The four axes: Change · Area · Level · Mode

C — Change: building or holding§

Grow — the task leaves behind something that keeps working on its own: a skill, a system, a product, health, a relationship. Stay — the task holds position: bills, admin, obligations, household.

The axis is named after the Red Queen's race: "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Stay is that running; Grow is what will run for you tomorrow.

Three structural rules keep you from arguing with yourself. They are part of the mechanics and identical for everyone:

• The asset rule. If it keeps working by itself afterwards, it is Grow: a written procedure, a policy, a hire, an article, a course.
• The core-function rule. The routine part of your own job is Stay: a teacher's grading, an accountant's payment runs. Work imposed from above is Stay as well.
• The three-second rule. Stuck for three seconds — Stay.

A — Area: the label outranks the project§

Work or Life — the zone of life a task belongs to. The label outranks the project: a personal task stays Life even when it sits inside a work project. This axis does not affect the selection of the day at all. It exists for the truth: at the end of the week you can see whether Life ever made it into your days.

L — Level: weight of consequence, not mood§

• Key — a door slams shut: a deal falls through, a deadline burns, a client leaves. There are few of these.
• Important — the result will visibly suffer.
• Regular — nothing dramatic, it simply needs doing.

Key is assigned only together with the answer to "what exactly burns?" If you cannot name it, the task is Important. A task is born Regular; Key is a deliberate promotion.

Key also has a budget: no more than 10 at a time, counted per person. The eleventh is not stacked on top — first one of the ten is demoted. The question "is this task important?" turns into the honest question "is it more important than that one?" On small portfolios a softer signal fires earlier than the budget: Key above 10% of the portfolio means priorities are inflating and the portfolio needs a review.

Level is the load-bearing beam of selection: it determines the row of the day matrix, and the precision of the method rests on it first of all. An error in Change costs little, an error in Area does not affect selection at all — but an inflated Key breaks the day directly.

M — Mode: is there a lever§

Do — my move. Delegated — my person's move, someone I can hold to account. Waiting — an outside party's move; all I can do is remind. The whole difference in one word: is there a lever.

In a team, Mode is always read from the point of view of the task's assignee — the person holding it. A manager does not re-mark subordinates' tasks to fit their own view: those tasks are separated from the manager's day by the assignee field, not by the Mode axis.

Defaults: keep the marking moving§

The default answers are Stay · Regular · Do. The three-second rule: if you hesitate, take the default and move on. Marking is a series of nods, not philosophy — a mistake is cheap to fix tomorrow.

The Freezer: ideas wait without pressure§

A task without a Level is in the Freezer: it takes part in no selection, no analytics, and no counters. This is capture without friction — throw the idea in without answering a single question. Defrosting is simply assigning a Level.

Marking on live examples§

How this looks in Todoist§

The method does not depend on the tool: all it needs is four coordinates and a date — on paper that is four marks in the margin. In Todoist (the reference implementation):

Seven labels in total, and the method never touches labels of your own.