Skip to content

How Do You Decide What's Good for You?

Three separate decisions get made every time somebody deals with their own health, and people who agree about one of them often disagree about the other two: how early you want a thing looked at, whose judgment you want it looked at by, and whether the goal is to be free of problems or to be better than that.

Thirty-six statements, about six minutes, and a point inside a cube. Answer for what you would choose, not for what has already been decided for you — and note that none of this is medical advice or a judgment about how anyone handles any of it.

36 questions

Answered 0 of 36

  1. 1 Once something is fixed, I want to stop thinking about it.
  2. 2 I have decided against a test that was offered to me.
  3. 3 Every test has a cost, and the cost is not only the test.
  4. 4 Guidelines are written for a population, and I am not a population.
  5. 5 I have stopped taking something because I could not tell it was doing anything.
  6. 6 I keep an eye on measurements about myself so that a change would show up.
  7. 7 I want to understand the reasoning before I go along with it.
  8. 8 I would rather leave a working system alone than try to improve it.
  9. 9 I would rather give a body time before doing anything about it.
  10. 10 I would rather act on something small than watch it.
  11. 11 What a body can do at forty is more a matter of choices than of years.
  12. 12 Waiting to see what happens is how small things become large ones.
  13. 13 I would rather be treated according to what usually works than according to what I have concluded.
  14. 14 Health is the absence of something wrong rather than a thing to accumulate.
  15. 15 When the advice is settled, I follow it and stop reading.
  16. 16 Being as well as most people is not as well as I want to be.
  17. 17 A test I did not need is a better outcome than a problem I missed.
  18. 18 I would take something that made an ordinary day better, not only something that fixed a problem.
  19. 19 Looking for problems turns up things that would not have mattered.
  20. 20 Consensus is slow because it is careful, and I would rather have careful.
  21. 21 There is a lot of distance between not being ill and being in good shape, and it is worth crossing.
  22. 22 Somebody who has seen a thousand of these knows something I do not from seeing one.
  23. 23 I have questioned something a clinician told me.
  24. 24 I take up the checks that are offered at my age.
  25. 25 I would rather aim past where I started than back at it.
  26. 26 Much of what gets treated would have settled without treating it.
  27. 27 I would rather live with a small uncertainty than start a process I cannot stop.
  28. 28 Second-guessing a professional mostly makes things worse.
  29. 29 I read up on something before I take somebody's word for what to do about it.
  30. 30 Chasing improvements past the point of being well is a way of finding new things to worry about.
  31. 31 Normal is a perfectly good target.
  32. 32 When I am given something to take, I look up what it does.
  33. 33 I would trust my own reading over a recommendation I did not find convincing.
  34. 34 Getting older is a set of problems, and some of them have answers.
  35. 35 The person who trained for a decade knows more than I will find in an evening.
  36. 36 I would rather know about something early, even if it turns out to be nothing.