Quadrant Theory
TL;DR
Despite obstacles in prison, you must take responsibility for your future opportunities. With 1,000 productive minutes each day, make decisions that prepare you for success. Focus on high-reward activities and avoid low-reward ones. Use theories like the risk-reward quadrant to guide your choices. Spend your time wisely to increase your prospects upon release.
Creating a Filter for Decisions that Lead to Success
Some prisons may block access to courses, classrooms, and instructors. Yet we cannot use obstacles and obstructions as an excuse for our failure to prepare for success. We are going to be responsible for the opportunities that open for us in the future, and every decision will count.
The lengthy sentence my judge imposed meant that I’d serve 9,500 days before I got out. Every one of those days gave me 24 hours. Simple math helped me grasp that there would be 1,440 minutes in every day. If I slept 440 of those minutes, I’d still have 1,000 minutes each day to live productively. Using them to the highest and best use would go a long way toward advancing prospects for my success upon release.
How are you using your 1,000 minutes each day?
Since I anticipated enormous struggles in the job market, I understood that I would need to figure out ways to create my own opportunities. Employers may have chosen to ignore my requests for a job, or if they hired me, they might have locked me into a job that didn’t offer opportunities for a sufficient income. I understood how a low income could present a real threat to stability, leaving me vulnerable to further problems.
To learn more about income opportunities, I devoted several hours each day to watching the financial news network known as CNBC. Those hours I spent watching the markets taught me a great deal. I learned from listening to interviews with CEOs, and also from financial analysts. They taught me to understand how investors value businesses. If I could understand the stock market, technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and the language of business, I believed that I would put myself into a position that could potentially increase or accelerate my earnings upon release.
What steps are you taking to qualify yourself for higher earnings upon release? The more thought you give to this question, the more effectively you’ll be able to allocate your 1,000 minutes each day. By listening to CNBC, I learned from one analyst who spoke about his quadrant theory. He said that as he assessed potential investment opportunities, he considered a risk-reward theory in terms of a quadrant.
Think of a quadrant as being four windows of opportunity, with two square windows on a top row, and two square windows on a bottom row of the quadrant. On the left side of the quadrant, he would have an explanation of potential risk, and on the bottom side of the quadrant he would have a potential reward.
The top left quadrant, he would label high risk, low reward.
The bottom left quadrant, he would label low risk, low reward.
The top right quadrant, he would label high risk, high reward.
The bottom right quadrant, he would label low risk, high reward.
If he considered a company as being high risk, with a low potential for reward, he put that investment opportunity in the top-left quadrant. For example, he might consider a startup that didn’t yet have anything other than an idea to serve a small market, with a lot of competition, he would not have an interest in investing. It would go in the top-left quadrant.
If he considered an opportunity as being low risk, low reward, such as purchasing gold, or a government bond, he would put that into the lower-left quadrant. As a growth investor, the opportunity wouldn’t interest him.
If he considered an opportunity as being high risk, high reward, perhaps something like a cryptocurrency, he would put that investment opportunity into the top-right quadrant.
If he considered an opportunity as being low risk, high reward, such as purchasing a company with a long history of steady earnings, dominant market share, no debt, and a super strong balance sheet with both great fundamentals as well as great technicals, he’d use the lower-quadrant to keep his eye on this investment.
Had I now watched CNBC, I may not have learned about this theory of creating filters to assess the risk-reward component of decisions I made. As I wrote about in Earning Freedom, I used this quadrant theory to help me assess decisions I would make in prison, too. Here were some examples:
If I wasted time playing table games, I could potentially get into an altercation with another person. Something I said may have bothered him and triggered a violent reaction, or perhaps he may have said something to bother me. Since there wouldn’t be much upside, but a lot of downside in playing table games, I considered the activity to be high risk, with a low potential for reward. It would go in the top-left quadrant.
If I spent all my time hibernating in my bunk, depressed, feeling for myself, that may not expose me to problems in prison, but it wouldn’t prepare me for success, either. It would be a low risk, low reward decision, belonging in the lower-left quadrant.
If I worked to create income or career opportunities, such as writing books, there could be a higher level of risk, but the earnings could also bring the potential for higher rewards. Staff may not like the idea of me publishing from prison and locking me in the hole, or transferring me. I understood the risk. But I also understood the reward. Writing for publication became an activity that I put into the top-right quadrant.
If I spent time reading, I wouldn’t have much of any risk, but I would learn and develop my knowledge, which would give me a high reward. For that reason, I put reading and practicing my writing in the lower-right quadrant.
As I wrote in Prison! My 8,344th Day, when I allocated the 1,000 minutes that I had available to me every day, I avoided decisions that would be in the lower-left quadrant of low-risk, low reward. I made decisions to focus my time in the top-right and lower-right quadrants.
Today’s Question
How do your adjustment decisions relate to your prospects for success upon release?
Steps to Build Your Profile
1. Send an invite to Interns@PrisonProfessorsTalent.com
2. Once accepted, send an email to the interns with the following information:
– Your name
– Your number
– Your location
– Your sentence length
3. Respond to any questions presented in the newsletter by sending your answers to the email above.
By taking these steps, you can memorialize your journey and demonstrate your commitment to a better future.
