My 2-step decision framework

(2 min read) How to focus on what matters, execute well, and make great decisions that actually grow your business

Author

Avi Gandhi
September 10, 2024

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You’re a creative person, so of course you have lots of ideas for how to grow your business. 

Courses, products, memberships, communities, events, podcasts, newsletters - all things you might be considering working on (especially if you’ve been a longtime reader of Creator Logic!) 

Maybe you’ll even work on a few of them at a time…

Don’t do that.

Even 2.5 millennia ago, wise people knew that focus is what gets stuff done.

In Hollywood, we call the tendency to get distracted by new ideas and opportunities “shiny ball syndrome”. 

Creative people get shiny ball syndrome worse than anyone because our imaginations are more potent - we can just see the possibilities unfolding. On top of that, even a little success brings new opportunities. 

Choose wisely, execute well, and your successes could build on each other into exponential growth. 

Fail to execute, however, and you could stagnate or even fall backwards - and that’s why focus is so important.

Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.

But how should you choose between a variety of great-seeming opportunities?

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Ease vs Impact Matrix

The Ease/Impact Matrix I’m about to describe is a variation of the more common Impact/Effort Matrix beloved by MBAs and product managers everywhere…If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it - tweak it:

This framework is fairly straightforward. On the Y axis, you have Impact. On the X axis, you have Ease.

Opportunities can fall into four quadrants (clockwise from top right):

  • High Impact, High Ease - Quick wins, you want to do these ASAP

  • Low Impact, High Ease - These feel good to get done but are unimportant. Do them next but limit time-spent.

  • Low Impact, Low Ease - Ignore these!

  • High Impact, Low Ease - Big, long-term projects - work on them consistently between quick wins.

When evaluating potential opportunities:

  1. List them out and give them Impact and Ease scores from 1-10. 

  2. Map them to the Ease/Impact Matrix.

If you’re looking for a quick win:

  1. Take all that have High Impact, High Ease and assign them new 1-10 Impact and Ease scores relative to each other.

  2. Now map those.

  3. Repeat until only one remains in the High Impact, High Ease category.

That’s the one project you do next!

Once you’ve completed that, run the framework again to figure out what to do next…and so on and so forth.

I’ve used this framework in my own decision-making. While everyone makes these calculations subconsciously, sometimes it’s helpful to be able to map it out - especially when there are lots of opportunities on the table.

There are three caveats to keep in mind:

  • Humans often overestimate ease and/or impact. We can’t see the future, and we have biases around what we want to do, so we often rationalize opportunities as more easy or valuable than they actually will be. Careful of these traps! (Great article on this here)

  • Impact and ease are complex ideas. Impact could mean revenue now or it could mean setting up for revenue later. Ease could mean time spent or it could mean emotional energy doing something unpleasant. There are many ways to interpret these concepts, so you should consider what each means to you as an individual and standardize your scoring based on your personal definitions of each.

  • High ease, low impact tasks can be a road to nowhere. You should keep time-spent on these projects limited - otherwise, you’ll waste energy doing easy busywork instead of hard, high-impact work. Email is a classic example. If you are constantly cleaning your inbox, the opportunity cost is working on something that makes you money…so be wary. If you start to feel like you’re working all day but aren’t actually making progress, this may be your problem.

If you’re struggling with decision-making, try out the Ease/Impact Matrix and reply to this email to let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading!

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Written by Avi Gandhi, edited by Melody Song,
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