Fitter, happier, more productive

It started in the early 1970s, following a terrible television accident that left astronaut Steve Austin a man barely alive. "We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was.  Better...stronger...faster."
   
Let's update that for the 21st century.

To celebrate the return of Mutual Improvement we are kicking off a new effort we are calling: "How am I doing?"™  Our goal is not to turn you into a bionic freak addled with technology (though that sounds pretty cool).  Our goal is much simpler - we want to create a system that will let you quickly measure where you are, where you want to go, and make a plan for getting there.

And we are inviting you to help us create it.  After a round of brainstorming and lots of time reviewing the most popular goals on 43 Things, we came up with an initial list of 12 categories:

1. Travel
2. Money
3. Career/work
4. Health
5. Diet
6. Exercise
7. Love/relationships
8. Family/home
9. Education
10. Habits/self improvement
11. Art/music/hobbies/culture
12. Spiritual/religious 

Our thought is, to build a system that lets you assess "How you are doing?"™ in each of these 12 categories as well as indicate which areas are of the greatest importance to you.  Based on that data - we'll generate a list of goals that have been recommended by users to help people make progress in that area.  After measuring whether you've accomplished the goals or not, we'll have a sense of where you are, and make a set of recommendations on goals that might get you ready for the new year.

What do you think?  We'd love to hear what you think of the 12 categories -- are there some you'd combine, delete, or add?  Do you think the users on 43 Things can pitch in to create lists of recommended goals in each of these areas?  We'd love some feedback on the ideas behind "How am I doing?".

Comments

[Buster McLeod]

I'm not sure what I think about health, diet, and exercise being three different categories... I was thinking that we should only have health, or only have diet and exercise. However, I suppose we could begin matching them with goals to see how they self-organize.

The format I'm thinking will work for this will be something like the kinds of tests people take on dating sites. First, you fill out information on your current self along those various categories, and then instead of saying what you're looking for in a relationship partner, you fill out what you're looking for in your future self. Rate things like "How important is it for you to be your ideal weight in 1 year?" and "How important is it for you to be out of debt in 1 year?" and "How important is it for you to travel this year?" We could also ask questions about your self in 5 years, 10 years, etc.

Then, we could match goals to each of the categories, and see how well the goals "match" your desires for a future self.

This might all be easier to draw out, but that's what's in my head so far.

[Josh Petersen]

I'm all for collapsing health/diet/exercise. I wondered the same thing about money and career/work or career/work and education - but for now I erred on leaving things seperated.

[WilloToons]

small ditto to josh's thought: Interesting that money & career/work are separate.

[Betsy]

I'm confused by love/relationships and family/home being separate. Where does friendship fit in? I sort of think it should all be under personal relationships, because I think doing love/relationships connotes romantic/sexual relationships, which are not a priority for everyone. Also, why are family and home together? Are we speaking only in the metaphorical sense of home? Shouldn't the physical sense be part of some category, too, good ol' Maslow?
Last peccadillo, I think the education category is a little strange. I get it for some people, but after one has achieved the desired level of formal education, then "education" starts to mean something different, it blends into the other categories. Want to take a pottery class? Focusing on personal productivity? Those are all now "education" but also fit into other categories. Maybe having things fit into multiple categories is okay, but it struck me as strange. This criticism is relevant only if the idea is for everyone to have always active categories. If not, one can just simply check it off and it becomes static.

[Chris Peters]

I like it! So far, the list looks good. I'm not sure why some people are saying to combine love/relationships and family/home. Seems like two completely different concepts to me. Maybe people trying to combine the two in their own lives leads to the 50% divorce rate in America...

I'd love to see a system that provides these goals in a social way, although I'm having trouble figuring out how that could be done. You guys are doing great with user-generated content, so I'm sure you could figure out something that would be terrific.

[Betsy]

That was an unnecessarily snarky thing to say, thanks. I love being judged about the future of my marriage by blog comments.
You also provided no actual rational explanation why combining them would be wrong, just how it "seemed to you," while I actually explained myself. I know that many people feel that their primary relationship with their partner constitutes their family/home.

[Josh Petersen]

When I left the two categories relationships/love and family/home I was thinking about the things you get a say in: your love and relationships - and the things you don't: your family. Plus kids, pets, plants and decks.

I know that doesn't all make sense - but there are lots of housework, home improvement, cleanliness and parenting goals and those all seem really different than the sex, love, dating, and marriage goals.

[Luciano Passuello]

I'm not sure how this system is going to look in the end - but is it possible to make it tag-based instead of category/hierarchy-based? This way we could discard the religious wars on grouping/splitting categories (maybe just create some major tag bundles to organize a little bit).
Just a thought.

[Sean]

Nice idea.

I think diet/exercise should be collapsed into health.

I think work/career and money should stay separate. One is about what you do to get money, the other is about what you do with money you earn. Ways to assess career might include training/skills, income level, satisfaction at work. Ways to measure success with money might include percentage saved, any long term investments, any debts.

Love/relationships could just be called 'people' or 'relationships'. I'd take 'family' out of home and consider it to be part of 'relationships'. But I'd keep 'home'.

I'd take 'habits' out of the definition and just call it 'self improvement'. Maybe consider rolling education into that.

There's a lot here about what people do, but not much about how they feel. I wonder if there should be something that assesses the user's attitude towards life, happiness, positivity and so on. That's surely a big factor in how successful someone is at life - if they're happy, it's working.

[Improvement]

I don't have much to add to the conversation exept one thing. Why do you divide # Money and # Career/work into two different categories? I think that these concepts depend on each other

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