Find your focus: intentional personal style and the Eisenhower Matrix

What should you focus on to create an intentional personal style? That is an excellent question. 

There are plenty of things we do for our personal style. We get dressed, we go shopping, we organize our closets, we define our style qualities, we clarify what we value, etc. etc. etc. 

So what to focus on next? Everything all at once is a recipe for getting nothing done. The wrong thing keeps you stuck in the weeds on a hamster wheel day after day. Keeping your focus on the right things makes your intentional personal style move forward smoothly and quickly. 

The Eisenhower Matrix is one of my favorite tools for identifying where to put your intention and your focus, regardless of the field. (If you don’t know, in addition to personal styling, I also work as a strategist for creative small businesses.)

What is the Eisenhower Matrix?

The Eisenhower Matrix is a useful lens for deciding where to put your focus. It categorizes everything by two factors: 1) how important is it? 2) how urgent is it? 

Via the Eisenhower Matrix section of the Wikipedia entry on Time Management:

“This method stems from a quote attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” Eisenhower did not claim this insight for his own, but attributed it to an unnamed “former college president.” Using the Eisenhower decision principle, tasks are evaluated using the criteria important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent…”

How does this relate to intentional personal style? 

If you’re like most of my styling clients, you are human. (I have yet to style an AI bot, but who knows what the future holds.) And if you are like most of us, you probably put off tasks that are not urgent. 

Figuring out what to wear to today’s meeting is more urgent than sorting out the back of your closet. Deciding what to wear to your cousin’s wedding next month is more urgent than defining your personal style values and qualities. Packing for next week’s work trip is more urgent than refining your professional image. Etc.

Half of these things are important AND urgent. Half of these things are important and NOT urgent. 

It’s easy to mistake urgency for importance, and non-urgency for unimportant, but they are two distinct qualities in a task. Which is where the Eisenhower Matrix can be helpful. The Eisenhower Matrix forces us to consider urgency and importance separately.

Staying stuck figuring out what to wear today, or next week, or next month keeps you stuck in the urgent-important category. It must get done and it’s important. But if you only place your intention there, you will stay focused there forever.

If you can’t carve out time (at least a little bit!) for the Important Non-Urgent you don’t get the benefit of the high, sustained ROI that comes from these Important Non-Urgent activities. 

Urgent – Important

These will force your hand into getting them done.

• Getting dressed this morning 
• Packing for next week’s work conference
• Deciding what to wear to your cousin’s wedding or your aunt’s funeral

Not Urgent – Important

Place your intention and your focus here, getting these done will make everything else easier.

• Defining your style qualities 
• Identifying what you want to say with your clothing 
• Tightening your closet system 
• Knowing what you have and knowing what you need
• Learning how you like to dress your silhouette
• Finding a trusted tailor in your city
• Getting a handle on the basics of fabric, fibers, quality, clothing care
• Cultivating a list of your go-to shopping spots. (What you buy is more important than where you buy it, but having a list of go-tos makes everything simpler.) 

Urgent – Not Important 

These are important things to have done. But these are not important things to focus on doing for your personal style. If you enjoy doing these, spend all the time you’d like. If you don’t enjoy these, don’t linger on these tasks – your new mantra for these is done and move on.

• Doing laundry (including: dry cleaning, stain removal, ironing and pressing, etc.)
• Dropping off consignments or donations or resale 
• Returning purchases that don’t work
• Altering, mending, tailoring garments 

Not Urgent – Not Important 

Like the Urgent-Not Important category, if you enjoy doing these things, go for it! But if you don’t, you can delete these from you “should I be doing this? list” immediately and without guilt. 

• Micro-trends 
• Following influences you don’t find inspiring just because they manufacture urgency 
• Constant shopping 
• Obsessing over where to buy something (what is more important than where)

In short, make time and set your focus on the Important Non-Urgent things. These are the things that will move the needle of your personal style AND will not get done on their own. 

The urgent things will give themselves a deadline and force your hand. You will find something to wear to your cousin’s wedding. There is no hard deadline for defining your style qualities. 

But having defined your style qualities will make deciding what to wear a lot easier. 

If you’re ready to create dedicated time and space to tackle these Important Non-Urgent items, let’s work together.