The following is an abstract for a problem and a proposed solution which I find worthy enough to be implemented. I’m looking for feedback and open to collaborate to get it done. I already have a prototype website up for it, but I need some anecdotes/user stories to quantify relevance and plan my investment in it accordingly. The problem’s been on my mind since college, I’ve copied some of the original writeup I wrote 5 years back.
Abstract
The world around us moves fast, often making us spiral into the ‘am I doing enough’ rabitthole. This, combined with the information overload through channels like social media, entertainment and general societal/peer setup makes us anxious and confused while objectively, we might be getting everything(or most) of the things right.
We often feel directionless with no actual measure of how far have we come in life, how far we need to go and in which direction. There are a number of things an average person is concerned about which include his/her financial standing, family and relationships, health, work, spirituality, etc. While the actual cause might be a few of these factors, we end up worrying about everything and feel helpless.
The objective of this product/questionnaire to help us define our current standing in different parameters of a content life, narrow down to actual causes of concern and pin point the areas which need improvement.
This product/questionnaire aims to provide you with a framework to make self introspection and reflection easy and intuitive. It can be used to find areas which need to be worked upon along with resources for the same. Finally, based on your self assessment scores, we provide you a #contentment score. You can look up to this score as a level you need to increase with time. You can compare your scores on different parameters with our user base and assess your standings.
While we understand this questionnaire/scores can be very subjective, contextual and their relevance can vary person to person, setting up a baseline with most common objective parameters is still a worthy attempt and can solve for many, if not all. For the first version, we’ll target the early working class(age group 22-28).
I’d count it as a success if the audience sets up their own questionnaire and calibrate themselves against it; that’d be the point conveyed.
How It Works
We plan to provide configurable weights to each domain(eg: Finance, health, work, etc) and rank the questionnaire. See examples below:
Domains
Financial, Health, Family, Work, Relationships, Friends and social life, Spirituality & Religion, Work, Having purpose and meaning in life, social work and charity, Following passion and hobbies, etc. Planning to start with Financial, Health and Work for v1.
Financial
Generally the most important parameter. People often tend to believe that it is the only parameter while it is not. Ultimate aim in personal finance should be to achieve financial independence which as defined by Naval Ravikant is a “State when you don’t have to worry today about tomorrow”.
Ask yourself these questions and assess yourself accordingly:
- Are you able to pay for your fixed expenses(rent, food, bills, etc.) (xpts)
- Do you have a basic medical cover and life insurance for you and your family? (xpts)
- Do you have an emergency fund for contingencies like job-loss, sudden expense? (ypts)
- Are you contributing to your retirement fund, or do you have a retirement plan? (ypt)
- ……
Health
Only Physical here, mental health to be covered in a separate category: Peace of mind. A healthy body houses a healthy mind. The urban lifestyle, rat races in careers, have made us more susceptible to diseases like hypertension, higher BP(heart attack risk), stress, obesity, etc. We often overlook our health and go for unhealthy food, unnatural sleeping cycles, no exercising, etc. It is thus, important to consciously monitor our health and put in efforts to maintain it in a stable state. While it is difficult to quantify health, we have provided a broad set of points which you can use to rate yourself. Their relevance might vary with your age or if you are suffering from some chronic disease. These points are framed only on factors which can be controlled by us by making conscious efforts.
Assess on following points:
- Do you have a normal BMI(Body Mass Index) between 18.5-24.9?
- Do you take a nutritious diet and have a regular exercise routine?
- Do you smoke or consume alcohol?
- Are your Blood Pressure, cholesterol(LDL, HDL) levels normal?
- Are your blood sugar levels normal?
- Do you go for regular medical checkups with your doctor?
- ….
Work
Job consumes a major portion of our time and it significantly affects our perception of well-being. Definition of an ideal job is poised to vary person to person. Still, we can come to an agreement on a few characteristics every job must have. You must feel excited about your work and you should be paid in proportion of your skillset. A meaningful job must provide ample opportunities for career growth and should give credit for whatever work you do. The working culture should be conducive to growth, ensure personal safety and should not discriminate on gender, religion and race.
Ask yourself these questions and assess accordingly:
- Does your work match your skillset and potential? Do you feel your potential is under-utilized? Are you provided creative freedom in the work you do?
- Are you paid in proportion of your skills and work you put in?
- Do you feel excited about going to work? Do you work on projects you consider relevant and impactful? Do you get the credits for the work you do?
- Does your work provide you enough opportunities to learn and grow in/out of your niche?
- How easily do you get help from your seniors/peers and the management when you seek it?
- …….
We’d assign weights to each of the questions above and to the overall domain as well(configurable by the user). These will be used to generate a final score, summarizing the assessment. We plan to gamify it in future versions with community/peer group insights.