Ask AltoTRY · 10 MIN
Ordinary Tuesday
TAIU
See what living there would actually look like on a normal Tuesday.
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Tool 73 · Develop yourself
What kind of place actually fits the life you want to live?
A guided 20 to 25 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Choose the life first, then the postcode.
Are you choosing a place, or choosing the life you imagine you'll have there?
Describe the Tuesday, not the view.
Some dissatisfaction moves house with you.
What you'll look at
- 01Why now
- 02The ordinary Tuesday
- 03Real constraints
- 04What a move would fix
A note from Mark
I've lived and worked in very different places and I've learned how easy it is to fall in love with the idea of somewhere.
The better question is usually much more ordinary.
What does a normal week look like there?
Who is around you? Where do you work? How much does the life cost? What becomes easier? What becomes harder?
I want to choose the life first and let the location follow.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
The life first
02
Real constraints
03
What a move fixes
04
The next test
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01Why this is live now
- 02The life you are actually choosing
- 03What must come with you
- 04Who matters geographically
- 05The real constraints
- 06What you are hoping the move will fix
- 07Which of those could change without moving
- 08The ordinary tuesday
- 09The rival reading
- 10What deserves protecting
- 11What evidence you still need
- 12Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
At the end, the conversation asks how Family and belonging feels for you right now, in your own words. It also asks what, if anything, would feel different. Nothing changes on your tree unless you say it changes.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- How you described it
- What would feel different
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
The life you are actually choosing.
02 · Test it
Spend a normal weekday there, including the commute and the food shop.
See more ↓
What I would do
- 01
Describe the ordinary week before naming any place.
- 02
Write down the constraints that are actually fixed.
- 03
Test each hoped for fix against whether it needs a move at all.
- 04
Visit on a normal weekday, not a good weekend.
- 05
Collect the evidence you are still missing before deciding.
Test it
- 01
What does an ordinary Tuesday look like there?
- 02
What are you hoping the move will fix?
- 03
Which of those could change without moving?
The alternative
The usual reading is that the place is the problem. Often the dissatisfaction belongs to the work, the housing, the cost or a thin social life, and all of those can follow somebody to a new postcode. The reverse also happens. Somebody keeps adjusting inside a place that cannot supply the work, the space or the people they need, and location is genuinely the constraint.
Think about this
- Why the question is live now.
- What you want daily life to be different from today.
- Which parts of your current life must come with you.
- Who matters geographically.
- What you are hoping a new place will fix.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Want to go further?
Recommended by the TAIU community
What helped you?
If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.
We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.
Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
Where do I belong?
If the question is belonging rather than location
Further thinking
Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert
Defining Place Attachment
Leila Scannell and Robert Gifford
Bowling Alone
Robert Putnam
See the thinking ↓
Book
Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert
Gilbert's subject is how badly we predict our own future feelings. We imagine the highlights of a life we do not have and quietly leave out the Tuesday mornings. That is directly useful when a desire keeps returning: it lets you ask whether you want the life attached to the thing, or one missing ingredient inside it, without dismissing the desire as a fantasy.
Article
Defining Place Attachment
Leila Scannell and Robert Gifford
A clear framework for the attachment people feel to places, useful when belonging is geographic rather than social.
Book
Bowling Alone
Robert Putnam
Putnam's account of the decline of associational life is contested and largely American, and it still changes how you count your own contribution. Membership, attendance and turning up repeatedly for something small are treated here as real civic goods rather than as lesser versions of writing a cheque.
Book
The Paradox of Choice
Barry Schwartz
Schwartz separates maximisers, who need to be sure they have the best available option, from satisficers, who stop once something is good enough. The uncomfortable finding is that maximisers tend to end up with objectively better outcomes and feel worse about them, because every choice carries the shadow of the one they did not take.
Article
How Many Hours Does It Take to Make a Friend?
Jeffrey Hall
Hall put numbers on friendship: roughly fifty hours to a casual friend, considerably more to a close one. It explains why adult friendship feels hard rather than impossible.