202204091039 Impact vs effort model of task value

The impact vs effort model of task value is a simple two axis graph that's split into quadrants.

Along one axis we have the value/impact of a task from low to high. Along the other we have the effort it takes to complete that task from low to high.

The quadrants then break down as follows:

3. Pit of despair — low impact, high effort tasks. There's nothing good about a low value task that's incredibly difficult and time consuming. It's our job to stay out of this quadrant at all cost. The good news is that it's typically easy to detect these pits and avoid them.
4. Snacks — low effort, low impact tasks. Tempting to indulge in because they're quick to build, but they don't offer much value and amount to busy-work. This is an easy and insidious quadrant to get trapped in. Many many organizations reward performative work #thread in this quadrant.
5. Quick wins — low effort, high impact tasks. These are the best things to work on. The only downside is that a mature organization will soon run low on items here and need to fill their time with tasks in other quadrants.
6. Deep work — high effort, high impact tasks. These are what we should be filling our time with when the low effort high value tasks are dried up. Instead of drifting to "snacks", we should deepen our efforts, dig in, and apply ourselves to long-term, valuable work. It can be hard to get buy-in for this type of work because many people favor short-term games, but as we know, we should be trying to 202109251140 Play long term-games