The Mighty Mighty Decision Matrix

Pop quiz hotshot: What is the single most important thing you could be doing right now for your business, job, or personal life?

Not sure? Well then, try a (potentially) easier one:

Pop quiz hotshot: what’s the most difficult sport in the world?

If you said, “Boxing,” congratulations! If you said anything else, then you get a kidney punch from  King Hippo.

This is not my opinion, this is from an article that is on ESPN.com today:

Boxing’s Knockout Punch

Do what this post says, or King Hippo will eat you...

The writers of the article asked a panel of judges to rank sixty different sports on a scale of 1-10 on ten different criteria. They averaged the judges’ scores, added them up, and then ranked the sports.

Boxing came out as number one. For those of you wondering, the least three difficult were fishing, billiards, and shooting. Curling, the often mocked Olympic sport came in at 56 (makes sense, since Curling is easy enough that one of my buddies wanted to set it up as an activity at his bachelor party. Any sport that you can play during a bachelor party can’t be all that tough…)

Of course the results are completely subjective based on:

1. Who exactly was on the panel of judges.
2. The criteria they selected to judge the sports on.

It’s a fun read and should spark some interesting bar discussions (I can see it now: “Yo man! There is no way that skateboarding is tougher than rowing!!”).

For those of you preparing to post a comment about how you disagree with their results, or to chastise me for having the audacity to mock curling, relax, that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about the practical use of grids and matrices to rank priorities and make decisions.

You see, you can use the same process ESPN used to rank the sports to help you prioritize your short and long term activities.

If you are at all like me, then you feel constantly pulled in many different directions by all the different options you have of “what to work on next.” So many choices, and so many of them seem important, and so many of them seem urgent, that it can be hard to pick one or two to focus on.

Argh! Too many choices!

Prioritization is one of the most useful skills you can develop. Great leaders, producers, and achievers are able to quickly and effectively decide on what the most important task is and then focus on that until it is done.

People who struggle (as I have in the past) procrastinate making a decision, have trouble deciding, and then immediately second guess their decision and start jumping back ad forth between activities.

Prioritization may not be easy, but it if you apply the decision matrix system it can get a little easier.

The nice thing is that the two limiting factors when it comes to the sports debate work in your favor when you do you own grid:

1. You are the only judge. Your subjective opinion is all that matters
2. You get to pick the criteria that matters to you. My criteria may be very different than yours

How to Do It

First, make a big list of everything you feel you could, should, or want to do. Don’t limit yourself. Put down everything that ever pops into your head as a, “yeah, I should work on that,” thought.

Next, eliminate the obvious ones. This will leave you with a list of potential options that you are having trouble deciding between.

Now it’s Matrix Time!

Free. Your. Mind.

Decide what criteria you will use to judge your selections. This is the most critical part of the process, because this is how you will evaluate your options.

Do your best to pick a bunch (3-10 is good) criteria that are important to you.

I have done this multiple times over the years. Here is an example of the criteria I used once (these were all business ideas):

1. Enjoyment – How much fun will this project be? Will I willingly keep working on it?
2. Ability – How able to do I feel to work on and successfully finish this project?
3. Relation to core mission – A big one for me. To what extent will completing this project move me closer to my core goal of doing nothing but writing and doing humorous presentations (i.e. some things may make money but in a way that takes me waaaaay off that path).
4. Projected short term revenue – How likely is this to make me significant income in the short term (within 3 months)
5. Projected long term payoff – How likely is this to make me significant income in the long term (3+ months)
6. Projected short term impact – How likely is this to generate revenue in other ways in the short term (within three months)? For example, writing a new book may not make a lot of money directly, but it might have a huge impact on my marketing.
7. Projected long term impact – Same as above, but for the long term (3+ months)
8. Investment (money) – How much will this cost me?
9. Investment (time and energy) – How much time and energy will it take to complete this project?
10. “One and done” factor – Is this a project that once completed will continue to pay off in the future (like writing a book) or is it one where once it’s over, it’s over (like a cold calling campaign)

That’s one list of criteria. Yours will be different based on what’s important to you. And it will differ depending on the type of projects you are considering, and where you are in life at that moment. My criteria changes over time.

Here are a few things you might have on your list:

1. Flexibility of schedule
2. Autonomy
3. Ability to interact with others
4. Potential for passive/residual income
5. Potential for travel
6. Opportunity for personal or professional growth

The list goes on and on. The hardest part of the process (and most valuable for you in the long run) is figuring out what’s truly important to you.

Once you have your categories, rate each one on a scale (1-10 or 1-5 work fine). Just remember to make sure they are all aligned the same way (i.e. if a “10” means good, make it good for all. So don’t make “10” the highest for fun, and then make “10” the highest for investment. If “10” is the best, then a “10” investment means free. Got it?)

Don’t over-think the rankings! It’s all subjective anyway, so go with your gut. Then add up the ranks and see what comes out on top.

When you do this, one of three things will happen:

1. You’ll look at the top item and say, “cool,” and then make that your highest priority. Congratulations, you’re done.
2. You’ll look at the top few items and say, “damn, I don’t want to do any of those.” If so, you either need to
   1. Suck it up and work one of them. Or…
   2. Re-evaluate the categories you set up and start over
3. You’ll find yourself wishing or hoping that one item comes out on top, but it doesn’t. In this case, I would suggest you:
   1. Work on that one anyway. This is your grid, right?
   2. Change the item you were hoping would win so that it better fulfills some of the other criteria (i.e. make it more profitable, change the scope so it will be easier/quicker/cheaper to complete, etc.)
   3. Use the ability to work on this item as motivation to complete some of the other higher priority ones on the list. When they’re done, you can focus on what you really want.

Usually you’ll find yourself in that third position when the item is fun but has a low long-term or short-term payoff. Be careful putting everything else aside to work only on those types of projects; if they will have no impact, you are better off thinking of them as hobbies, not work projects.

Once you have picked your top one to three projects, get to work on them. Ideally, you will put as much focus as you can on just those few projects (some say the ideal is one, I go with three, but that’s a discussion for another post) until they are done.

Of course, this entire process is subjective and just a tool to help you set priorities. You can play with the methodology all you like. In fact let me know in the comments if you come with any interesting tweak or variations.

I use this mostly for businesses, but you can use it for many things, like trying to decide what fitness plan to start, or where to go on vacation.

Just remember: Don’t be a slave to the results! One of the most useful parts of going through this process once is that it helps you figure out what’s really important to you.

Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go begin my “physical training to prepare for fishing” regimen – which mostly consists of drinking beer and napping…

***
Are you planning an event and looking for a great speaker to add humor and energy? Then visit Avish’s Motivational Humorist page now!
 

About

By Avish Parashar. As the world's only Motivational Improviser, Avish uses techniques from the world of improv comedy to engage, entertain, and educate audiences on ideas around change, creativity, and motivation. Connect with Avish on Google+

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