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Exploring the rated day, the ownership mentality, and authenticity
Logan
April 03, 2025
In partnership with
Exploring the rules, doing one thing well, and patterns
Happy Thursday! Thanks for reading Intentional Dollar — where we look at old money ideas through a new perspective.
What’s inside?
One idea to experiment with
Two quotes from others
Three questions to dig deeper
Four lines of poetry for the point
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.
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One idea to experiment with:
The Rated Day:
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing today, whatever you have done, you are here, you are reading these words right now.
How’s your day?
No really, how’s your day?
We’re asked this question dozens of times daily, yet we respond the same: “good,” “it’s fine,” “meh,” “great,” “could be better” each tired time.
We neatly and vaguely package our statements into standardized, socially acceptable boxes. We call it small talk. And even when we do expand upon our qualitative responses, we miss the golden opportunity that a quantitative rating would provide.
Our tiered rating systems are broken. These qualitative systems leave us in a void of vagueness; our language, our titles, our words have failed us.
When your day is distilled to good, bad, great, or terrible, you don’t have a tangible clarity to improve or even describe the day. And sure, we don’t want to get into all the details with the coworker passing by, but we’ve become so conditioned to these responses that they’ve imprisoned us to the conditions that have created them.
Instead of asking how you’re doing, or how someone’s day is, ask this: how would you rate your day on a 10 scale?
It’s a small difference. Yet, it’s specific enough to get you or the receiver of your question out of the matrix and thinking. Wheels turn.
By scoring the day you unlock quantitative ticks, rabbit holes, and questions to explore. Today is a 6/10, why isn’t it a 4/10? What would make it a 7/10? Was there a tangible event that pulled it from a 8 to a 6?
These individual rating notches teach us about discovering the things we enjoy and the thieves of energy.
Oh, doing the hour walk really moved the needle from a 6-8, I should incorporate that into a daily lunch walk.
That morning workout with a friend was a great way to start the day, I think that alone is worth some points.
Morning traffic drives me nuts, what if I left earlier or later?
Inversion applies here as well: add the good, remove the bad.
This is not to say you can engineer perpetual 10/10 days. However, you can do more of the things you want within the confines of your current structures. And that’s what money is for anyway.
But money is not long-term effective when used to increase material happiness. Think about how quickly we become familiar with the once coveted house or car. By assuming a permanent increase in day satisfaction from a material purchase, we completely discount the feeling of familiarity to come. It appears that a brand new custom home will build a baseline 7/10 for the day, but we forget that we still get bored in big new homes, we still bicker in big new homes, we still need a sense of meaning in big new homes.
A good life is the culmination of a bunch of little ingredients that create that energetic buzzing feeling.
Use the rated day to draw out the non-material activities that are frequent associates with that buzzing feeling. That’s what we’re after.
what would you rate your day on a 10 scale?
Two quotes on the ownership mentality:
Employees at work, employees of our lives. Switching to the ownership mindset alters our perception of action: we take control, exercise agency, make quality long-term decisions – because we own the outcomes.
“Your life must be a progression towards ownership - first mentally of your independence, and then physically of your work, owning what you produce.”
“The basic principle which I believe has contributed more than any other to the building of our business as it is today, is the ownership of our company by the people employed in it.”
Three questions on authenticity:
What avenues in my life draw out my true authenticity?
Are my financial resources aimed at enhancing this authenticity?
Can I see the inauthenticity in others, if so what are these implications for me?
Which question stuck with you? Questions like these are spotlights for the mind. Reply to this email and let me know which one shined light on a previously dark cave.
Four lines of poetry for the point:
A rating system, a way to measure
Quality days, days of pleasure
When time hums in blissful energetic states
The equanimous buzz of your rated day awaits
Contact Me:
Content ideas, questions? Reply to this email or reach out to me at [email protected]
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. These weekly posts represent my simple thoughts, a few quotes, and some questions — for educational purposes only.
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