I Found the Method to Live Your Best Life. Want to Know More?

The foundational theory of this guide to a successful life is based on the premise that life consists of choices. For reference, see: How Do You Understand Freedom?

Life is essentially a series of choices. Make good ones, and you’ll get the best outcomes; botch them, and you’ll settle for less than satisfactory results.

Back in the day, magazines used to feature these kinds of tests: pick A for question one and you move to question two; pick B and you jump to question four; pick C and you’re off to question six. Your choices determine your final destination—that’s the essence of decision-making.

How many important stages are there in a person’s life? Choosing a school (background), choosing a company (compensation)—I made that up, don’t take it too seriously, just using it as an example.

Question 1: You have the chance to attend one of the following schools. Which would you choose?

A. Tier-1 university B. Tier-2 university C. Vocational college

Question 2: You have the opportunity to work at one of the following companies. Which would you choose? (Tier-1 graduates can choose any; Tier-2 graduates can choose from B or C; vocational college graduates can only choose C)

A. Tencent (15,000 RMB/month) B. ofo bike-sharing (6,000 RMB/month) C. Supermarket clerk/salesperson (3,000 RMB/month)

Our lives actually work this way: the result of one choice determines how many options you’ll have next. I call this freedom (How Do You Understand Freedom?). And success in life simply means making the optimal choice at every step—like the AA combination in my example above.

So success is actually quite simple: seize the opportunity to choose, then make the optimal choice. The principle itself is easy to understand. What’s harder is ensuring the correctness of your choice, and that’s where a practical method for making optimal decisions truly matters.

Here’s the methodology:

In marketing, there’s a well-known tool called SWOT analysis. But honestly, only the concept is useful here.

I’m just going to explain how to use it, without further elaboration.

(This differs from what marketing textbooks say, but that’s fine—I’m not certified in marketing, so I’m going with my own understanding.)

The tool uses the first letters of English words, roughly translating to four dimensions: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Strengths and weaknesses are assessed from your own perspective. For example, if your spoken English is strong, that’s your strength—it’s not an opportunity. Simply put, strengths and weaknesses are tools for self-analysis.

Opportunities and threats, on the other hand, are analyzed based on the impact they have on you. For instance, a startup offering you stock options is an opportunity because it affects your interests.

Once you’ve established these reference dimensions, lay out your options and enumerate their potential impacts—both opportunities and threats.

The real key is listing and quantifying:

List all the opportunities (benefits) and threats (drawbacks) you can think of that might affect you. Ideally, find comparable factors across your options to build a consistent framework. Assign weights to each factor based on how important it is to you (importance = weight), then quantify and compare. That sounds abstract, so here’s an example:

Suppose you’re evaluating job offers based on three factors: salary, benefits, and vacation time. The winning factor in each category gets a score of 1. If salary matters most to you, assign it a weight of 0.5; vacation time is also important, so 0.3; benefits get 0.2 (the weights add up to 1). That’s how you force a quantitative comparison.

If Company A wins on salary, its final score is 1 × 0.5 = 0.5.

If Company B wins on both salary and vacation, its score is 1 × 0.2 = 0.2.

If Company C only wins on benefits, its score is 1 × 0.3 = 0.3.

For a bold approach, stop here—the optimal choice is already clear.

For the cautious, only consider the threat scores using the same method. The higher the threat score, the less attractive the option. Pick the one with the lowest threat score for a safer bet.

For a balanced approach, score both opportunities and threats: assign 1 for winning factors and 0 for losing ones. Give opportunity weights a sum of 1 and threat weights a sum of -1, then add everything up.

Now, strengths and weaknesses are primarily useful for comparing yourself to peers. For example, if three candidates are competing for the same job, this method helps you quantitatively assess your relative capabilities. After all, in a social world where people interact, choices are always mutual—never one-sided.

So this quantification method is specifically designed for life’s big decisions. (And never forget the baseline option that rarely appears on the test sheet: staying put, doing nothing, refusing to choose. Ha.)

First, establish a standardized list of dimensions, such as opportunities and threats (usually just two: pros and cons). Then identify the specific factors within each dimension that matter to you, assign psychological weights to those factors (with the total adding up to a fixed value, like 1), score the winning option in each factor as 1, and finally do the math to get your overall score.

Yep, that’s my Scientific Choice Method.