I am not talking about immediate issues of survival, work and family concerns, what to buy next, investment portfolio, inherited rituals you keep busy with, physical fitness and your diet, getting drunk, high, or sport watching, spiritual issues whether you are a believer or not, community service or political debates, etc.
I am talking about issues such as:
At least 20,000 people died yesterday in Asia
Ray Kurzweil’s new book, “Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever” (Rodale, 2004), published last month
What should be the US Foreign Policy, especially in light of the Middle East situation, the rising death in Iraq, nuclear weapons in North Korea.
The hunger, famine and poverty levels in the 3rd world
How do you decide which issue has more priority to occupy your thoughts, allocating your brain power?
No. I am not polling. I realize this is GQ forum, and only questions with factual answers should be raised.
If someone asks “is there a way to set up a life objective and a purpose in life?” The answer is “Yes”, and I can briefly describe the methodologies, and provide back-up references for details.
I suppose by the question raised in this OP, I am looking for a brief description on “Here is how it is done”, backed up with credible references for further study. That is all.
No. Because there is no factual answer to “how the human brain works”. AFAIK, as of 27 December 2004, no one has a scientifically acceptable / proven answer to that question, thus not an appropriate question to ask in the GQ forum.
Sorry, we’re getting closer, but I still don’t understand the question. I’m not sure what a life objective is, or that there was consensus how to achieve it. Here’s how WHAT is done – what is it precisely you want to know?
Maybe you could give an example of the KIND of answer you are looking for?
OK. Here is an example (some people call it the Synectic technique).
Let’s choose any 3 of the 4 issues I mentioned in the OP to think about. Let’s call them issues A, B and C.
One way to prioritize is to compare A to B, in terms of which one is more important. Let’s say you conclude B is more important than A. Next you compare B to C, and you conclude B is more important.
Therefore, your top priority to concentrate among the 3 issues is B. Next you compare A and C, and if you find C is more important, voila, you got the answer. The priorities are B, C and A, in that order.
Now let’s expand the above example to all the things that you could be thinking about, wondering which one is more important to focus. What technique do you use?
“Common Sense?”. Is that a technique? If so, cite please.
One technique for time management is to differentiate between what is Urgent and what is Important.
Is it important? Yes or No.
Is it urgent? Yes or No.
This gives you four categories: Important and Urgent, Important but not Urgent, not Important but Urgent, and neither Important nor Urgent. Note that Important outranks Urgent.
So categorise your tasks accordingly and it’ll help you prioritise them.
I think you’re asking a very simple question, “How do you decide which issues are more (or less) important to you than others?” Technically I agree that there is a factual answer to the question. But the factual answer must account for our individual Doper psychology, and we will all have different, yet factual answers. Which is why, IMHO, it belongs in IMHO. But IANA mod, and I can answer you factually for myself.
My personal answer is part gut feeling, part my personal experience or the experience of someone close to me, part statements like “These are not MY problems.” I can’t quantify it any further.
I have one charity I give 90% of my donation money to, and a half-dozen others I contribute a token amount to. I can’t make any claim that I came to this distribtion scheme through any particular rational process. At one time I worked in the profession that gets most of my donated money, which is certainly a very biased way to make a decision.
Im with Boyo Jim – IMHO, this belongs in IMHO. If you can figure out how to decide, in an objective reliable way, whether one issue is more important than another, talk to some AI researchers fast, as they will give you lots money to explain it to them. If you can assign numerical scores to issues, the rest ought to be very easy – just choose the most important one first. Or perhaps some combination of importance, urgency, and achievability. I’m not convinced you can consciously decide to “allocate your brain power”, so I think the whole question is either meaningless, or enough in the realm of pop psychology that you can’t find a GQ answer.