[Weekend WRAP 87] What's in Your Box?

Hey Reader,

On Tuesday I hosted a webinar on how to take and turn your notes into the working material of great ideas. This is a topic I love learning about and developing material on because having an idea development system makes everything easier. Watch the replay here.

💡 One Big Idea: What's in Your Box

A common theme of productivity is prioritization. One could argue that improving the ability to properly prioritize tasks (and the goals they support) is the most important part of productivity. In my mind, prioritization is the lead domino of productivity, the skill that impacts all others.

There are a couple mental models for understanding priorities that I’ve talked about in the past. The original model is the Eisenhower Matrix, a more recent twist is the $10K Work Matrix from my friend Khe. Both are helpful ways of thinking about the priority level of different tasks.

​Watch a never-before-published interview between Khe and I about $10K Work​

This week I stumbled upon a new priority model that focuses more on what parts of life you’re focused on over specific tasks. Thomas Frank described it from a dinner he had with James Clear.

My first response to this is there are lots of things I’m willing to do in order to maximize income and growth. That leaves me with a pretty big box but without a lot of time to prioritize each one. I haven’t really solved my problem. Based on my experience with coaching and courses plus the replies to Thomas’s tweet, lots of people have this problem too (a too-full box).

I thought about my box more and realized there are really 2.5 work priorities in my box. Growing my agency business (GPD), writing the newsletter, and re-starting YouTube (I’m halfway there, hence the 0.5). Coaching and social content are priorities, but only in service of GPD or the newsletter. Here’s my box.

It’s important to note: this is only a work box. There’s a life box, personal box, and family box. There could be other boxes, but these are the normal core four most people fit their lives into. Another helpful article to read about work/life balance is Clear’s Four Burners theory.

Video to Watch: How to Get Ahead

Besides the Notes webinar and my interview with Khe, a video that resonated with me this week is Mark Manson’s How to Get Ahead of 99% of People (Starting Today).

[Disclaimer] Mark uses the F-word several times in this video. If you know the title of his most popular book, that’s not surprising. Probably don’t watch around kids, but teach them these lessons!

What’s different about Mark compared to other success videos is how it doesn’t focus on routines, systems, or goals. Mark shows us there are 3 steps to getting ahead of 99% of people:

1. Have a contrarian idea
2. Be right (this is hard)
3. Relentless execution

The TL;DR of the video is these 3 steps are not for everyone, mostly don’t work, and almost always involve a lot of patience and/or sacrifice to be more successful than 99% of people.

More successful than 80% of people is much more attainable and realistic, but we will discuss that in a future edition of the WRAP.

🧵 One Thread I Read: The Harada Method

Dan Go is a friend and writes the High Performance Founder newsletter (sign up here). He had a recent thread about a little-known performance model known as the Harada Method. It’s a multi-step, long-term personal development process that essentially aligns every day actions with your personal vision. Read more here or click the image below.

Have a great weekend,

Matt Ragland

p.s. if you have a (literal) minute to share feedback, click here.