Need some help with area name

I was trying to brainstorm different area names and spent several days working on this. Taking inspiration from the App Store, I end up with these:

  • Utilities (similar to System :v)
  • Productivity & Finance
  • Business
  • Education
  • Information & Reading
  • Creativity
  • Entertainment
  • Health & Fitness
  • Shopping & Food
  • Social
  • Travel

But there is a problem. The number of area here is 11 :sob:. How to reduce to 10? I need some ideas.

I think you can consider how you approach these areas and then likely combine from there. For instance, social & travel might go together or social & food could go together and maybe shopping & entertainment go together. I also don’t know that I would have Utilities/System as well as Productivity & Finance. In my mind, a lot of those things go together in an admin category.
Good luck

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Time to crack out a mind map! There are plenty free online, and my favourite MindNode is free for Mac (with a paid-features option, but the free version is all you need).

Put all those things in there, then start putting things together that feel together. Like @karamon says, social, travel, and shopping & food all feel like natural friends.

Do this a couple of times to see what works. Don’t just settle on the first version.


What we’ve found as we do Lucy’s system, and then putting together a new standard for 10-19 Life admin that we’ll be releasing, is that you need to fight the tendency to choose really short names.

Longer names are obviously more descriptive. And they can be more fun! So just use all the letters, go crazy.

Here’s a sneak peek so you get the idea. Look at those category names! Looong. :slight_smile:

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Hi Johnny

What do you mean by releasing here? Is it something new in the workbook or the workshop?

How is it going @minjualt001 ? I’m a bit late in seeing this, but to expand on the earlier replies: from what you write it seems like you’re working top down (thinking of the area names first); have you also tried bottom up? trying to group categories together and seeing what groups emerge.

I have a tendency to try to think of concise names that capture a large area, but I’ve come to embrace the approach @johnnydecimal mentions, to create groups that feel natural, no matter how wide their scope, and then make however long a name is needed even if it sounds awkward.

You could also try throwing a completely different organising principle at it, like I did when I asked myself what physical locations of daily life things happen in (see my post here.

Long-term plan is to release it as a template that you can buy. But we’re always happy to look after family (that’s you), so if I forget to send a version to workbook/shop subscribers, hit me up. :slight_smile:

Give us a couple of weeks, still working on it.

Thank you.