Best graph ever + October 2019 Newsletter

Best graph ever

Not long after meeting me you’ll most likely realise I love graphs and data visualisations. I’m a long way from being an artist but this doesn’t stop me from whipping out a pen and drawing diagrams and charts during meetings. Come to think of it I should put some training time aside to improve my stickman drawings to make group structure diagrams more legible!

Of all the graphs we work with there is one which is substantially more important than all the others: the Eisenhower Decision Matrix. Does this sound impressive and daunting? In concept it’s really simple:

All tasks have a certain amount of urgency and importance. Here are a few examples:
1. Your license to trade needs to be renewed before the end of the week. This is both urgent and important so it’s in quadrant 1: DO
2. Personal and business goal setting/strategy. This is very important but not urgent as it’s a long term goal. Quadrant 2: PLAN.
3. Processed mail needs to be filed. This should be done as soon as possible to stay on top of it but isn’t overly important so DELEGATE it. Quadrant 3.
4. Personal messages regarding plans for the weekend arrive through the day. Generally the messages are just fun so they aren’t important or urgent. ELIMINATE this, quadrant 4. Before you think that I’m a cold heartless accountant, I’m not suggesting that we eliminate friends or a social life but eliminate the distractions for the blocks of time set aside for DO and PLAN activities.

My goal is to spend most of my time in quadrant 2: PLAN. By doing this I can usually avoid tasks becoming urgent and important so have more time to focus on genuine category 1 items such as a black swan events.

You’ll probably find yourself being far more productive when following this model so can churn through the same amount work in less time. As a reward I tend to spend my time savings on the ELIMINATE items I ignored earlier in the day. Maybe I should call my Quadrant 4 “YouTube”!

Feel free to share any great workflow tips and tricks you use. I’m always interested to learn from others.

Newsletter

Below is a list of the short articles in the newsletter:

1. Sales process
2. Employment termination
3. Marketing channels
4. Short term vs Long term financing
5. Staff resignations
6. Making the most of a business slowdown
7. Social media savvy