How to Contribute to the Personal Development Guide Project

[Cat Dancer]

1. Have you given other people advice?

Have you helped someone in person or in the forums by giving them advice or by making a suggestion? If so, go to step 2.


2. What is the most common answer or suggestion that you've given people?

I'll explain why I'm starting backwards with the answer in a moment, but for now just think about the advice you've given. You've listened, maybe asked some questions, and then come up with a suggestion. What has been the most frequent suggestion that you've ended up giving people?

(Note that "most frequent" doesn't necessarily mean you've given the suggestion often. Perhaps every one of the many times you've given advice your answer has been different, expect for one suggestion that you ended up giving twice. That suggestion is then the "most frequent" one).

By way of example, let's say that you often end up suggesting people should eat a banana.


3. What questions or qualifiers would you ask before making that suggestion?

Of course, even if you often end up making that particular suggestion, you wouldn't suggest it in all circumstances. So what is a question or two that you'd ask before making the suggestion?

For example, such a question might be, "do you like bananas"?


4. Post the topic, the qualifier(s), and the suggestion here as a reply to this thread.

For example,

"I'm hungry. What should I eat?"

Do you like bananas?

If yes, eat a banana.

(If no, click here to get further help to your question...)

Simple? Yes. But don't forget, this is going to be a collaborative process, so we can always add more branches and options later.


Mystery revealed: why I started backwards with the answer.

Every guide, no matter how extensive it eventually becomes, will help people in some circumstances and not in others. Even guide will need to have an "escape hatch" of saying, ok, we don't have an answer for you in your particular circumstance, but here's where to go for more help.

The natural way might seem to first come up with a lot of topics ("hungry", "lonely", "generating income", "sleeping well", "self motivation", "dating", etc. etc.), and come up with various questions and options ("so are you hungry because you're poor and starving? just had surgery? don't know what to eat? allergic to food?") and then begin to come up with answers...

but...

then we end up with with a lot of topics and branches and questions, and few answers.

And this never goes away because there will be always be different circumstances that don't have an answer yet.

By starting with answers, we automatically ensure that we have a guide that provides answers.

And by starting with common and frequent answers, we provide a guide that can help the most number of people (for the number of questions and answers that it has).