Decision making tree

When you are planning what to do next with your life, I think it is useful to pull together a list of the goals that you would like to achieve.

I call this the list of 100 things. This exercise may take a few hours to do in an evening or at the weekend but it is worth doing.

Grab yourself a large pad of paper or even better a few stacks of post-it notes and on each post-it or new line on the paper write out one thing you would like to do, see, obtain or learn etc. These things can be trivial or immense, they all count. Make these items things that you would like to do within the next 10 years.

Most people get to 30 or so things quite quickly and then falter. Having someone with you to remind of all those ambitions you used to talk about is helpful. Nothing is off limits, you may have no money to spend today but in 10 years who knows what you will have achieved.

Getting to 80 is the next challenge, now you'll begin to see why a friend is useful; go for the final push though and get all 100 things down.

Wow! Time to take a break.

Now it's time to sort these wishes into 4 individual piles.

Things to achieve within 1 year
Things to achieve within 3 years
Things to achieve within 5 years
Things to achieve within 10 years

Well we're nearly there now, is this begining to look like an action plan for life? I hope so!

It's time to decide on the priority of which things to do first, concentrate your efforts on year 1 because that is where you'll take immediate action. It might be that you can see a simple pattern to the order in which to do these things or you may feel like you need a helping hand.

One way to get a real handle on what to do first is to employ a knock-out contest. The picture on the left will give you the idea. Load up the boxes on the left hand side with your tasks/ideas/desires and pit one against another through a few rounds until you emerge with a winner.

The sheet is an aid to decision making that helps the user define what tasks are most appropriate to do next.

Click on the picture to download a printable PDF version of this picture.

In the 16 pink boxes on the left enter the list of tasks that have been generated through previous work. One task per box, the order of entry is not really that important but obvious competitive options should be grouped together.

Using a knockout system, two pink boxes feed into one yellow decision making box. Only one task can be carried forward to the next round (the orange boxes). Choose which task seems most appropriate to be carried forward and continue until you finish with your most important or pressing task.

Try different combinations of tasks and different orderings to test the outcome. In the end you have to comfortable with the results!

When you have completed the decision tree, work from the right back towards the left in terms of pursuing the actions and goals.

Re-evaluate the situation often!

Take your time and have fun with this, keep a note of your results too.