Categories
Development Entrepreneurship Life Progress Self-awareness

Making One-way Door Decisions

One-way vs. two-way door decisions
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Managers in big corporations like Amazon, Virgin, and Facebook use a particular problem-solving approach. Whenever they face a decision to make, at first, they determine if that decision is a two-way door decision or a one-way door decision. Two-way door decisions are cheap. You can try them, see if they work, and get back to the starting point in case of failure. One-way door decisions are harsh. They are related to significant risks and things that you can’t reverse. And even if you do get back, you will never be at the same point where you started. One-way decisions require thorough considerations and should never be rushed.

Corporations are corporations, but can we use this decision-making approach in our own daily lives? Absolutely. Have a look at several custom-tailored examples of how you could make one-way decisions.

A choice to be made for a life explorer

You like adventures. Going to concerts and festivals is in your blood. You feel best when socializing with friends and making new connections. But there is one small problem: you can’t decide whether to get yourself the first tattoo you want or skip. When you have a tattoo, there is no way back. Or at least not an easy way.

So you have two choices, so far:

  1. Get a tattoo.
  2. Keep your body tattoo-free.

Think about your values?

Would the tattoo reflect your original personality? Or would the tattoo-free body reflect your personality more?

In 30 years, would you regret more about making a tattoo on your body? Or would you regret more that you decided not to make a tattoo at this time?

Do your health conditions support a tattoo? Or would your health conditions support a clean body more?

Would your body look more aesthetic with a tattoo or without it?

Would you feel more fulfilled with a tattoo or without it?

Does your profession allow you to have a tattoo, or unfortunately not?

Will your friends and relatives support you more with a tattoo or without it?

The list could go on.

Evaluate your choices by all those different criteria. Then sum up the advantages of each approach. And here, you will get a clear picture of whether to have a nonvanishing sign on your skin or rather have plain mundane skin.

A choice to be made for an artist

You are creative. Your head is always full of visuals. Your imagination is rich. You always are ahead with new ideas. But here you go: you need to choose a theme for your next collection. If you do it wrong, you might lose a lot of your followers. Your reputation can be ruined. You won’t be accepted in the most significant exhibition houses anymore.

So you have several themes that you like:

  1. Green living
  2. Women rights
  3. Space exploration
  4. Things people carry every day
  5. Street art metamorphosis
  6. Human cloning
  7. Visualising music
  8. Retrospective on children psychology
  9. Art therapy for anger management

Think of how you wanna be remembered in your old age.

  • Influential
  • Impactful
  • Mysterious
  • Financially free
  • Respected
  • Authentic
  • etc.

Think about each of your ideas, how they will match your expectations about yourself.

Will the collection about “Green living” make you influential? What about impactful? Will you be considered mysterious if you choose this theme? Can it make you financially safe?

When you evaluate each of your themes by each quality you want to achieve, you will have a clear picture of your topic. 

A choice to be made for an NGO fundraiser:

As an NGO fundraiser working for an ecological cause, you have to choose a crowdfunding platform which you will communicate on your website, social media, and press releases. Once the news is out, you can’t get them back. But there are so many crowdfunding platforms to choose from. It’s confusing. Which of them is the best? How not get lost in decision-making fatigue?

Should you choose one of the dinosaurs like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundMe? Should you go with the plain good PayPal? Or should you make use of one of the new platforms like Kindful, Handbid, Sodality.app, Fundly, Qgiv, 360MatchPro, Donately, Classy, CoinUp, Fundraise Up, RaiseDonors, GivingFuel, you name it? How not get lost in paralysis by analysis?

Think of some criteria which are essential for choosing your crowdfunding platform. Something like these would work:

  • Is your category supported on that platform?
  • Can you keep what you collected even if you didn’t reach the goal?
  • Are the transaction fees low?
  • Is the platform fee low or even none?
  • Is the monthly fee low or even none?
  • Are there giving levels with presents for the donations to motivate the donors?
  • How customizable is your fundraising profile?
  • Is the platform well known in your country?

Do your research. Answer those questions for each of your platforms. Then sum up the results and see which of the platforms got the most points.

A choice to be made for a project manager

The company you are working at has already gained some traction. Several different potential clients have reached out wanting to get your services. But your resources are limited, and you can only serve 2 or 3 of them at a time. Which of them should you choose? Once you establish a connection, you have to stick with it: the projects and the clients will be listed in your portfolio, web searches, press, etc.

Do you have a vision of an ideal client? Think of some criteria for choosing your best clients. For example, some of them could be:

  • How much are your goals shared?
  • How much do you respect that client?
  • How much do you believe in their brand?
  • How much do they respect what you do?
  • How much those clients fit your culture and ways of communication?
  • How willing are you to work on their project?
  • How competent is your company to work with this client’s needs?
  • How much are those clients ready to pay for the quality instead of just costs?
  • How much is it likely to form long-term collaborations with this client?

Anything more to add?

Evaluate each of those questions for each client with a number from 1 (very unlikely) to 5 (very likely). Then sum up the points for each client and see your winners.

A choice to be made for a frontend engineer

When somebody says that HTML is a programming language, it turns your eyes red and puts your head on fire. You know the slightest differences of each browser and how to make a website tick on each of them. But every time you start a new big project, you have to deal with this question again and again: which JavaScript framework to use?

Should you use React, Angular, or Vue? Should you try Svelte, Preact, Ember.JS, Backbone.js, Mithril.js, Polymer.js, Meteor.js, Aurelia, Express.js, vanilla JavaScript with web components? Or should you just stick with the old friend jQuery?

Once you choose a JavaScript framework for a project, you can switch to another one only when you do a major update of the website, probably in a few years.

Start with the criteria:

  • Is that framework trending this year?
  • Has it been growing on Google trends?
  • Does it feel familiar?
  • Is it simple to start with?
  • Is the documentation clear and extensive?
  • Do you like the coding principles in that framework?
  • Are there enough StackOverflow answers about that framework?
  • Is there a friendly and helping community behind the framework?
  • Are there enough jobs using this framework in your city, country, or remotely?
  • Does this framework has enough Github stars?

Add more criteria if you consider something is missing.

Do some googling, read some articles, do what you need, and answer those questions for each of your frameworks. Then sum up your yeses, and here you have the answer!

A choice to be made for a startup founder

You have produced an app and bootstrapped a company, the sales are happening, you have a stable income, but you want to scale it now and need some extra money for the new hires and marketing. Which financing option should you choose – that’s a question.

  • Should you fund yourself with money from your family?
  • Should you seek venture capital?
  • Could an Angel investor help you?
  • Should you rely on funding-based investment companies?
  • Would you consider crowdfunding?
  • Or is crowdinvesting a better option?
  • Should you get a bank loan?
  • What about getting a grant?
  • Are you in Europe and would like to get European Union funding?

Which of those financing options are best for your business?

Let’s start with the criteria. By what criteria could you evaluate your financing options? My hint would be those:

  • How likely can your business afford this type of financing?
  • How likely is your time in business appropriate for getting this type of financing?
  • How likely can you get the required amount from this type of financing?
  • How likely will your credit history allow this type of financing?
  • How much is this financing option based on your chosen financing form (debt or equity)?
  • How likely will the economic period (current growth or recession) allow this type of financing?
  • How much do you like the lender or investor?

Would you add anything else?

Evaluate each financing option from each perspective with likeliness points from 1 (very unlikely) to 5 (very likely). Then sum up the points for each option, and you’ll get the winners.

Invitation

If you are tired of Excel sheets and pen and paper are too limiting, I invite you to try and use the strategic prioritizer “1st things 1st“. There you can evaluate things by multiple criteria and get your priorities sorted out.

With the tool, you can evaluate your things with yes or no answers or gradually. Also, you can set different weights for different criteria if some of them are more important to you.

Final words

Some decisions we make in our lives are reversible. People call them “two-way door decisions.” But other decisions have a major impact on your life and work, and you cannot easily get back to the point where you started. These are called “one-way door decisions.”

When you face a one-way door decision, you can’t act spontaneously and have to evaluate your choices from all the different perspectives.

To do that efficiently, you can make use of strategic prioritizer “1st things 1st”. See you there!

Cover photo by Brett Jordan

Categories
Life Progress Self-awareness

Needs and Priorities: Important Questions to Ask Yourself

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Somewhat 80 years ago, an American psychologist Abraham Harold Maslow generalized a hierarchy of needs, where each level of needs builds upon the previous one. At the very base, people require a smartphone with the Internet. Just kidding.

The overview of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

At the very base, we all have physiological needs. To stay alive, we need to eat when we have hunger, drink when we are thirsty, have something to wear for the right body temperature, get to the WC when we need it, have a place to sleep, and probably someone to sleep with.

Then we have safety needs, such as a stable source of income, having where to live, being secure outside, at home, and at work, having some rules to follow, being treated well in case of illnesses, and getting help in case of fire or other catastrophes. At this level, we want to have structure and order. We want to know our limits and live stable and predictable lives.

These two steps ensure that a person will survive physically in this world.

Then we have a need to love, be loved, and belong. At this level, life without connections feels empty. We require pets, friends, lovers, family, coworkers, communities. We want to be a part of something bigger. We want to share intimacy and tenderness, affection and belonging. 

The next level is the need of esteem. We want to feel strength, self-esteem, and self-love inside of us. At the same time, we want recognition for our achieved mastery and respect for our competence from the outside world. At this level, we demand reputation and prestige.

Then there is the need of self-actualization. At this level, we want to explore, learn more, stimulate our minds. We want to play, grow, bring our best to the world. We need to be in harmony, order, and beauty.

The needs and priorities

At all of those levels we make decisions. 

  • At the bottom of the hierarchy we need to choose what to do to survive physically. 
  • Then we need to make decisions what to do to survive psychologically without becoming robots or zombies. 
  • Then we need to decide what to do to become more than social animals. 
  • Then we need to find a way how to escape the narcissism and arrogance. 
  • Finally we need to make decisions what to do to achieve the full harmony in the world. 

To make conscious decisions we have to prioritize some things over others. Let’s explore some of the crucial decisions we make at each level of our needs.

Physiological needs

What are you going to eat and drink to survive another month, week, or even this day?

When choosing food and drinks, you would typically ask yourself: Is your food cheap? Does it fill you? Is it tasty?

To get to the upper levels, you should also ask: Is your food healthy? Is your food nutritious? Does it give enough energy to you? Will your friends or family like it? Will you get a compliment for making this dish? Will your cooking skills be honored? Is it made from the best ingredients? Won’t you need to throw half your ingredients away? Is your food supply chain practical, ethical, fairtrade?

What are you going to wear?

When choosing clothes and shoes, you would typically ask yourself: Do they fit the season? Are they clean? Do they look appropriate?

To get to higher levels, you should also ask: Are they comfortable? Do they look good? Will your friends and loved ones like it? Do you feel like yourself in those clothes? Do you look respectful with this outfit? Do you need another piece of jacket this year? Are you living your authentic self with these clothes?

Safety needs

What job should you have?

When choosing a career, you would typically ask yourself: Is it paid enough? Do you understand, and can you do what they ask you there? Is it not too hard? Is it not too boring?

To get to the upper levels, you should also ask: Do you feel accepted by coworkers? Are coworkers friendly? Are you recognized for your work? Does your salary match your skills? Does the work fulfill you? Do you grow enough there? Do you do something meaningful there? Are you living your full potential at your work?

What should you buy today?

When choosing a purchase, you would typically ask yourself: Is it affordable? Do you want it? Do you need it?

To get to the higher levels, you should also ask: Is it long-lasting? Will that improve your comfort? Will that improve your relationships? Is that a brand you like? Will that look prestigious? Will that represent the status you are at? Is it useful? Does it look authentic and original? Is it ethically and ecologically made and brought to your shops?

Love & belonging needs

Which event should you attend?

When choosing events to go to, you would typically ask yourself: Would you go to this event for solidarity? Do you like the content of the event? Do you like the people who will gather there? Is it a chance to make new friends?

To get to the upper levels, you should also ask: do you feel like yourself in these kinds of events? Is it a chance to express yourself and gain recognition there? Is it not too long? Is there a chance to meet people of the same interests and social status? Can you make an impact at such events? Can you feel authentic at such events?

What present to get to your friend?

When choosing a present, you would typically ask yourself: Can you afford it? Will your friend like it? Is it something they don’t have yet?

To get to the higher levels, you should also ask: Will that present match your friend’s social status? Will that gift show your admiration and respect for your friend? Will that present lift your friend? Will that present add up to the authenticity of your friend?

Esteem needs

What should be your goals for the upcoming years?

When choosing long-term goals, you would typically ask yourself: Is that goal specific? Can it be measured? Is it attainable for you? Is it realistic to achieve it? Is the timing correct for this goal?

To get to the upper level, you should also ask: Is the goal positively stated? Is it ethical? Is it challenging you? Is it environmentally sound?

What books should you read?

When choosing your next book to read, you would typically ask yourself: Does it bring you knowledge and understanding? Does it improve your skills? Is it widespread or reputable literature? Is it interesting? Is it entertaining?

To get to the higher level, you should also ask: Does it make you a better human being? Does it lift you up spiritually? Does it help to find yourself or going towards your personal mission?

Need for self-actualization

What are the activities that you could call your Ikigai?

When choosing your reason for being, you would typically ask yourself: Do you love doing it? Are you good at it? Can you be paid for it? Does the world need it?

To go even further, you should ask yourself: Is it healthy? Is it ethical? Is it sustainable? Is it ecological? Is it progressive?

What should you do today?

When choosing the next optimal action to do today, you would typically ask yourself: Does that bring you closer to your goals? Does it remove bottlenecks? Does it make money or reduces costs?

To go even further, you should ask yourself: Is it impactful? Is it ethically, socially, and ecologically responsible? Does it bring more health and clarity to your life?

Invitation

So you have to make decisions and prioritize your choices at all levels of needs. The strategic prioritizer “1st things 1st” was designed to help you not lose yourself among all those choices and dimensions and help you grow as an individual, personality, and spirit. You are invited to use it and make your life more progressive.

If you are still struggling at the survival phase, but you would still like to make better decisions in your life, drop me a message and your reasons at the contact form. Every month I will select several people to use the tool for free.

Cover picture by Chester Wade

Categories
Development Life Progress

The Cycle of Long-term Success (UPDATED)

The Cycle of Long-term Success
Reading Time: 2 minutes

One kind of events in life happens spontaneously, unplanned, powered by intuition, and seeming random. Calling a friend, buying a chocolate bar, or sitting down on a bench at a fountain doesn’t require special preparation.

Another kind of events requires making hard decisions because of the urge to gain something huge or the risk of losing something important. In those cases, it’s better to get prepared.

In life, as in nature, everything happens in cycles. Previously I introduced you to the cycle of long-term success as I saw it at that moment. Today, I have refined the mentioned cycle, and now it consists of these 5 steps: research, prioritize, plan, act, reflect.

1. Research

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
– Zora Neale Hurston

First of all, before taking a measured action, you would need to find out what your choices are today. You can use a search engine, Wikipedia, references, podcasts, magazines, books, or anything else that provides you with information that you could utilize in your field of focus. Gather information with the intent to incorporate it into your activities.

2. Prioritize

“If everything is important, then nothing is.”
– Patrick M. Lencioni

There are several ways to set priorities for your activities. You can use the flexible and mighty prioritizer “1st things 1st”, decision matrices in Excel sheets, Eisenhower Matrix on a piece of paper, or maybe just selecting the first several priorities intuitively.

3. Plan

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
– Jim Rohn

Put your most important activities on the schedule. You can use Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, monday.com, any other scheduling app, or even an analog calendar on your wall or in your Moleskine. Try not to have more than 3 activities in a day. Book yourself or your colleagues for the vital work to do.

4. Act

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
– William James

Now it’s time to do what you have planned. Have a necessary meeting or a zoom call, speak, write, or perform what’s on your list today this hour.

5. Reflect

It is only by reflecting on the past that one can create a better future.
– Rithy Panh

If you got positive results, celebrate the wins. If you failed, see what you can learn from your mistakes. The next time will be better. Now go back to the first step and do the new research.

Final words

If you master the cycle of long-term success, you form a habit of success. Whether you win or lose, you gain experience and become excellent at what you do.

Cover photo by Ian Stauffer

Categories
Life Progress Self-awareness

From Chaotic to Harmonized Mindset

From Chaotic to Harmonized Mindset
Reading Time: 3 minutes

It’s 2020, and a lot of things happening now might seem very chaotic and confusing. Brexit inescapably happened. Man-caused global warming is changing landscapes. Oceans are flooded with plastic. The Covid19 pandemic brings risk to our lives and limits our mobility. Wildfires in Australia and the USA kill live beings. People are still experiencing discrimination and brutality because of skin color. Moreover, you might believe in some conspiracy theories that add to stress and anxiety about the current world situation. But do you want to stay under that stress, or would you instead want to have peace of mind?

First of all, what you can do is think about whether you can change any of that? Is it in your scope of control, or is it outside of your abilities? If you can’t control something, detach yourself from it. It is as it is. You have to adapt to it, but there is no necessity to keep worrying about it day after day.

If adversity happens to you directly and you are affected badly, you have to calm down and focus on what you can do to solve your situation. For example, if you lost a job due to Covid19, you have to find another one. Maybe even get some skills in another area than what you know already. Don’t panic. Clear your mind and surroundings at first.

If you have a chaotic mind, you probably also have a messy home. Start cleaning up your mind by cleaning up your home. Define places for each thing you want to keep. Get rid of or hide the things that bring you bad memories and emotions. It might take hours or days, but you will finally have a system for something you see every day.

Take a problem you want to solve and plan the way how you are going to solve it. Divide the path to the solution into multiple steps that you can take one by one. For example, you were in a restaurant business but decided to learn software development. So you will borrow some money, take online courses on some technologies, create a project for a friend, work on your LinkedIn profile, and apply for a junior position at a chosen IT company.

If you feel down, maybe you are lack of brain fuel. The human brain runs on glucose and needs at least 420 kcals per day to maintain normal function. That’s 42 grapes or cherries, 4 bananas, or 4 big apples a day. It can as well be more or less depending on your body mass and the mental work intensity.

To have a harmonious mind, make sure to spend time with people you care about. But also have some time alone. You need both: a feeling of connection and love; and time for meditation or prayer, journaling, and exercising.

When doing something, try not to multitask. Focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking brings you more stress and makes you less productive. If you have several or many things to do in a day, create time blocks for each of those things. For example, you will spend two hours reading and answering emails, one hour for the industry news, and one hour for an online meeting. Try to stick to your plan.

Simplify your life. It is recommendable to choose up to three most important tasks every day and only focus on them. Quality is more important than quantity. When you work a lot, you have a risk of mental burnout. That’s especially often in the tech industry.

Try to get information in your head classified. Either connect the points of knowledge in your head and group them into categories. Or read more about your interests and find some categorizations on Wikipedia or other resources. This gives you more trust in yourself and your opinions.

Get an essential objective in your life. It should be a big aim worth pursuing. Then make a plan for how you will achieve your dreams. And try to progress towards it. Know that failures will happen on the way. But focus on the process and enjoy the ride.

Cover photo by Hello I’m Nik.

Categories
Life Self-awareness

What Was Your Name Again?

What was your name again?
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Whether your first name is James, Mary, or X Æ A-Xii, your name not only identifies you but also shapes your character and influences how other people will accept you. With the wrong name, you could have problems with being accepted by the society you are living in. With the wrong name, you can have difficulties getting a partner or job you want. With the wrong name, you can have a weight of associations that people bring to it. When you are about to have a baby, don’t give them the wrong name.

Our story

My wife and I are from Lithuania, and we are living in Berlin, Germany. Before the births of our kids, we did some name researches to find names that would be well accepted in Germany as well as being Lithuanian. I wouldn’t be a programmer if I wouldn’t take 500 most popular names in Germany and filter them using Python programming language to see the ones with Lithuanian word endings. From that point, we got just a handful of names and intuitively chose the ones that we liked most. I hope that Joris and Laura will enjoy the names they got at birth and will live integral and successful lives.

If we didn’t trust our intuition, we could have used the strategic prioritizer 1st things 1st to analyze a few names by multiple aspects. Let’s see how we could have done that.

Using the prioritizer

At 1st things 1st, you can evaluate anything (like first names) by multiple criteria (like aspects) and get calculated priorities. The workflow looks like this:

  1. You define your criteria or aspects.
  2. You list out your things, like first names.
  3. You evaluate each name by each aspect.
  4. You explore the prioritized first names.

Step 1. Define your aspects

Let’s brainstorm for some aspects that we can use to evaluate first names:

  • Both parents like it
  • Easy to pronounce
  • Easy to spell
  • Sounds good together with the last name
  • Doesn’t have negative associations
  • Has a nice meaning
  • Unique
  • Traditional
  • Globally recognized
  • Authentic in your native country
  • Ethnically appropriate
  • Doesn’t prompt negative nicknames
  • Doesn’t sound foolish for a middle-aged person
  • Some relative has it
  • A person you admire has it
  • A favorite book or movie character has it

I will choose the ones that are most important to me and enter into the prioritizer.

Both parents like it
Easy to pronounce
Easy to spell
Globally recognized
Doesn't sound foolish for a middle aged person
Bulk-add all the aspects into the prioritizer

Here they are all added to the tool:

Essential aspects for prioritizing first names added to 1st things 1st

Step 2. List out the first names

Now let’s list some first names that you thought could be good candidates, let’s say, for a daughter:

  • Lina
  • Laura
  • Ada
  • Lara
  • Emma
Several female first names listed for evaluation

Step 3. Evaluate each name by each aspect

Then I go through the list of aspects and names and rate how each name matches each aspect.

Evaluating first names by 5 most essential aspects

Step 4. Explore the prioritized names

In the last step, I get all first names prioritized by how much they match all the aspects. “Laura” is in the first position with a 100% match. Other names got fewer points, so they are less recommended to choose. 

Last thoughts

If people call you by another name already or you want to start a new chapter in your life, you can still officially change your first name in some countries. But if you care about your kids’ well being, choose their names wisely as soon as they come into this world.

Other interesting reads

Cover photo by Yoann Boyer

Categories
Development

Restart with Better Charts

Restart with Better Charts
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Not so long ago, calculated priorities at 1st things 1st were displayed together with Radar charts. Was it the best visual representation for the priorities? Or is there anything better for your needs? Something more obvious, customizable, and intuitive?

Radar charts are the past

Radar charts (sometimes called Spider charts) are great for multidimensional comparisons. You have the complete overview at the fingertips and can compare the different items, side by side. Some radar implementations even suggest comparing different things with different dimensions on different layers of the same graph.

Radar charts are the past

But Radar Charts are the past. At least for the 1st things 1st. Because they have these drawbacks:

  • They don’t work well with less than 3 or more than 6 dimensions. In those cases, the best what I could think of was to replace them with Bar charts.
  • If you have different weights for different dimensions, you couldn’t properly represent them in the chart.
  • If the names of the criteria are long, they don’t fit into the dedicated space and make the chart very clumsy and fragile at the same time.

I did some googling and found another type of chart that could work. It was a Polar Area Chart. It’s like a Pie Chart with arcs of the same angles, but different radiuses representing the differences. I believed that with some slight modification, I could achieve even better results.

Aster Plot charts for the win

Some more time researching passed, and finally, I found what I had in my imagination – a rarely used chart which they call Aster Plot chart. Aster Plot Chart is a combo of the Polar Area Chart and Donut Chart.

Reading Aster Plot charts is simple. The more the donut is filled with color, the closer to 100% is its total score.

Aster plot charts for the win

With the Aster Plot chart, you can not only show different dimensions with any amount of them. You can also represent different weights for those dimensions.

Adjusting relative weights for criteria

For example, if we adjusted the relative weights for our criteria, the Aster Plot charts would show arcs of different angles for each weight, and different radiuses for each score.

Aster plot charts with custom weights

The names of the criteria are not gone. They are shown as tooltips on mouseover. And you can have as long names as necessary. I will just need to improve the accessibility by keyboard someday.

Final Words

When creating something innovative and crazy, you can be surprised that other people have already analyzed some steps of your path. Just do some googling, reading, and evaluation, and you’ll find ways that you had never taken or thought. And you’ll learn the vocabulary that you are missing.

Innovation is an original combination of what is already known. And if you haven’t already, try the first of a kind strategic prioritizer 1st things 1st.

Cover photo by Jason Coudriet

Categories
Progress Self-awareness

The Magic of Math Behind “1st things 1st”

The Magic of Math Behind "1st things 1st"
Reading Time: 3 minutes

I am an intuitive thinker! I don’t like overanalyzing or changing my mind too often. The first choice that I make usually gets the most power. I trust my gut feeling. But sometimes there are choices to make, which depend on too many variables. I used to be lost in such cases. Some options have some benefits; others have other advantages. How can I make the right choice when I have multiple decisions depending on several criteria? Nowadays, for long-term multidimensional decisions, I use the strategic prioritizer “1st things 1st”. I will describe its formula in this article.

How would you use the “1st things 1st”?

Strategic prioritizer “1st things 1st” lets you bring multidimensional priorities to light. It allows you to make intuitive decisions for each criterion and uses a formula (that I will describe in a moment) to calculate the priorities:

  1. At first, you define your criteria.
  2. Then you list out things to prioritize (for example, activities).
  3. Then you rate each thing by each criterion.
  4. At last, you explore your calculated priorities.
Workflow of prioritization: criteria, things, evaluations, priorities

Relative weights of criteria

Each criterion has a relative weight in percentage. By default, these weights are spread evenly. For example, if you have 4 criteria, each of them will have a weight of 25% – the sum of relative weights is always 100%.

Just recently, a possibility to adjust the relative weights was added to the prioritizer. If we look at the project about finding your Ikigai which was the first prioritization example in this blog, you can decide to give the criterion “Am I good at it?” a lower relative weight (10%) than “Do I love doing it?” (30%), “Can I be paid for it?” (30%), and “Does the world need it?” (30%). Because practice makes perfect, and the skills can be gained over time.

Adjusting weights for criteria

Evaluations

Whether you evaluate the things by each criterion with yes/no answers, probabilities, stars, or percentages, behind the scenes they are all saved as numbers between 0.0 and 1.0 and can be represented as percentages between 0% and 100%.

The formula

“1st things 1st” uses the weighted average formula to calculate the priorities.

To see how much a thing matches all of your criteria, you would sum all criterion weights multiplied by corresponding evaluations:

A = w1 × e1 + w2 × e2 + w3 × e3 + w4 × e4

No worries, you don’t need to calculate anything yourself. You just do the ratings, and all the computations are delegated to the computer – that’s what computers are for.

Here is an Excel template laying out the calculations: 

prioritization-templateDownload
Prioritization spreadsheet template

Our example with Finding Ikigai would look like this:

Prioritization example in a spreadsheet: Ikigai

As you can see from the last column named “Match”, programming, writing, teaching, and driving a car would be among my top priorities. Even when I can’t drive. Yet.

Final words

When making decisions, sometimes you can trust your intuition and the first thought that comes to your mind. And sometimes, the decision has to be analyzed and calculated. Why not leave those calculations to the computer? “1st things 1st” does that for you very well.

Cover photo by Michael Dziedzic

Categories
Life Self-awareness

How to Choose a Guided Meditation for Daily Practicing

How to Choose a Guided Meditation for Daily Practicing
Reading Time: 4 minutes

If you want to stay happy and peaceful, you probably practice meditation. Tried a series of different guided meditations, you would find it useful to have a meditation track on your iPhone so that you can practice it in a park, at the workplace, or even in public transport. Meditation apps like Soulvana, Omvana, Calm, or Headspace are cool, but maybe they are not your thing, and all you need is a simple MP3 with the guidance that you can listen to at any place.

You did your research and selected several guided meditations. Now you want to decide which of them to choose. Your guided meditation must meet several criteria you have. To help you prioritize, 1st things 1st comes into play.

Using 1st things 1st to prioritize guided meditations

At 1st things 1st, you create prioritization projects, where you perform these four steps:

  1. Define criteria.
  2. List out meditations (or other things).
  3. Rate each meditation by each criterion.
  4. Explore priorities.
The workflow of prioritizing guided meditations

⚙️ Project setup

At first, you will add a new project to your personal account. You will choose “Blank” from the project templates.

Choosing a blank project template

The project creation wizard will guide you through the essential questions:

1. The project Title and Short description – you will probably call the project “Guided Meditations”. Next!

Entering the project title

2. Then you will set how to name things. You will change the Things to Meditations.

Deciding how to name things

When you created the project, you will go to the main steps of prioritization.

🧭 Step 1. Add criteria

In the first step of prioritization, you will add the list of criteria and their evaluation types.

  • Can be saved on your iPhone because you want to access it anywhere. 
  • Takes a short time because you don’t have much alone time during the day.
  • Improves well-being because that’s what matters to you.
  • Boosts energy because you need to relax and gain the focus back.
  • Performed in a kind tone because you don’t want to listen to unpleasant guidance regularly.

Choose Bulk add criteria and enter these criteria one per line. Set their evaluation type From “definitely not” to “definitely”

Bulk adding criteria

The criteria will be added to the prioritizer. Now you can edit them and change their importance.

Criteria listed

💡 Step 2. Add guided meditations

In the next step, you will list out your guided meditations.

After choosing Bulk add meditations, you will enter them line by line:

Bulk adding guided meditations

The meditations will be added to the prioritizer. You can then edit them individually.

Guided meditations listed

🎚 Step 3. Evaluate meditations by criteria

Now it’s time to evaluate all guided meditations by all criteria.

For example, you can save most of these meditations on iPhone either as MP3 or as offline Spotify tracks, but “15 Minute Guided Meditation by Boho Beautiful” is from Youtube, extracting sound from it would be complicated. 15-minute meditations are probably not short, but you can practice the others in 10 minutes or less. “Arriving Meditation by Connected Business” and “6 Phase Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani” definitely improves well-being and boosts energy, whereas others are not so effective.

Evaluating guided meditations by each criterion

📊 Step 4. Explore priorities

The prioritizer will show you calculated and sorted meditations grouped into the ones:

  • to choose for sure,
  • to consider, and
  • to skip.
Exploring priorities

“Arriving Meditation by Connected Business” might be at the top, matching your criteria at 95%. That will be the track that you will transfer to your Music app and listen to it regularly to calm your mind and restore energy. “6 Phase Meditation by Vishen Lakhiani” could also be pretty close, matching the criteria at 85%. It’s worth having on your iPhone for more random and longer rest times.

Final words

Whether you evaluate meditation tracks or meditation apps, prioritizer 1st things 1st might be handy for you. Check it out now and make rational decisions about things that matter to you!

Cover photo by Jared Rice.

Categories
Entrepreneurship

How to Strategically Select Stories for Your Weekly Newsletter

How to Strategically Select Stories for Your Weekly Newsletter
Reading Time: 4 minutes

The problem: lack of clarity

Let’s say you have a mailing list with a few thousand subscribers. You send a newsletter every week on Tuesdays at 2 pm. You want to keep your subscribers engaged with some news related to your service and some industry news and opinions from around the world.

You use Quora, Twitter, and LinkedIn feeds, medium.com blogs, and your secret source to discover new exciting information from your industry. How would you decide which of the findings to send in the newsletter? You probably don’t want to send randomly selected news, because it matters to you how many subscribers you will have and how many of them will click on your links and buy your products.

You will carefully select your stories by the following criteria:

  • Is it relatable to your target user?
  • Is the news source trustworthy?
  • Are the events described actual?
  • Is the story captivating?
  • Does it create positive vibes?

One of the best ways to make a decision is to use the strategic prioritizer 1st things 1st.

The solution: using 1st things 1st

The workflow of the strategic prioritizer is pretty straightforward and consists of four steps:

  1. Defining criteria
  2. Listing out stories (or other things)
  3. Evaluating stories by each criterion
  4. Exploring priorities
Workflow

Let’s have a look at how to do that!

⚙️ Project setup

Log in to 1st things 1st and create a new project. From the prioritization project templates, choose “Blank”.

The project creation wizard will guide you through the essential questions:

1. Enter a project title and optionally a description. For example, you can call your project “Stories for the Newsletter”:

Enter project title

2. Decide how to name things. In this case, we will be evaluating Stories by Criteria.

Decide how to name things

Now when you created the project, let’s explore the main steps of prioritization.

🧭 Step 1. Add criteria

The first step of prioritization is adding criteria. Choose Bulk add criteria and enter these criteria one per line:

Relatable
Trustworthy
Actual
Captivating
Positive

Choose the evaluation type From “definitely not” to “definitely” for them.

Bulk add criteria

You will get five criteria created in your project. Now to set the importance of any of the criteria less than 100%, edit that criterion.

Criteria listed

💡 Step 2. Add stories

In the next step, you will add stories to prioritize. For example, you want to sort three stories about Augmented Reality:

Choose Bulk add stories and enter the titles one per line:

Facebook teases a vision of remote work using augmented and virtual reality

Copy and paste the real world with your phone using augmented reality

This augmented reality eyepiece lets firefighters see through smoke
Bulk add stories

You will get the stories added to the project. There you can edit each of them and, for example, add the links in the descriptions:

Stories listed

🎚 Step 3. Evaluate stories by criteria

Now evaluate all stories by all criteria. Go through the whole list and mark your choices. Be aware that the number of evaluations will be equal to criteria × stories.

Let’s say, the first two stories are probably relatable, because lots of people work from home and copy-paste, but the story about firefighters are possibly relatable because not so many people extinguish fires. The first two stories are definitely trustworthy, because verge.com has high Alexa site ranking, and the third story is probably trustworthy because the ranking is lower. The story about Facebook’s employees working from home is probably not very captivating, because the video is of poor quality, but the other two stories are pretty captivating. 

Evaluate stories by criteria

📊 Step 4. See priorities

The prioritizer shows calculated and sorted stories grouped into the ones:

  • to choose for sure,
  • to consider, and
  • to skip.
Explore priorities

As a result, all of the chosen stories are pretty strong, but the story about copying and pasting in augmented reality would be the most worth sharing in the newsletter; it got the priority of 90%. The story about firefighters got 85%; maybe you can share it next week. And the last one, the story about using Augmented Reality at the home office of Facebook employees, got 75%.

If the results are entirely unexpected, try to adjust the importance of your criteria or change the criteria to match your values.

Final words

After prioritizing your news stories, create the newsletter, describe the story of high priority or link to the original, send it, and keep the number of subscribers growing.

Check out the strategic prioritizer at 1st things 1st.

Cover photo by My name is Yanick.

Categories
Life Progress Self-awareness

The Cycle of Long-term Success

The Cycle of Long-term Success
Reading Time: 2 minutes

In my younger days, I was obsessed with finding the formula for happiness and success. Why do some people achieve more than others? Why do some people suffer when others enjoy their lives? What is the secret of some people’s advantage against some others? What do successful people do differently from the poor ones?

At some point, I realized that happiness and success are two different things. Happiness is something that you feel yourself, whereas success is something how others perceive you. There are happy people without significant achievements as well as successful but stressed and depressed people.

Success might be random, like a toss of a coin. That will likely be short-term. Have you heard that 70% of lottery winners spend all their money just in a few years after receiving the big amounts? There has to be something else. Something better than randomness.

As of now, I know that circumstances are one of the factors. But mostly everything depends on the mindset. A human being can change their mind and then be able to change the conditions or adapt to them.

Success happens through forming better habits and sticking to your goals.

As a great thinker and author, James Clear, once tweeted

There are 3 primary drivers of results in life:

1) Your luck (randomness).
2) Your strategy (choices).
3) Your actions (habits).

Only 2 of the 3 are under your control.

But if you master those 2, you can improve the odds that luck will work for you rather than against you.

Did you notice that in life, everything happens in cycles?

I want to introduce you to the cycle of long-term success as I see it today.

The Cycle of Long-term Success
  1. Everything begins with prioritization. It can be some productive work using mind mapping, TODO lists, decision matrixes, and other tools. It can be something that you do intuitively or meditatively in your head. Or it can be something that your managers and bosses do for you.
  2. Then there is planning. It’s dividing big tasks into small ones, assigning time for different tasks, deciding who will do what, choosing appropriate tools. Maybe you’ll also be using Trello, Monday, or Clubhouse, to name a few.
  3. Now it’s time for action. Do what you have to do to move towards your goal. Try to make progress. Try to fit the timetable. Remove all the bottlenecks. Make that call. Write that email. Create that masterpiece. Travel to that destination.
  4. The last step of the cycle is celebrating your successes. Or, if your actions failed, you have something from what to learn and improve for the next time.

And the cycle goes on and on again.

Cover photo by Grant Ritchie