Showing posts with label 5choices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5choices. Show all posts

Sunday, July 30, 2017

The 5 Choices - Part III

Wanted to take a break from doing my App Dev course.
So I decided to write out a post on the 3rd Choice in the book I was reading before.

Choice 3 - Schedule The Big Rocks, Don't Sort Gravel


Basically, the book advocates that you should plan your schedule by putting in priority tasks first, and miscellaneous tasks second.



The above pointers are what I would need to do.

For some time, I have been doing the Daily Q2 Planning through the daily updates in this blog.
But I haven't got to trying the Weekly Q2 Planning yet.
Will try it out today!

With the pointers, I have also created a generic schedule for myself.
I think I have mentioned it a few times already, but I didn't really post it up.
There was a few changes along the way as I tried to follow the plan.

Here's the current version.


Onwards, to living my life~!

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The 5 Choices - Part II

Took me a while to finish up the exercises for the 2nd Choice.
I realized that I couldn't really do productive work at home.
So now I'm writing out this blog post at a Starbucks, sipping on my hot chocolate.
This can be addictive~
Choice 2 - Go For Extraordinary, Don't Settle For Ordinary

1. Identification of Roles

I'm supposed to identify the different roles that I play, or want to play in my life, and prioritize 5 to 7 of these roles which I feel is more important.

More Impt Roles
  • Life Partner
  • Son
  • Friend
  • Company staff
  • App Developer
  • Financial Freedom Pursuer
Less Impt Roles
  • Solo Trekker
  • Obstacle Racer
  • Mindfulness Mediator
  • Maths solver
The less important roles seemed a bit trivial and not very conventional, but are things that I want to do in my life. But these roles are not the roles that I want to focus on at the moment, or I felt that the more important roles are roles that would add value to my life now.

2. Life Wheel + Performance Evaluation

In this step, I drew a circle and divide the circle equally by the number of roles I have identified. I drew inner circles as well to have concentric circles, and each region of the concentric circles represent the evaluation of how I am performing in those roles.

Life Wheel + Performance Evaluation

I felt like I was doing my best as a life partner to Dearest, but I wasn't being Extra-ordinary yet. And my worst performance was as an app developer, because seriously speaking, I am no where near it. Haha.. Feels a bit like a wake-up call.

3. Anchoring Purpose & Passion in a Q2 Role Title

Next, the book advised me to renamed the roles that I have identified, but embed them with a purpose and passion. Not so sure how the "Q2" is supposed to help guide this renaming, but I'm guessing the role titles are supposed to be "Important, not Urgent"; roles that I should be consistently working in.


For each of the 6 initial (and boring) role titles, I have individually thought through carefully on what I want to achieve in these roles, and thought of the most suitable names to re-title them. I showed them to Dearest, and she praised that the "Son -> Freedom Enabler" was a really apt title for the things that I want for my parents.

The book advises that these roles can change over time, as my purposes and passion would change as my life progresses. Perhaps reviewing them in a half-yearly manner would be ideal to rethink my priorities.

4. Craft a Q2 Role Statement for Each Role

This exercise is quite similar to life goals setting; to come up with an aim, and the concrete steps to achieving that aim. The template for this exercise is to start out with the retitled roles with "As ...", the aim "I will ...", and the concrete actions "By ...". A rather exhausting exercise for me.



5. Making My Roles Tangible: Setting Q2 Roles

The final exercise is to come up with some immediate course of actions to fulfill my roles, in the format of "From X to Y by When". So I came up with some immediate things that I want to do now.

Role: Journey Companion
Action: Making a project schedule and lead the journey for the wedding and renovation By 14 May 2017

Role: Freedom Enabler
Action: Make a list of food to avoid/eat for diabetes for mum By 13 May 2017

Role: Lasting Buddy
Action: Organize a dinner with the e4 guys By 18 Jun 2017

Role: Diligent Researcher
Action: Finish off the book "Invisible Influence" By 31 May 2017
Action: Read 3 academic articles By 12 May 2017

Role: Aspiring Developer
Action: Schedule fixed time periods for Udemy lessons By 11 May 2017
Action: Finish at least 3 lessons By 14 May 2017

Role: Freedom Aspirer
Action: Schedule fixed time periods for working on Financial Blog contents By 11 May 2017
Action: Decide on regular purchase of ETFs (amount and when) By 10 May 2017


These exercises took me quite a bit of effort to finish them, but I'm glad I did. They made me sit down and review my priorities, evaluate them, and come out with a course of actions to pursue them. 

Onwards to Choice 3~! 

Saturday, April 8, 2017

The 5 Choices - Part I

This book was briefly mentioned around 5 months ago and I still haven't got down to really executing the exercises inside of it. The exercises inside are supposed to identify important areas in my life to focus on, and then allocate time for them. The ironic thing is that because of the efforts needed to sit down and do those exercises, I procrastinated doing it.

This month seems to be a breather for me at work. Somehow things just died down for a while. But I don't think it's gonna last long, probably till the end of the month only. So I better take this chance to carefully plan my life schedule.

In this book, as the title suggests, there are 5 choices to be made; 5 conscious decisions. And I would be making them 1 by 1 through all the mini-exercises.

So here goes~

Choice 1 - Act On The Important, Don't React To The Urgent

I did a summary of the pointers in Choice 1 using my Samsung tablet.


  1. Time Matrix
    • Divide my tasks into four quadrants, depending on 2 factors - Impt & Urgency
  2. Pause-Clarify-Decide
    • Pause myself at least once a day, Clarify whether what I'm doing, and Decide whether I should continue doing it
    • Have a checkbox for the week to check this off
  3. Identify Q2 (Impt, Non-Urgent) tasks for the day
    • 2 Tasks for each day
  4. Identify Q3 (Non-Impt, Urgent) tasks that are distractions
    • As in image (my current distraction and my strategy for it)
Alright, that kinda finishes Choice 1.
I shall end off this this quote that started the chapter, which I believed wholeheartedly (because that is what's happening to my life).


"Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important 
is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant
- By Dr. Stephen R. Covey