To celebrate the new year I have just published my book Happiness Design: How to Design Your Ideal Life and Make it Happen. It’s now available on Amazon.com (.co.uk, .it., .es, etc.)

The book is about happiness. More specifically it’s about designing happiness. In other words it’s about learning how to define, clarify, plan and realize your very own set of conditions that, when fulfilled, make you feel happy.

In the book I include step by step instructions on how to figure out what is important to you and leverage that knowledge to generate life plan options, pick the best and make it happen.

I introduce practical tools and techniques from the field of applied psychology including Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Interpersonal Communications, TimeLine Therapy as well as more practical considerations coming from the field of change management and project planning.

I wrote this book the way I live my life: with passion. I hope it will inspire you to take your life’s design in your own hands and to live your ideal life on your own terms.  

You can get it for free on Amazon only from Wednesday 22nd of January to Saturday 25th of January  and again on Thursday February 13th via this link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HVI3VQO 
After this promotion it will be available for purchase any time via the same link. 

If you go for the free download option I would appreciate your constructive reviews to help position it on amazon.com.
Feel free to share the book with those you care about.

 Wishes of a happy and productive 2014!

In the previous post I have explained a technique to help you break a tie when facing a difficult decision. That technique may not be suited to those who require a more structured way to make decisions. This post, as promised, offers such a more analytical technique to help you make the right decision.

Let’s see how.

Building on your list of values (see earlier posts) identify the top five to ten or so criteria that you will use to assess your options.

Tip: Ideally you would want to use a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel to go through this as it makes the process easier. However you can also do it with paper and pencil with the help of a calculator.

Step 1. List the options you are considering in each row one below the other.

Step 2. Place your criteria next to each other column by column.

Now that you have your criteria and your options lined up it is time to bring them together and see what happens.

Step . 3 Distribute 100 points across your criteria.

Imagine having 100 coins and having to split them up so that every criteria gets a few. Try to avoid just dividing them up evenly (e.g. 20 points to each of the 5 criteria) as this reduced your ability to gain useful insights.

Step 4. Assess each option against each of your criteria

Start with the first option and score it from 0 (min) to 10 (max) against each criteria. In your Excel or paper grid this means placing a number from 0 to 10 in the cell where the option (row) meets the criteria (column). Work your way horizontally until you have gone through all the criteria for the option under assessment.

Step 5. Adjust the score to take into account the weight of each criteria

To do this, simply multiply the score in each cell in a given column for the weight of each criteria to which column it belongs. Example if option 1 vs. Criteria A scored 8 then you need to multiply 8 by how many points you had previously attributed to Criteria A (e.g. 20 out of 100). Result: 8x20=160.

Step 6. Repeat column by column until you have worked out all the weighted scores by cell.

Step 7. Sum up the totals row by row.

Now you are ready to reap the benefits of your analysis  by adding up the weighted scores cell by cell, row by row. This will give you the score of each option (row). At this point you are finally ready to rank options and determine which one carries a greater total score and therefore which one better fulfils overall your criteria.

And there you have it, staring at you in the face: the highest scoring option, the one that ranks top seems to be the one right for you.

Note: It may prove helpful to take into account the probabilities of each option to turn out the way you expect it to. If you do so assign a probability to each and multiply the option by this % value. Examples option 2 may have a higher score (say with a total of 450) but is only 60% likely to turn out as expected. So multiply 450 x 60%. This resulting value is the realistic score of your option.

Step 8. Review the results and pick your option.

Whatever the outcome of this process was: congratulations!

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So is time for you to make decisions?

As the new year approaches this could be the right time. Decisions followed by actions that bring you closer to you desired outcomes.