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DavidC · 05-25-2007, 11:43 AM

I am truly surprised that this article has received such warm greetings in this forum. To me it is add odds with some of the excellent articles elsewhere on this website.

First, if you need to prioritise, there's too much in your life. You shouldn't be prioritising, but culling. Prioritisation is all about making choices about what you are not going to do.

Second, the things that you choose should come from the heart of your being, or you won't be effective at doing them. A scoring system that applies the same dimensions to everyone, and doesn't weight them according to who you are, cannot have this quality. Those weights are unlikely to be constant even for a single person; what is important when you are young and building a career is different from when you are bringing up a family.

Thirdly, there's no recognition of the interdependence of objectives. I'd like to have a family, something I could likely do quite easily. I'd also like to do have enough money to look after the family. Success in business is by no means guaranteed, so it will tend to rank lower in the CARVER system than starting the family. To me, though, it's a life principle that I won't burden the community by bringing children into the world that I can't look after. Business success is therefore a higher priority than starting a family, but CARVER might give them the opposite ranking. (I understand clearly that others might disagree with this view, but that just reinforces the second point just cited that priorities are individual things.)

Fourthly, the need to use a scoring system to rank activities shows that they have approximately the same different priority in your head. (If the ranking was clear already, you wouldn't need a scoring system.) That in itself is an alarm call to a review of purpose and life direction far more profound than application of a scoring system.

SP himself has written an excellent article that addresses essentially these points at http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...g-things-done/

The promise of this article, by contrast, is that if you just follow this checklist, your life will be on the right course. Am I alone in thinking this is misguided?

05-25-2007, 11:43 AM	#15 (permalink)
DavidC Junior Member Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 1	Hmmm.... I am truly surprised that this article has received such warm greetings in this forum. To me it is add odds with some of the excellent articles elsewhere on this website. First, if you need to prioritise, there's too much in your life. You shouldn't be prioritising, but culling. Prioritisation is all about making choices about what you are not going to do. Second, the things that you choose should come from the heart of your being, or you won't be effective at doing them. A scoring system that applies the same dimensions to everyone, and doesn't weight them according to who you are, cannot have this quality. Those weights are unlikely to be constant even for a single person; what is important when you are young and building a career is different from when you are bringing up a family. Thirdly, there's no recognition of the interdependence of objectives. I'd like to have a family, something I could likely do quite easily. I'd also like to do have enough money to look after the family. Success in business is by no means guaranteed, so it will tend to rank lower in the CARVER system than starting the family. To me, though, it's a life principle that I won't burden the community by bringing children into the world that I can't look after. Business success is therefore a higher priority than starting a family, but CARVER might give them the opposite ranking. (I understand clearly that others might disagree with this view, but that just reinforces the second point just cited that priorities are individual things.) Fourthly, the need to use a scoring system to rank activities shows that they have approximately the same different priority in your head. (If the ranking was clear already, you wouldn't need a scoring system.) That in itself is an alarm call to a review of purpose and life direction far more profound than application of a scoring system. SP himself has written an excellent article that addresses essentially these points at http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...g-things-done/ The promise of this article, by contrast, is that if you just follow this checklist, your life will be on the right course. Am I alone in thinking this is misguided?