Feelings cannot be reduced to numbers, and there are important limitations in the use of a "worksheet" as an aid in evaluating choices and avoidances. However it may be helpful to some people to visualize an illustration of the weighing process that some term the "hedonic calculus." Here is a draft example for your consideration and comment. Scores included here are of course fictional and for example only. A version of the spreadsheet in xlsx format is attached for downloading.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The point of "As a practical matter the two goals are not the same" is to emphasize this distinction:
If one's overriding goal were truly minimizing the number of painful experiences in life, then one would never choose any activity (getting a shot from a doctor; going to the gym; fighting to protect oneself) which involved any element of pain whatsoever.
The true goal is not avoiding pain at all cost, but maximum net pleasure, which is why Epicurus described the reasoning this way:
And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but will often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is should be chosen, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these matters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good.
And it is important to emphasize the limitation stated in the heading: There Are No Absolute Scores, and Nature Provides No Authority Higher Than Your Own Feelings To Assign A Relative Score To Each Item
Feelings cannot be reduced to numbers. A Worksheet can only serve as a primitive method of conceptualizing the relationships between them for our own personal reflection. There is no target maximum number of "maximum net pleasure" applicable to everyone. To the extent that thinking about feelings in terms of numbers is helpful at all, it is only to the extent that ranking their values to us might be of some help in organizing our activities to emphasize the ones that will in the end bring us the largest net benefit.
I don't think it really matters if it is subjective or not it does make us think and feel differently when we write it down on paper according to research by David d. Burns M.D. Like when you feel depressed you can write down all the good things that happen that day because we have a tendency to ignore the positive. If I am interpreting subjective correctly in your posts on the other post.
What software did you use to make that spreadsheet? I like how you changed it up so it fits on a printed piece of paper.
