What is Priority Number 4?
Explore the world.
Around New Years I decided I wanted to be more conscious about living my life with intention. But intention determined by what? Priorities.
It started with 3, then upon reflection I realized something was missing. There was nothing to encourage acting on my many, diverse interests — housing, urban planning, cities, architecture, real estate, public health, industrial hemp, rural areas, bikes, travel, etc. I needed to unify all this in a limitless way. A framework with which to evaluate actions and choices.
Explore the world: Near and far. Physical and ideological.
The pursuit of a life with this in mind is the purpose of this blog. If you also prioritize exploring the world, follow along with me, share your experiences and lets learn from each other.
What about Priorities Number 1-3?
They did not excite me enough to start a new social media platform. Yet are essential to living the life I want.
Priority Number 1 — My Health Without it, nothing else matters.
Priority Number 2 — Forming and Maintaining Social Connections Sharing life’s experiences with others makes them memorable and meaningful.
Priority Number 3 — Financial Independence From Work I Don’t Want to Do Access to wealth and income allows me to pursue the other 3 Priorities.
Later posts will delve into each of these further, so stay tuned.
Why Make this Public?
In the fall of 2018, I was an architecture student working on my thesis. To help stay focused and waste less time, a friend and I decided to quit social media. At that time, it meant Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook.
Prior to this decision, I had already reduced Instagram posts to only when I had a blog post to go along with it. That website is long gone but the idea that I was “de-valuing” information by scrolling through it for a second at a time has stuck with me. The blog posts were a way to redirect attention of a broad audience to a media where I could explore a topic with sufficient depth. It was fun for a while to have a creative outlet too.
I’ve never re-downloaded Snapchat. I did recently start an Instagram for work, although it’s a slippery slope into old, bad habits. And I’ll probably have a Facebook account as long as my Mom lives, or the platform exists, to be able to stay in touch via a family group chat even though I never post or comment.
That was my problem with all these platforms: I was only a consumer and not a creator.
That ends with this blog.
Even if very few people read it, I want an outlet to share what I’ve learned. To give back. Something that people who are really interested can find and interact with in as healthy of an online environment as possible. If a line or a photo or an idea resonates with you, or you have a question about something — post a comment — that’s why I’ve made this information public.
What kind of content will you post?
All sorts of things and whatever inspires me enough to document then share it. Lately I’ve gone down a deep rabbit hole on bike travel, upgrading my bike, researching bike tours (near and far). As these thoughts solidify into actions or clear ideas, I will post them. But there will also be days when all I post is a thoughtful photo. Then different days might be rants about housing or related topics. All as means of me living with intention according to priorities.
Isn’t some of this content redundant?
Maybe, but I don’t care. I’ve learned a lot from others over the years and this is a way for me to take that information and show others how I interpret it and acted upon it. My hope is that it provides enough value for you to keep reading though.
Considerations for the name
When the idea of “Priority Number 4” as a way to combine a lot into a cohesive “brand”, I was concerned that it would be too similar to other names. Chanel perfumes came to mind first. Fortunately, Chanel has yet to release a No. 4 because, as far as I could tell, they were concerned about the similarity of the words “four” and “death” in some cultures. So I’m safe there. Some EMS services also use a priority ranking system to categorize calls. Fortunately, four is the least severe and most routine. Again, I think I’m safe there as well.
