Smart categories create variety

Design your lists to better serve you

Longtime readers know that I tend to suggest people plan their upcoming weeks on Fridays. Part of that advice is to create a 3-category priority list. What is most important, over the next week, for your career, your relationships, and your self?

Most people will think through their professional to-dos for the next week. Relationships and self? Maybe not so much. But the reason I have people do this exercise is that it turns out to be quite hard to create a 3-category list and then leave one of those categories blank. Our brains don’t work that way. We see the category and think, well, I have to put something in there. The virtue of a 3-category priority list is that it will nudge you to create a more balanced life.

Once you realize that truth, you can use this same insight for all kinds of planning. The categories you choose influence what you do, so choose smart categories and you might make better choices.

Nudging it up the priority list

For instance, if you’re creating a budget, you’ll no doubt include the normal categories of housing, transportation, groceries, etc. But maybe there are other categories you want to remind yourself to treat as important and fund. Maybe it’s “date night childcare” or “fun with friends” or “screen-free entertainment.” By creating a category for whatever you tend to under-fund, you can nudge it up the financial priority list.

Or if you’re planning a big trip, you might sort your activities into different categories to nudge more creativity. Let’s say you’re planning a trip to New York City. The city has great museums and great restaurants, but you probably don’t want to spend every minute on those things. So maybe you create multiple categories as you’re planning: art, food, theater, experiences — which might be something like taking the Staten Island ferry — and outdoors, which could mean visiting the New York Botanical Gardens or Central Park, or even trying out a roof deck somewhere. You and your traveling companions can brainstorm possibilities for each category, and then you can refer to the categorized list as you plan. You’ll see the city in a different way.

Rethinking what’s automatic

Some families use categories as they navigate kid gifts. One popular set of categories is “something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read.” The kid doesn’t get all books, or all video games, or all socks.

Variety keeps things interesting. That’s one reason colleges create distribution requirements. Perhaps your life could benefit from a few distribution requirements too! Sometimes we treat categories as automatic or set in stone, but they really aren’t. We can choose what they are, and putting a little thought into them increases the chances that they serve us in the quest for creating the lives we want.