There’s a trick that instantly makes you a better photographer.

You’ve probably heard of the Rule of Thirds — a composition technique to make anything visual look really compelling.

It’s ubiquitous. The technique is used by Van Gogh, SaaS billboards at airports and YouTube thumbnails.

It works. And you can’t unsee it.

You know what else you can’t unsee?

The Vans logo is the square root of “ans.”

And an upside down Chicago Bulls logo — is a robot reading a book.

I know, silly.

Speaking of never-can-go-back-to-before revelations: here’s one I'm sure you haven't seen before.

Not all tasks are created equally

This is the trusty matrix that anchors our productivity system.

Let’s break it down:

On the horizontal axis you have Unique Skill. (aka What are you dang good at?)

And on the vertical axis, you have Personal Leverage. (aka How can I scale my impact?)

(Now to be clear, we’re not talking about actually earning $10,000/hour. We’re just simply saying one task can be 1,000x more impactful than another.)

$10 Work (aka "Why on earth am I doing this?")

$10 Work causes dopamine surges in your brain.

It’s the satisfaction you get from aligning columns in Excel.

Or carefully organizing your messages using Gmail labels.

Heck, I know some people that even write down a task… just so they can cross it off.

(A simple question to identify $10 Work: “Could I do this hungover?”)

$10 Work is low-value and low skill work. It doesn’t move the needle on what truly matters in your life.

$100 Work (aka "Will this matter in 5 years?")

Our next quadrant is a trap. It’s where you use leverage to amplify an activity.

But it's the wrong thing.

This is the land of fancy productivity systems (ahem, Notion and GTD).

It’s the land of keyboard shortcuts, fitness trackers and self-improvement books.

(Oh, and meta-work.)

These hacks, tactics and systems all help — a little bit.

But that fancy workout tracker won’t actually help you get fit.

And that complex project management tool, won’t help you set your company's 5-year vision.

$100 work is the difference between being efficient.

And being effective.

$1,000 Work (aka "What am I great at?")

This is the land of expertise.

This is where you, my friend, regularly hang out.

You’ve got skills. Real-life experience. And maybe a fancy degree or two.

It’s these unique skills that enable you to earn your salary.

Or acquire freelance clients.

Or start a company.

Simply put: $1,000 work is the ticket to a great life.

You monetize your unique skills.

But there’s an issue. It lacks scale.

If a lawyer stops practicing the law, the billable hours grind to a halt.

If a software engineer stops coding, they'll lose their job.

$1,000 work acts like golden-handcuffs. They deliver on their promise, but you’re left wondering:

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The magic of $10,000/hour work

I once worked for someone with an epic superpower.

They could walk into a meeting – any meeting, be it marketing, ops, investing, HR and IT – and always ask a question that would stump the experts in the room.

While this boss was indeed a polymath, he had only worked as an investor.

But his $10K Work was knowing just enough about each function and distilling complex issues into simple questions.

$10K Work is the exact opposite of its $10 brethren.

There’s no swoosh sound when you complete it. Zero dopamine.

The results aren’t seen for years, if not decades. So like the proverbial Important, but Not Urgent it becomes easy to kick the can down the road.

I’ll "snooze" on my question asking skills for a day. A week. A year. A career.

$10K Work is your peculiar cocktail of industry, skills, passions, curiosities, relationships and vision. It’s planting important seeds for the future, yet requires patience and conviction.

Now, the trickiest part about $10,000/hour work is that the actual nature of the work itself is elusive. It’s akin to identifying good modern art:

So here's just one short sample case study. Meet Younger Khe, who had just left Wall Street and now wants to start a blog. He could

• Spend hours researching the perfect color scheme for his website ($10 Work)
• Learn how to automatically share his blog posts on Twitter and LinkedIn, where he usually gets around 8 likes per post ($100 Work)
• Start writing blog posts ($1,000 Work)
• Write that cold email to a potential mentor who could help him on his journey ($10K Work)

All valid tasks when you're starting a blog. But most of them won't have any impact five years from now.

In short, $10K Work is the idea that not all tasks are created equal. They vary in the skill required and the impact they have on your life. Being productive isn't about doing more $10 Work. It's about incorporating more $10K Work to truly move the needle.

Your turn

Hit reply to this email and tell us:

With gratitude,

Khe and the RadReads team

PS Tomorrow we’ll uncover the sad truth of why an oura ring won't do anything for your sleep.