Back in the day (and I’m surprised at how old some of these posts are, I’ve been at this for a while now) I wrote a post about coming up with solutions to issues called Solve for X. In this post I mentioned using a SWOT analysis as well as laying out the options in a table with different criteria. These are both techniques that are part of a set of tools called quadrant analysis… and you should have a couple of versions in your tool kit.

Quadrant analysis is a method of visually categorizing data onto a space, either with four labels or two axis. SWOT analysis is for analyzing a situation, but other kinds of quadrant analysis are useful for prioritizing a set of options, solutions, clients, or possibilities.

This site (which is an ad for some kind of tool) has a really nifty overview with several good examples (which I’m going to steal). But you don’t need a tool for this. Pad and paper or white board will do just fine. And as with any graphical method, the best way to understand it is to walk through some examples:

Urgent vs. Important

Let’s say you’re working on an awesome side project (a book, a side hustle, a series of paintings). You desperately want to do this thing, but somehow you never end up being able to get the time. Other things are always drawing your attention and distracting you and pulling you away. Yet, some of those things really are critical — how do you prioritize? The Urgent vs Important quadrant is perfect for this. Your awesome project is in the Important, but not Urgent quadrant. If you don’t deliberately schedule time for it, it’ll constantly get pushed aside in favor of all the things that seem so very urgent. Pro tip: if everything is urgent because if you don’t do it right away, you’ll forget… that’s a systems problem rather than a priority problem. Get a system in place to remember them and you can do them when the time is right.

Effort vs. Impact

So let’s say that you are trying to choose between several different projects to improve your household. You know that some will have a bigger impact than others, but different options have different amounts of effort. There may be money involved, but also your own time and energy, and how inconvenient it is (like remodeling your only bathroom). So you put the into an effort / impact quadrant. Seeing all your ideas littering the quadrants will help you quickly figure out which things to take on first and how to keep from getting overwhelmed. And you don’t have to be exact!

Practicality versus ROI

This is a really interesting one. Let’s say you are considering a number of side hustles. You have a rough idea of the potential 1 year Return on Investment (ROI) for each possibility. But you can’t do everything! So rank the ROI against how practical the idea is. Sure, you think there’s huge upside to a business that combines sky diving with mushroom hunting… but if you don’t know how to skydive, all the potential money in the world isn’t going to make that make sense. Or breeding dogs in an apartment that doesn’t allow pets. Just not practical! That said, this will also keep you from choosing ideas that are super practical but won’t make you any money.

Anything vs Anything

There are a huge number of preexisting quadrant analyses out there, just do a search. But you can come up with custom ones as well. For example, let’s say your household is apartment hunting. There are some baseline criteria that aren’t negotiable (number of bedrooms, size, cost) but others that are on a spectrum. By the time you look at half a dozen places, your heads are swimming! To create a quadrant analysis tool for this situation, determine two criteria that are meaningful, but on a spectrum. Let’s say you pick apartment amenities (pool / playground / club house — important to your kids) and neighborhood energy (restaurants, walk-ability, nice neighbors — important to you and your spouse). Now your quadrant looks like this:

Quadrant analysis is one of those great tools that’s usually confined to the corporate world, but that is actually super useful for personal decision making. It’s particularly useful if you are dealing with a group. In this example, let your kids rank the up and down axis and you and your spouse get to rank the left to right. So it encourages discussion and makes sure you’re on the same page with one another. After all, is a pool better than a playground? Is a farmers market better than a hip restaurant scene? This tool will help you sort that out.

I never recommend making decisions based only on this kind of tool or research without considering your gut feelings. But the tool can also give you a framework for exercising your own intuition. Which apartment just felt right? And if it’s in that lower left quadrant, why did it feel right? Maybe it’s not amenities or neighborhood that are important after all. Maybe the instinctual appealing on had some other characteristic that you hadn’t really prioritized, but should. Maybe it’s on a really quiet street. You could go back and create a new quadrant analysis with amenities on one axis and peace and quiet on the other. Or maybe you look at a few more places that combine amenities, neighborhood, and quiet (perhaps a challenge, but you won’t know until you look). You control the tools you use and the decision making process.