The Four Quadrants

The Four Quadrants is a quick emotional stocktake of your actual week. Take the things that fill your time: meetings, tasks, chores, people, commitments. Sort each one into Love, Like, Dislike, or Hate, up to 15 per box. Drag things between boxes when you change your mind, because you will. Honesty beats being tidy here. Putting something you are supposed to enjoy into Dislike is the most useful thing you will do in this tool. Your score is the share that's sitting in Love, so it rises as the balance shifts in that direction. That number actually matters less than the pattern, though. Look at what is in Hate. Now, some of that may be unavoidable. Some of it you might have agreed to four years ago and never revisited. Some of it could be delegated, it could be dropped, or done differently after one conversation. It draws on values-clarification practice, which runs through coaching, cognitive behavioural therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy. And the principle is simple enough. You cannot decide what to change until you've said out loud how you feel about what you are already doing. Most people find two or three items in Dislike that they could move with very little effort. Start there than with any of the big ones. Now, run it again three months later and compare the Love column.