Hello,
I find that most people around me do not possess the mental faculties necessary to accomplish goals that do not have an immediate and consequential deadline. Often times this leaves people in a constant state of simply getting by and not thriving. I often try to instil my thought patterns in people around me and notice obvious flaws in their thinking and logic. There seems to be an inability for people to take a large and broad goal and achieve it. I believe this stems from suboptimal prefrontal cortex functioning resulting in poor prioritization, segmentation, planning and unconsciousness to mental biases and conditioned thought patterns. I have found the only cure to these problems is using verbal logic questions that point out inconsistencies in your thoughts.
Some biases I have noticed: People tend to spend time on the method of action that is easiest but not the most likely to succeed. (I call this the lottery bias). People choose a method of action that is societally omnipresent without researching viable alternatives thus potentially wasting substantial time because often times there are hacks and optimizations that are not known intuitively. Also, people tend to not work with time constraints and will often pursue a method of action far beyond the point where one should reasonably move on, likely due to mental conditioning of thought processes around one set of ideas. Lastly, over-planning aka speculative procrastination which again falls into not operating within reasonable time constraints.
I'd like to create a website that asks simple questions which are designed to illuminate flawed mental biases and allow people to accomplish large goals the most efficient way possible by simplifying broad goals into small prioritized tasks without needing consequential motivation. I would want the website to include a membership functionality so people can save and refer or edit their work. This system can work on any goal. And I would want to create visual webs of tasks that stem from their main goal. It's painfully mentally tasking so I would want it to only ask one simple question at a time without overwhelming peoples brain and patience. Many of these questions can be broken down and then answered with a yes or no to make it easier for the user. The site could also give suggestions when it registers pauses in user activity and could potentially be social by allowing users to submit their goals to the user base and allowing others to suggest methods of action and upvote or downvote suggested methods based on their experiences tempered with an evaluation of their certainty. I wanted to get some constructive feedback and also see if anyone else feels inspired by this.
"I'm Lost" Prioritization System.
If you get "lost" in any step, plug it back into the system by making your goal "Figure out how to…"
In other words, whenever lost on any mini goal (smaller task that will help you reach main goal), plug it into the system.
This system believes in learning from action and potential failure rather than speculative inaction. Thats why we advocate beginning a your small tasks (AKA mini goals) even with the feeling of uncertainty.
1. Define: Write down your goal as specifically as possible. Then write the maximum amount of time, money, and effort you are willing to spend on achieving it and what you are unwilling to sacrifice for this goal keeping in mind your finite lifespan.
2. Outline: Make a list of all known methods of achieving this goal. (At least 3, preferably one that you were not previously aware of)
3. Order: Put this list in order of most likely to succeed to least likely to succeed in your opinion.
4. Start: Begin working on the first method on the list.
"Many Steps" Prioritization System.
When there are several separate necessary tasks to achieve your goal, make 2 columns. The first is called "Necessary" and the second is called "Not Pertinent."
Examine each task and ask, "If every other task was completed but this one, could the goal still be met?" If the answer is yes then categorize it as "Not Pertinent." If the answer is no then categorize as "Necessary"
Organize the list of tasks in "Necessary" in order of most time consuming and difficult to fastest and easiest. Then, organize the "Not Pertinent" list from most time consuming and difficult to fastest and easiest.
Do the "Necessary" tasks from first to last. Only when these are done or if they are empty, do the "Not Pertinent" list of tasks from first to last.
Edited by alpal, 16 April 2014 - 11:21 AM.
