TJL #33: Use quadrants (Daily productivity #8)
Simple tips & tricks to be more productive
Welcome back to Today Jan Learned (TJL) #33. In this newsletter I share the best of what others have figured out already. To get these delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe by clicking the button below!
Key insight:
Make stuff insightful, use quadrants.
I am going to show you three images now. What do these three images have in common?
The first one is the Eisenhower matrix which separates tasks into urgent/not-urgent and important/not-important buckets.
The second one is the Indistractable model which separates triggers into external/internal ones and your actions in traction/distraction.
The third one is a sorting box that separates choice/guesswork and experts/peers. (I honestly don’t think this one makes any sense at all, don’t worry.)
What do these things have in common?
They. All. Use. Quadrants.
All these images have four quadrants. They are a two-by-two grid of .. stuff.
For some reason our silly monkey brain really loves this. It’s not too simple that we say “of course that was obvious.” But it’s neither too complex for our brain to go “this doesn’t make any sense.” It feels about just right.
How to apply?
So how do we apply this idea?
When you are trying to explain something, use quadrants:
When talking about people: introvert/extrovert
When talking about organisations: internal/external
When talking about some transformation: before after
So that takes care of one of the axes, and think of another one. Just divide it up into four quadrants.
I think that this has to do with the limits of our working memory. Our working memory can only store 7-9 pieces of information. If we chunk up the information in 4 pieces then our bran can still intuitively grasp it, which we find pleasurable.
This post is not directly related to making you more productive, but it’s about noticing what works and learning from that.
Go use some quadrants.
Thank you for reading!
That was today’s issue of the Daily Productivity Newsletter 🚀
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Previous TJLs
Read my previous TJLs by following on the links down below:
TJL #6: How to remember the difference between margin and padding
TJL #7: According to Jeff Bezos there are two types of failure
TJL #27: Be aware of the spotlight effect (Daily productivity #2)
TJL #28: Start with the upper-left hand brick (Daily Productivity #3)
TJL #30: Start with writing your README (Daily productivity #5)