and going into my process on the soloist programme until today.
Q1.1 Background
Q1.2 A hole in time
Q1.3 Eisenhower on Drums
Q1.6 Film sketches
Q2
An open ended discussion of important aspects of the project.
Q2.3 Orbits
Q2.5 Mental challenges
Q3
A short section, mainly about how to avoid Q3 taking over one’s life.
Q3.1 Say no to Q3 / make rules for Q3
Q3.2 B.R.I.C.K.S.
Q4
More of a playground of loose ends and other stuff.
It can be skipped, but I suggest you have a look around to see if anything
interests you.
Q4.1 Wait But Why
Q4.2 Local Expedition
Q4.3 Finn Hesselager
Q4.5 Sculpture Album
Q4.6 EoD workspace
Q4.7 Automatic Writing
Q4.8 572 songs
Q4.9 Loose Thoughts
Closing chapter in self help book style
Did you click on the monkey?
No? Good!
(The monkey belongs in Q4. We'll get there later.)
But now that you're here;
a note on the paper you're about to read
After (hopefully) graduating from this programme, I will keep this page alive as a developing archive of my further progress and reflections.
For me personally, the scope of the Eisenhower on Drums project is a lot bigger than this recap of my RMC study, and there are no conclusive lines to be drawn, and as I will explain in a second, the project is essentially a personal defiance of what I experince as an urgency paradigm in western culture.
My attitude in this regard makes these pages divert slightly from a typical research paper, in that, if you come back here before or after my examination, you will see things have changed. That being said, there is plenty of reflections here already for you to assess the work.
On every page, I will put a small symbol, either a meaning that I am not likely to make changes on that particular page. Or a meaning that the page you're on is likely to be updated before our talk on may 29th.
These symbols also serve a link to the contents page, making it easy to link your way around the paper.
Let's take look at the contents table now!
