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That’s my favorite quote from the book. Pavlina is nuts, though. Now he’s into cheating on his wife as a personal growth experience.

BUT , some of the best things in life are the 5’s, 6’s, 7’s, and 8’s. Don’t replace them – embrace them >> learn >> grow.

This might be a great way to rate feature ideas, but it’s no way to live your life ;-)

Michael: to be fair, it’s not cheating if both people know about it and welcome it.

Not sure if I can disagree with “nuts”, though—although I’d probably put it a bit more charitably.

Definitely has some interesting stories to tell, though. Good sense of purpose. Not a bad source for self-improvement advice if you can weed out the more extreme stuff.

The reverse of this argument is that the constant pursuit of “all 10s” in all areas of one’s life is destructive. It’s extremely difficult to attain, and often leaves people with burnout or an ever-present sense that they just can’t seem to get things right.

They work too much and don’t spend enough time with family, or they have balance with both but aren’t getting enough exercise, or aren’t hitting their financial goals, or feel spiritually dry, or haven’t travelled enough, or feel like a bad friend. When the goal is simultaneous perfection on all dimensions,

An alternative is to have your upper bound be “good enough” instead of perfect. It still provides the opportunity to define success (what does good enough mean?) but acknowledges that there will be periods of your life where certain aspects have greater needs in terms of time or focus.

to sj: An alternative is to have your upper bound be “good enough” instead of perfect just adjust your scoring of 1 to 10. Let 10 be good enough :)

This is great advice for photons and electrons and other elemental particles where all progress is quanta-based.

It’s terrible advice for human beings, and will undoubtedly lead to a variety of objectionable character traits in particular and a miserable existence in general.

JK’s suggestion to adjust the scoring so 10 is “good enough” immediately reminded me of Spinal Tap’s amps that go to 11. Haha!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbVKWCpNFhY

“Good Enough” is the same as “Just Enough Not Crappy”. I understand JK’s suggestion, but “Good Enough” really isn’t good enough.

The 1 OR 10 scale really only serves the purpose to identify the area(s) of one’s life that create unhappiness. Presumably, the next step is to create goals, and a means of attaining happiness and greatness in all areas of life.

I won’t be following this advice. These areas of my life go through constant shifts, I’ve come to realise that these shifts are natural and that an increase in one area leads to a decrease in another area.

For example. Sometimes I feel the urge to be passionate about my social interactions and will put more effort into going out and doing things with people I give a shit about and meeting new ones. This eats into the time required to experience the passion I feel when I lock myself away and practice drums for hours, or work on developing a new web project.

It’s about finding the balance, all these areas of my life are cyclical and on any given day, one aspect will be higher than the other. Vice versa on any other given day

What I work towards is not letting my “rating” of these different aspects of my life drop below a certain point before I give it some attention. So when I feel like my social life needs some attention I give it, when my “work” feels like it needs “work” I do it. I don’t expect these things to be 100% fulfilled at every moment of every day.

To do so would itself cause the unfulfilled feeling we are all trying to avoid.

By doing this I can step back and look at the bigger picture and feel sublime happiness – 10/10.

The “miserable existence in general” that GeeIWonder is talking about is studied closely by psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists. In general, when people have an increasing number of areas in life or goals in which they attempt to attain perfection, they end up being less happy than people with fewer such pursuits of perfection. The reasons for this are not that aiming high results in failure. It’s not that – it’s not “don’t try then you won’t be disappointed”.

Instead, what they find is that societies in which people are told “you can be anything you want” tend to have more stress, more anxiety (often medicated), and less satisfaction with life in general. While societies that have a stratified class system or less opportunities in general, where people have a lot in life that they have come to accept, have a less anxiety filled and more satisfied populace.

When you’re told everything you do needs to be perfect, you turn into the broken souls that are found in our child TV stars, fallen sports heros, and young girls with a malformed sense of what ‘beautiful’ means.

Now, I’m not saying that I want my kids to grow up in a stratified society or poor country. But I am saying that when they do something that’s good enough and that they and I find satisfaction in, I tell them ‘That’s great!’. Most of the stuff won’t matter tomorrow, next week, or next year anyway. They hear – ‘keep working on it ‘til it’s a 10’ enough times and they’ll just stop trying to do new things.

Okay, so I made the cardinal mistake of not reading the quote very closely. He does say rate your satisfaction in each area from 1 to 10. That’s a different story. I can be satisfied with a C+ , while you’re not satisfied unless you get an A. I can be satisfied with a general knowledge of God, while you’re not satisfied unless you have an intimate spiritual knowledge. He’s not recommending that you rate your performance in an area, but your satisfaction in that area in your life. I can be satisfied with a one room shack while it takes a large mansion to be a satisfactory home for you. It’s all about rating your satisfaction in an area.

So the advice can be summed up as “if you’re not satisfied with something, change it”.

But, that advice seems so obvious that it hardly seems worth a topic of discussion.

There are two kinds of people.. those that see everything in black or white (binary, 1 or 10, nothing in between, “you are with us or against us”), and those who don’t. I guess I don’t.

Wonder how Steve Pavlina rates his astral projections. :| Dear God.

My old philosophy teacher used to tell us, “don’t try to have everything that you want. Instead, try to want everything that you have”

There are two kinds of people.. those that see everything in black or white (binary, 1 or 10, nothing in between, “you are with us or against us”), and those who don’t.

I’m not sure if you’re kidding or not, but this is pretty funny.

@Gee, that was the subtlety I was shooting for.