In my last post I provided an exercise to help you discover what you want in various aspects of your life.  In this post, we’re going to start concretizing your vision with a simple process for prioritizing all the things you want in all aspects of your life.

After a few days with the previous exercise you should have a list of things you’d like in various aspects of your life.  Some lists may be long, some short, and that’s fine.  What you need now are a number of small post-it pads (the ones that are 1 or 2 inches to a side), with as many colours of pads as you have lists (ie: if you have 6 different lists, have 6 post-it pads, each of a different colour).  Choose one colour to correspond to each list you have.

Then simply transcribe each item on each list to a single post-it note.  For example, if you have 3 items on the list of things you want for your physical life (exercise, activities, etc.), and you’ve chosen blue post-its for your physical items, you should have 3 post-it sheets, each with one of the items from that list on it.

Once you’ve transcribed all of that, put all of the post-its on a big wall.  Then just pick two at a time, and ask yourself which one has more energy for you.  NOTE: Do NOT choose based on what you think you ’should’ want.  Choose on the basis of energy – which *do* you want more.  Put the one you want more high up on a fairly empty piece of wall, and the one you don’t want as much below it.

Then choose another post-it (from all the others) at random, and compare it with the lower post-it note.  See which has more energy.  If the new one (#3) has more energy, put it above the second one.  Then compare it with the one on top.  Whichever one has more energy goes on top.  If #3 has less energy than the top one, it stays in second place.  For those who’ve done any sort of training in this, it’s a simple bubble sort – you just keep going with all the post-its until you have them all in order.

For example, let’s say you the first 2 things I pick are ‘to be my ideal weight’ and ‘to take a history class’.  Let’s say the ideal weight is more important.  I put that up highest, then the history class second.  The next post-it I pick up is more time with my kids.  Well, that comes in as more important than the history class, so I move it into second place.  Comparing it with my ideal weight next – my kids come in first, so I move it up to first place, ideal weight is second, and the history class is third.

Next, I might pick up a post-it about having a new car.  Let’s say it feels more important than the history class, so it moves into third place, and the history class moves to fourth place.  Comparing it to the ideal weight, let’s say being my ideal weight is more important, so it stays where it is, so the new order is 1) my kids, 2) my ideal weight, 3) new car, 4) history class.

Then I would just get the next post-it, start at the bottom and see how far it goes up.

What’s most important is that you choose on the basis of energy, not on what you should want or what intellectually seems right.  This is about feeling what’s right for you.

Once you’ve sorted them all, you may have a long list.  The colours will show which areas of your life have the greatest priority now.

You don’t need all of these.  Just pick what feels right – it may be the top 10 things, the top 20 or the top 30.  Your vision should be fairly simple and focused on what’s most important to you right now.

Once you have these top items, you’ll be ready to write your vision, which I’ll give you an outline for in the next post.

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Tags: Post-it note, vision

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Laws/Principles, Priorities, Success, Vision/Goals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.