The most important decision in your life: where to live — Notion/Coda living decision making template

May 6

It is a common, shared truth in the productivity/life optimization ecosystem that you are (become) the average of the people you spend the most time with at any stage in your life. You may have the capacity and luck of choosing where to live once you detach from your family of origin. The default option is to stay around your family of origin, in the same city/town/area. An alternative is to search for a (better?) location where you will establish yourself. The first option (staying in the area where you grew up) may be associated with comfort and a tight existing community, depending on your circumstances. The second option (searching for a new living location) may feel uncomfortable, exciting, and scary.

Either way, where you live has a significant impact on the quality of your life, and on who your “five people” are. According to computer scientist and author Cal Newport, deciding where to live is one of the most important decisions in your life. It can make a difference in your happiness and life satisfaction levels because the environment where you find yourself is pivotal in your journey to becoming a person. This discourse has become relevantly prominent in these last few years, when a shift in cultural norms around work has been taking place, and many knowledge workers can also conduct their duties remotely (i.e., not in person at the office).

This novel situation has given birth to the concept of lifestyle-centered career planning (by Cal Newport), according to which you may choose your career based on the lifestyle you intend to have. You can only do so once you have accumulated enough career capital (Newport, 2020). Career capital is your leverage in the domain of work. You gain leverage over time by consistently delivering high-quality, precise work on time and with attention to detail. When you do this for long enough, others empower you to take more responsibility. Responsibility gives you more career capital, which provides you with more leverage and self-efficacy in your career development and life in general. Once you have played this game for a few years, you accumulate career capital, which can unlock more options for your lifestyle and career path.

At some point down the road, you will face the decision of where to live. When intending to live a deep life (Newport, 2022), intention matters in every sphere of existence. Deciding where to live can then become a quest for optimizing the value of the key pillars for a deep life (as explained in this post): constitution, community, craft, and contemplation. The environment where you live influences those variables in your life. As Newport suggests in this podcast episode, making a decision where to live can be a by-product of applying a “sum” function of these criteria for each location considered:

Community and family
Non-professional activity opportunities
Work opportunities
People's attitude (how people behave and what’s the environment like)
Cost of living

You can score each variable on a scale from 1 to 5, and then sum the results for each location. You can then rank order each possible location, and this process can aid you in consciously shaping your life instead of being shaped by your current circumstances. As Newport underlines in the podcast episode, it is crucial to avoid applying a “max” function, because maximizing for a few criteria above can jeopardize a well-rounded, deep life. For example, when scoring San Diego, California, you may give a 5 (out of 5) to “Non-professional activity opportunities” because you love surfing and you know you could surf every day in San Diego.

But all the other criteria are average or below average for you. So, you may be tricked into thinking that since you love surfing and San Diego is perfect for that, you need to choose San Diego, even if you are compromising for the other criteria. In truth, according to Newport’s advice, this is fallacious thinking, as surfing is only one small part of your existence, and the point is not to maximize that activity at the expense of feeling miserable throughout the rest of the day when you are not surfing.

There are no perfect locations either. And the scores you give to one location may also vary depending on the current season of your life because you are a constantly evolving, changing organism. As a consequence, remaining open to rethinking your living decision is also a key aspect of living a deep, intentional existence. You may re-evaluate your living location every few years and check how you are feeling and doing about it. Then remain on your current bus if the facts are friendly, or stop at the next bus station, ready to find and catch the next right wave to ride.