Evaluate Your Life Just in 15 Minutes
A simple exercise which can make your life more balanced.
Once every few years, I like to do a simple exercise to evaluate how my life is going. It takes only 15 minutes to do. The exercise aims to show which areas of your life are going well and on which aspects you should improve on to be more satisfied with your life.
I’ve shared a few of my own examples and graphs below to help you see how it works. In the end, you can also find what to do with the results after the analysis.
Why do we need this?
People often tell you to plan your life, make goals, and achieve them. Sounds easy, but in most cases, it never works as expected. How do you start planning? It’s hard to do without knowing at what life stage you are currently in. That’s why it’s important to self-reflect and see a clear picture of how your life is going.
Since childhood, parents and teachers are the ones planning for you, when to wake up, what to eat, how to spend your spare time, etc. It can continue later on in college or in private life with partners planning instead of you. Some people could spend their entire lives without understanding what is important for themselves rather than somebody else.
To understand what matters to you, it doesn’t take much but spending some time reflecting and being honest. For better and quicker results, I like to use the technique called Wheel of Life which helps me to visualize my priorities in life and see what is still lacking.
How to create your Wheel of life?
It’s a simple but powerful method. You can draw it with a pen and paper or find an online source with available ready templates. You can also use the image below and add text in Word.
Step 1: Print or draw a circle and divide it into 8 equal sections. Mark each with intervals from 1 to 10, see the example below.
Printing will make it easier, but if you decide to draw it by yourself — don’t worry too much about the perfect shapes and measurements. The next steps are more important.
Step 2: Think about the 8 most important areas of your life. Write one of them at the bottom of each section. Here’re a few examples.
- Health
- Family/Parents/Kids
- Love/Partner
- Career/Work/Business
- Money/Finances
- Community/Social life
- Friends
- Self-development
- Education
- Sport
- Nutrition
- Hobby/Entertainment/Relaxation
- Spirituality
- Traveling
It can be anything you deeply care about. Come up with your own examples.
Step 3: Evaluate your personal satisfaction in each area from 1 to 10, where 1=“Not at all satisfied”, 10=“Very Satisfied”. Point it on the chart. It’s crucial, to be honest with yourself here.
Step 4: Take a pen/pencil/marker of a different color and connect all the points as shown below.
This is how my wheel of life looked 6 years ago when I just started to study at university.
How to analyze your result?
“A balanced wheel gives you a smooth ride.
A balanced life gives you the pleasures of life.An unbalanced wheel gives you a rough ride.
An unbalanced life gives you griefs in life.”
― Dilan De Silva
In case someone has the highest level of satisfaction in all areas, then that’ll be one big perfect circle. Pretty impossible to achieve a perfect one but the bigger and rounder your inner circle is, the more balanced and happier you’ll be. The combination of those lines which you have as a result is your “wheel” on which you ride in life.
How to work with your result?
This is the end of the exercise and it should take you around 15 minutes overall. As a post-analysis, you can create a short plan for action to help you stay motivated.
Write down all the 8 areas and think of how you can improve them. Concentrate on the ones with the lowest scores. You don’t need to create a super detailed plan — put some ideas on a piece of paper, the first things that come to mind.
Years ago when I did the exercise, I wasn’t satisfied with my family situation because I studied abroad and could see my parents only once in a few years. That’s what I wrote as the initial steps of improving it.
- To send a parcel (with sweets and souvenirs)
- To plan trip back to my home
I couldn’t even imagine how happy my family would be after receiving the package. Six years later, it has now turned into a small tradition to send them a nice package with surprises from time to time.
For health, I added swimming more often, reducing sugar from my diet, and booking a medical check as soon as possible. You get the idea.
You’re the one knowing which areas of life you should be working on. However, you won’t be able to improve everything at once. Try to focus on one or two things at a time for more efficient results and to avoid burnout.
How my wheel has changed
Recently I made the exercise again. In comparison to six years ago, my “wheel” is significantly better, but there are still some aspects I want to develop further. The wheel could also shrink in one area and skyrocket in another, it also depends on our priorities. It’s not a steady curve that goes up and up, but a weirdly shaped wheel, just like our life.
Small tips:
- Keep the list of initial ideas of how to improve and add more with time
- Put some action points on your desk or wall to remind you and to stay motivated
- Use the technique regularly enough to evaluate the differences: could be once in three months, a year, or two years. Up to you.
- Don’t worry if your wheel is not ideal. Nobody is perfect. Assess your abilities and set attainable goals. That’s it.
- As Naeem Callaway said: “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life”.
Learn to be thankful and to enjoy any, even the smallest success. Those small achievements are already the small steps that keep you moving forward.
