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Using The Prioritizer To Analyze Your Dreams

A while back, I talked about The Prioritizer, a tool I first read about on The Simple Dollar used primarily for comparing different financial goals. The tool asks a series of comparison questions to determine the order of priority among a number of specified goals, and although it was designed as a financial tool, it can be used to compare any set of stated goals, financial or otherwise.I’ve received emails since from a readers discussing balancing divergent goals, such as debt reduction vs triathalon training, or saving for retirement vs starting a business, and asking for feedback about how to prioritize these unrelated but important to them activities, and I was instantly reminded of The Prioritizer and how I had used it to compare a number of my own goals in terms of my financial commitment to each of them. The goals were not necessarily all directly financially related, although each had a financial component and ramification to it.  So I thought I’d run through what The Prioritizer is, and how it can be used to understand what is deeply important to you and how to find balance.

Using The Prioritizer is pretty straightforward. You begin by entering up to fifteen goals by name, one per line. These are just simple descriptions of each goal, such as “Retiring at Forty” or “Vacationing in Rome”.  Once you’ve entered your goals, the Prioritizer gives you a list of pairings of your goals, and you rank one of each pair as the more important to you.  Think about each pairing before you choose - really decide which of those two things is more important in your life.  This is the key.  Comparing the goals two by two is much less overwhelming than trying to compare everything at once.

Once you’ve done that, the Prioritizer uses the data you’ve entered to rank your goals from most important to you to least important, with a percentage ranking next to each.  the higher the percentage, the more important to you.  The beauty is in the simplicity.  This isn’t anything you couldn’t do yourself with a number of pro/con lists, but it does it automatically for you and gives a simple list ranking your goals for you.  From this, you not only know how your priorities rank - but how much more (relatively) important one priority is than another.

Is it perfect?  Of course not.  It is a tool like any other - but it may give insight to you when you’re stuck trying to compare apples to oranges.  When I’ve been stuck looking at a number of different goals and not sure where my priorities truly lie, I’ve been able to use this tool to make things a bit more clear cut.  And readjust my financial focus (and otherwise) appropriately.

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