In our last blog post we learned the most critical stage of “filtering the firehose” of health information: knowing what health info you can trust.
However, that can still leave us with a LOT of solid health advice. The firehose is still spewing more than we can drink, so we ask our second filter question: So What?
This question is focused on personal relevance. Even if you’ve found information from a trusted source…so what? How is it relevant to your life?
The key to answering So What?…is knowing your health goals.
Health Goals Tournament
Here’s a tip from the book The On-Purpose Person to prioritize your health goals. Run a tournament; a health goals tournament.
Make a list on paper of all your possible health goals, but don’t prioritize them, just let them flow. Then simply work your way down the list and pit them against each other in pairs like a sports tournament (see image). It can be hard choosing a winner, but the “losers” aren’t discarded; they’re just delayed. You’ve just created a hierarchy of health goals.
Now you can start reading and filtering health info to help achieve your top goals. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, you’ll have a sense of purpose in your health info choices.
Two Additional Recommendations
- Health is a broad, wholistic concept. You may find it helpful to run four health goal tournaments, one each for emotional, physical, social and spiritual health goals. This may give you a more balanced approach to your health goals.
- Your goals will likely change over time, so it’s good to revisit your tournament periodically.
Next blog post we’ll look at an example of how this can all fit together and show you how you can still move forward with “enough” knowledge when you don’t yet “know it all”.
Remember:
“Know-It-All’s” try to fit everything for use. “Know-Enough’s” only use what actually fits.
Reference: McCarthy, Kevin W. The On-Purpose Person. Winter Park, FL: On-Purpose Publishing, 2009