The Design Criteria
Five consistent criteria. Context-specific measures.
Money, Health, Joy, Time, and Sustainability help me judge whether the systems and decisions I’m building work for the life they are supposed to support.
No universal score. No invented relevance.
The five criteria
Money
Financial resources, costs, savings, income, assets, risk, and whether the financial side of the solution works.
Health
Physical and mental capacity, treatment, recovery, function, stability, and whether the solution protects the health infrastructure that makes the rest of life possible.
Joy
Meaning, enjoyment, relationships, experiences, connection, fulfillment, and whether the result supports a life I want to live.
Time
Clock time, cognitive bandwidth, effort, attention, recovery time, flexibility, and whether the use of time works for the life I want.
Sustainability
Whether the larger arrangement is durable, maintainable, resilient, and compatible with real life over time.
The problem comes first. The criteria help test the answer.
- Start with the real problem and identify only the criteria that materially apply.
- Define what success looks like using problem-specific measures.
- Separate expectations from observed results.
- Report the relevant evidence and conclusion. There is no mandatory formula or verdict.
Health can constrain the answer. Joy keeps the point of the answer in view.
If a choice materially damages the health and capacity system that makes the rest of life possible, a financial or efficiency gain does not make it a successful solution.
Optimization is not the destination. Living is the point.
Explore the WorkCompleted Work Example
Did moving my savings to a high-yield savings account make a meaningful difference?
Result: More than $500 in interest in 2025 after under one hour of setup, versus under $10 in each of 2022–2024.
Relevant Design Criteria: Money — $500+ interest in 2025. Time — under one hour, one time.
Conclusion: Keep the higher-yield setup. Money and Time materially affected this decision; the other criteria did not.
Tool used: EverBank Performance Savings