Happy Saturday, friend!

We’re back again with another edition of Productivity + Habits + Fun

😃 Fun Fact of the Week

Scotland chose the unicorn as its national animal.

🐦 Tweet of the Week

Are you building anything quietly in your life?

💪 Featured Productivity Tool

The Eisenhower Matrix

This is a classic, quick way to plan your day. Just divide a piece of paper into quadrants, and add the not important, important, urgent, and not urgent headers. Then add in your tasks as appropriate.

My tip to you is to do this before you go to bed so you already have your plan in place for the next day.

If you’d like a downloadable copy similar to the picture above, see this link. (I am not affiliated at all with eisenhower.me.)

🧑‍🚒 Something Interesting

This is the average response time of the LA Fire Department based on residency in Los Angeles. (From 0 minutes to 10 minutes.)

📉 Public Trust in the Federal Reserve

There’s been lots of talk about the Fed in recent years.

Does this chart match what you’re hearing, or is it too pessimistic?

😌 Decision-making Idea

Let’s use the chart above to walk through a fictional example.

1. Identify the problem - We want to go out to dinner.

2. Collect information - We discuss what we’re in the mood for. What kind of food do we want? What kind of experience? Do we want something casual or something more upscale? Do we dine in or order to go?

3. Identify the alternatives - We know we want barbeque. Now we need to decide between Brazilian, Korean, or Southern US.

4. Weigh the evidence - It’s been a long week, and we decide we want to go out and eat in a restaurant. We want something more upscale.

5. Choose from the alternatives - Between Brazilian and Korean barbeque, we look at locations, menus, parking, etc. We decide we want to go all out, so we choose the Brazilian barbeque restaurant downtown.

6. Implement action - We go to the Brazilian barbeque restaurant.

7. Evaluate the results - We have a good time and decide to return some time in the future. Maybe we’ll invite more friends and make it more of a dinner party.

🧠 Quote of the Week

What I think: I really like this. The only thing I would add is that I think we have to progress in those four steps to REALLY pass on the lesson. In past jobs of mine, I was always the one to train the new people. I always showed them how we did X. I explained to them why we did X. I showed them how to do X. And I always, always, always asked them to let me know if they found a better way. This last part always got me great information, and the people I trained felt empowered to experiment and find their own way.

What about you?

Thank you so much for spending some of you precious time with me. 🙂

I’m always looking to improve, so hit “reply” and let me know what you think!

Have an awesome week.

Sincerely,

Steven Sanders

PS - I hope to see you on Twitter and Instagram!