To-dos influenced by Eisenhower priorities

The underlying concept behind Appfluence's new Mac version of its popular iPad and iPhone app Priority Matrix is rooted in something President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said: "What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important." Based on that principle, the program moves away from the traditional linear to-do lists and substitutes a movable four-color grid that adds visual categorization, making it clear what's urgent, what's less urgent, and what's important or less important based on choices the user themselves have made in terms of where on the grid they put tasks.

Users are less bound by deadlines and more in charge of organizing and re-organizing their tasks based on the factors of time and importance. It breaks users of the thought train of "now I must do this, then I must do that," and puts them more in the sphere of "this task will take some time, but here's something I could take care of right now." The grid keeps all the tasks visible but gives the brain color-coded cues on what to focus on. Tasks can be placed in certain quadrants, assigned certain icons, and have completion percentages attached to them.

The Mac version is said to be even more efficient than the previous iOS versions by virtue of having user-created keyboard shortcuts. It also features free cloud syncing, which allows the information on one version of Priority Matrix to be in tune with versions on other machines, silently synced whenever there is a Wi-Fi connection.

The program supports searching by keyword, drag-and-drop interactions, sorting either alphabetically, by due date or by completion percentage. It also includes dozens of reminder icons, progress tracking and target dates.

Priority Matrix costs $20 and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store. It costs $20 (Mac version) and requires OS X 10.6.6 or later to run. The iPhone and iPad versions cost $2 and $4, respectively.

by MacNN Staff