Mike Schmitz

I’m a big advocate of productivity. But I’m not a big fan of how most people approach the topic.

Productivity is not cranking more widgets. Productivity is not doing all the things. True productivity is saying “no” to the things that don’t matter so you can say “YES!” to the things that do.

But that’s not what most people think of when they hear the word “productivity.” They conjure up a mental image of heartless efficiency – getting their tasks done faster so they can squeeze in a few more from the never-ending in their task manager.

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There’s a fascinating discussion about the most recent Michael Hyatt episode of Mac Power Users over in the MPU forum where a couple fo listeners started responding to what Michael Hyatt calls his Freedom Compass. Michael talks about it in his new book, Free to Focus, but the TL;DR from the podcast episode is this:

Everything you do can be broken down into one of four quadrants:

1. The Desire Zone – Things that you are passionate about and proficient in
2. The Distraction Zone – Things that you are passionate about but not proficient in
3. The Disinterest Zone – Thing that you are proficient in but not passionate about
4. The Drudgery Zone – Things that you are neither passionate about or proficient in
   

It’s an interesting mental model, and I mostly agree with Michael’s argument that if you are able to align the things you care deeply about with the things that you are good at, that is where the magic happens. The one thing I would nitpick here is the use of the word passion.

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