1/4-7 Rule: Breaking the Monotony of Productivity

"My desk’s looking overly messy. Some books were lying on each other like sleepy, junky teenagers. Some diaries kept on looking at the ceiling quite aimlessly. And the laptop had been lying halfway down in utter confusion. Somehow they all hummed and cracked some scattered jokes on me as if they were laughing off and whispering, "How’s your organisation hack going? Feeling messed up, huh?"

It’s time to review my productivity system.

Since the last few months, I've noticed that my productivity is looking like a flat tyre. I am just dragging it. It was never like this before. It suffocates my wellness because most of the time I’m just ticking off the pages. And I start messing up from the mid-month. The monthly routine isn’t coping with the sudden changes. Everything’s crooked up."

This is my note from December 2022.

Since January, I’ve been working on the 1/4–7 rule. It looks like a tubby version of any Wizarding rule, but it is simply the most effective method for me so far. 1/4-7 rule goes like this: "Practicality-Urgency". 1/4 is for each quarter. It unfolds the practicality of our expectations, and 7 is for a week, which counts the urgency of the current situation.

When we scratch our yearly vision, in most cases, we hypothetically expect some set of events. And we start marking them on the basis of our individual assumptions. That’s the most important part of our understanding of individual wish lists, and it accelerates the blueprint before any beginning. Even if it’s the foremost step, but unfortunately, every bit of it is not consistent. We see certain differences or gaps between our wishes and the strokes of our overall life situation. We bend the wish stick according to practicality.

Now if we spread out some of our wishes over a stretch of three months, the difference rate comes down by a handsome margin. That creates a balance between wish and practicality.

But what’s the difference between a quarter and a month? A monthly planner fixes our mindset for only 30 days, and that tends to solidify the results even before they actually happen. It’s like yes or no, and then move on because we have only 30 days. And also, the weekly planner and monthly schedule look very similar. That repetitive categorization and the double system would be like chasing something unrealistic with an imposed calendar on our heads.

In each quarter, we can reevaluate if something is or isn’t working for us. And the next quarter comes as the fresh chance to select new set of tasks. If you just look back to your January, February, and March, you might see a pattern. Your activities might have linked from one month to another (they didn’t stick “only” to the 30-day stretch); you might have scrapped some unsuccessful tasks within these three months, and you might have reconsidered your decisions; or you might have selected a better set of wishes.

7 days talks only about urgency.  It’s a weekly chart to keep us in a constant flow of scheduling. We can’t only rely on the 1/4 system, which can be vague to some extent in everyday working hours. Week by week, it skims down the pressure effects. 7-day rotation is less overwhelming than a long stretch of 30 days. Weeks allow us to make changes in the shortest possible timeframe. We even get the savoury of weekends, and that makes it even more breathable.

Yesterday, I pulled some paper file from my desk drawer. One was from my graduation days. The first paper said, "When work of any kind is done feelings of weariness, of disinclination for further work and of desire for rest become prominent after a time."

It was a research paper, "The Physical and Mental Effects on Monotony in Modern Industry" by psychologist A. Hudson Davis.

The more we see a certain kind of duty for a long period of time, we get tired. Our brain hates the monotonous pattern. This 1/4-7 rule circles inward with the yearly wishes with a constant flow of real work and real breathing time. And this pattern steps down each Saturday and steps up every Sunday. Both of these days have a fun and easy flow. Of course, we need a review time for both 1/4 and 7. A good review can show a better understanding of priorities and their connection to the yearly wish list. We need to sit with our checklist baskets from time to time. Let’s see a breakdown of this rule.

When a chunk of work has two different yet correlated systems, we get a break from chaotic monotony. Ina* is the first decision we make when we want to define our systems according to our new goals. When we change our systems expect some sort of versatility. A new flow is touching the shore at every turn.

(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)