Experiments

Goal priority calculatorSix goals, one week.
Something has to go first.

A list of goals is not a plan until it is ordered, and ordering by feel reliably promotes whatever was mentioned most recently. The point of scoring is not that the number is true; it is that scoring four things separately stops one loud dimension — usually urgency — from silently doing all the deciding.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

The goals

Three to six. Ranking two things does not need a calculator.

GoalImpactUrgencyEffortFitBy
5555
5555
5555
5555

Name at least two goals to rank them.

Everything is worked out in this page and saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.

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✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Score impact honestly

What changes if this happens. Not how much you want it — those are different numbers and conflating them is why everything scores an 8.

2
Let effort count against

A 9-impact goal that costs a year loses to two 6s that cost a month each, and it should.

3
Argue with the ranking

If second place feels wrong, the missing criterion is the finding. Adjust the scores until the order matches your judgement, then read what you changed.

Each goal is scored on what it changes, how time-sensitive it is, what it costs, and how well it fits what you are already doing. Effort counts against, the other three count for, and the ranking falls out.

If the result surprises you, that is the useful outcome. Disagreeing with a score you built yourself is the fastest way to find the criterion you actually care about.

✦ The limit

An answer is not a record.

This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

Questions

Goal priority calculator, answered.

Impact counts double, fit counts one and a half, urgency counts once, and the total is divided by effort rather than having effort subtracted. Dividing is what lets a cheap, decent goal beat an expensive brilliant one — which is usually the right call for one person with a job, and is the specific judgement most people make wrongly.
Because your week is the constraint, not your ambition. Two goals at 6 impact that each cost a month will change more about your year than one at 9 that costs all of it, and the arithmetic only becomes visible when effort is in the sum.
Then you have learned something specific, which is the point. Adjust scores until the order matches your judgement, then look at what you changed: that is the criterion you actually weight, and it was invisible before.
Three to six. Two does not need a calculator, and past about eight the exercise stops being a ranking and becomes a way of avoiding the fact that most of them are not going to happen.
Download it, or send it across — each goal arrives in EvyOS with its position and its four scores in the description, so in three months you can see what you thought at the time.

Keep the answer.
And the record of doing it.

Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

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