The ICE Matrix:
What Do I Do Next?

I learned to score before I learned to argue. The summer of 1978, my parents had just separated, and my father took me to Phillies doubleheaders most weekends. He taught me to keep score, a pencil and a scorecard, every at-bat reduced to a symbol I could read back a decade later. I didn't know it at the time, but I was learning to turn a feeling into a number. That habit followed me through a sales analytics dissertation, nineteen years at Oracle, and now shows up every week in a matrix I hand to founders who ask me the same question: what do I do next?

A to-do list is not a priority list. It's an inventory.

Every founder I work with carries a version of the same problem. The backlog isn't short. It runs thirty or forty items deep, half of them sound urgent, and all of them compete for the same Tuesday morning. Left to gut feel, the loudest task wins, not the most valuable one. That's the gap the ICE Matrix closes.

I didn't invent ICE. Sean Ellis, the growth-hacking pioneer who coined that term, built it for startup teams deciding which experiment to run first. I adopted it, tested it against real client backlogs, and now run it as a standing weekly discipline for the businesses I advise.

How It Works

Score every task on three dimensions, one to ten each, then average the three:

• Impact. If this gets done, how much does it move the number that matters, revenue, retention, a client outcome? A ten changes the business. A two barely registers.
• Confidence. How sure are you the impact estimate is real, not a hope? A ten is backed by evidence. A two is a guess dressed up as a plan.
• Ease. How much time, money, and complexity does this actually take? A ten is done this week. A two eats a quarter.

Average the three and rank the list. The math does the arguing so you don't have to.

Here's what that looks like against a real backlog. Gut feel reaches for the loudest task. The scores say otherwise. (Click a column header to sort.)

The website redesign looks like the obvious move until it's scored. Confidence and Ease drag it below two tasks that felt smaller.

This is not the Eisenhower Matrix, and the difference matters. Urgent versus important sorts your list into four boxes and stops there. It never tells you what to actually start Monday morning within the box marked "important." ICE forces a number, and a number breaks the tie gut feel can't.

I run this discipline every week against real client task lists, not as a one-time exercise but as a standing operating rhythm: score the open backlog, write the scores back into the system where the work lives, and tag the top-ranked items for the week so the priority is visible where the team actually works, not buried in a memo nobody reopens. The result isn't a longer list. It's a shorter, ordered one.

If your backlog has stopped telling you what to do first, that's worth a conversation.

Score Your Own Task

Try it against something actually on your list. Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere — it's just for you.

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