Anything else · Universal Upgrade Process
The Italian course, the spare room and the friend you keep meaning to ring are not three problems. They are one leak, seen from three sides.
Goals that look unrelated stall at the same point: the next action is vague enough to postpone. That is a fault in a process, and a process can be measured. Twenty-two questions. About six minutes. Nothing to pay.
The sixth page
Why we are writing to you about everything else
Five of our six pages are about one department of life. This is the sixth, for the reader whose list fits no department and for the reader who has not decided what to upgrade first.
The list goes something like this. Learn some Italian. Clear the spare room. Ring the friend you have not spoken to since the wedding. Walk before breakfast. Settle the question of the move. Take the guitar out of the cupboard.
Six unrelated goals, you might say. We have noticed that they stall at the same point.
Look at the item that has been there longest. Its next action is vague enough to postpone. “Sort out the spare room” cannot be done on a Tuesday evening. “Carry two boxes of books to the car” can. The first is a wish; the second is a step; the gap between them is where lists go to die.
That gap is a fault in a process, not in a person. Every improvement, to a room, a language or a friendship, runs the same five steps: Baseline, Desires, Options, Decisions and Implementation. The steps do not care what the topic is.
Which is the useful part. A person who skips the Baseline in the spare room skips it in the Italian too, and in the move. The leak travels with its owner. Mend it once and the mending goes everywhere.
Upgrade IQ measures that process. Twenty-two questions, about six minutes, no charge, and no need to have chosen a topic. The general assessment asks how you run the five steps in life as a whole, and names the one where your effort goes to waste.
We make no promise about your Italian; we have never seen your spare room. We know the process, and can show you where yours leaks. The rest is yours to do, and rather more likely to get done.
The framework
The five steps, as they happen in a small upgrade
Every improvement, to a language, a room, a habit or a friendship, runs through these five steps. Here is what a leak looks like at each.
- 01
Baseline
Where you actually are, measured rather than remembered. How many words of Italian do you know today? How many mornings did you walk last month? Small upgrades skip this step; measuring a small thing feels absurd. The leak: a plan built on a guess, and a guess that flatters.
- 02
Desires
What you actually want, ranked, and admitted to. Do you want to speak Italian, or to be the kind of person who does? Do you want the spare room clear, or a room to work in? The leak: a goal borrowed from someone else’s list and pursued without appetite.
- 03
Options
The real alternatives, honestly priced. An evening class, an app, a fortnight in Bologna, a neighbour who will talk to you for the price of lunch. Most people consider one option, then consider whether to do it. The leak: a single course of action, adopted because it arrived first.
- 04
Decisions
A commitment made by criteria rather than mood. A small upgrade is decided on Sunday evening and un-decided on Monday morning, because nothing was written down. Set the test in advance and let it decide. The leak: a resolution made every Sunday and never once carried into Monday.
- 05
Implementation
Execution that is still happening in ninety days. The guitar comes out of the cupboard for a fortnight; the walk survives until the first wet week. The effort is real, and the fault is seldom here. The leak: more willpower spent on a plan that was never quite made.
What we have noticed
Nine things we have noticed about people who improve at anything
We have watched many people try to improve small, ordinary things. Those who succeed have no more time or discipline than the rest; they have habits, and the habits are dull enough to copy.
- They count the thing before they change it. A person who wants to walk more first finds out how much she walks now: a week of counting, no improving. That number is a Baseline, and most lists never get one.
- They keep the list short. Six upgrades at once is an elegant way of doing none. They run one at a time; the others wait on paper, where waiting is cheap, not in the head, where it is dear.
- They ask what the wish is for. The spare room: for a desk, for guests, or for the pleasure of an empty room? Until the question is asked, the room is being cleared for nobody in particular.
- They price the alternatives in evenings. An hour a week for a year is fifty-two evenings, which is a great many evenings. They know the price before they choose, and are not ashamed to choose the cheap one.
- They set the test before they decide. “If I have not opened the app by Friday, I cancel it and book the class.” The criterion is written down in advance and does the deciding; nothing has to be argued twice.
- They make the next step small enough to see. Not “learn Italian” but “ten words before the kettle boils”. A step you can watch yourself take is one you can know you took. Vagueness feeds postponement; they starve it.
- They pick a day, not a mood. The old friend is rung on Thursday at seven, not “when things calm down”. Things do not calm down. A date in the diary is a decision; an intention in the head is a hope with a good vocabulary.
- They expect the dull middle. Week three of anything is dull: the novelty has gone, the benefit has not arrived, and this is when most guitars go back in the cupboard. They plan for the dip.
- They finish or they cancel. No goal is carried for three years in a state of meaning to. It gets a date or it gets crossed off, without ceremony. Crossing off is also an upgrade, and often the one that frees the others.
None of this asks for a new character or a new year. It asks you to know which of the five steps you skip, and that is what the assessment is for.
A case history
The pattern hiding in plain sight
The goals on his list looked unrelated. Learn a language. Clear the spare room. Ring an old friend. Three departments of life, three kinds of guilt, no obvious thread.
He found the thread one morning, with a notebook. Each goal had stalled at the same point: the next action was vague enough to postpone. “Do some Italian” could be put off indefinitely; so could “sort the room” and “get in touch”. None could be finished before lunch, so none was begun.
Once the pattern was visible, the fix travelled. He wrote down the smallest step he could observe himself taking: ten words, one box, one message. He decided when each would happen. Then he watched what actually followed, and adjusted.
The leaking step was not Implementation, though that is where the guilt lived. It was Decisions: nothing had been committed to precisely enough to be kept or broken. Once the decision was real, the doing had something to hold on to.
We tell this story because it is ordinary. Most lists leak at one step, and it is the same step for every item on them.
Mr. Upgrade’s strategies are invariably creative and often ingenious.
Professor Thomas Y. Levin · Princeton University
The instrument
What the assessment measures, and what it does not
The assessment measures how you run the five steps. It puts 22 statements to you: whether you check where you stand before starting, whether you rank what you want, whether you cost the alternatives, how you commit, and what has become of your plans by the ninetieth day. You say how true each is of you, on a five-point scale from “Never true of me” to “Consistently true”. There are no right answers, and no score appears while you answer, so there is nothing to steer towards.
Your result arrives by email. It gives you a Raw Upgrade IQ: what your abilities would add up to if the steps stood alone. An Effective Upgrade IQ: what survives once a weak step has taxed every step downstream, which is the real number. A Rework Tax: the share of your effort spent redoing work spoiled further up. A Baseline Clarity reading. Your weakest step, which is the leak. And your strongest, which is all the share card shows.
Now the admissions.
It does not know what is on your list, and cannot tell you whether to do the Italian or the spare room first. Nor does it measure talent, knowledge, health, money or luck: a person can run the five steps beautifully and still be defeated by a bad knee.
It does not measure willpower, and we would gently suggest you stop measuring yours. People who believe they lack discipline are, in our experience, often leaking at Decisions, a step that asks for none.
It cannot see past your answers. Answer as the person you would like to be and you will get a score to match. Answer as you are on a wet Tuesday and you will get something useful.
It is a reading, not a sentence. Each result is timestamped so you can take it again in a season and lay the two side by side. The difference is the number we care about most.
Before you begin
Questions people ask before they begin
I have not decided what to upgrade first. Should I wait?
No. This is the page for people who have not decided. The general assessment measures how you run the five steps whatever the topic, and knowing your leak makes the choosing easier.
When should I choose one of the other five pages instead?
When your whole list belongs to one department. If every item is about work, take the Career version: the same assessment, taken with that department in mind. If the list is mixed, or there is none yet, take this one.
Does it take longer if my list is long?
No. Twenty-two questions and about six minutes, however long the list. The assessment is about you, not the list.
What happens to my email address?
We use it once, to send your result. There is no phone number to give and no series of follow-ups. Your result is yours alone; should you share the card, it shows nothing but your strongest step.
Is there a catch?
There is a paid Practitioner tier, which you will see once, after your result, and are free to ignore. The assessment costs nothing, and will go on costing nothing.
Free · 22 questions · About six minutes
Find the step where your list leaks. Then take one thing off it.
You do not need to have chosen between the Italian and the spare room. You need to know which of the five steps you skip, because you skip it in both. Six minutes will name it.
P.S. If the spare room has waited three years, it can wait six minutes more. Take the assessment first; you will know which step to begin the room with.
One email to send your result. No phone number, no drip campaign.