What are Aspects of Life?
We identify so strongly with some people in our lives such as mentors, parents, children, spouses that they sometimes become our whole world or we only see ourselves through them. It is no wonder we become lost or our whole world collapses when we lose someone so significant.
It is a healthy,rewarding and a very simple exercise to map out your Aspects of Life and understand how you are dividing your life. You may even decide that it is time to spend more time in another area.
Here are the major areas of those Aspects of Life and I have included a couple of topics that fall under those major areas just to get you going. You can make up your own lists.
- Relationships – Family, friends, colleagues, mentors
- Health – fitness, medical, well-being
- Spiritual – religion, culture, beliefs, meditation, personal development
- Recreation – hobbies, sports, activities, travel, charity, interests
- Financial – income, investment, budget
- Work – career, jobs
- Education – study, school, learning, personal development
- Home – living, house, location, property,renovations,building
Step-by-Step Guide
(there are examples at the end of this guide)
- make notes about yourself under each topic. Write as much as you like. Do a complete brain dump or just write down what you did today under each topic.
- prioritise each topic by it’s importance to you (“1” being most important).
- time – this is optional but you might want to see just how much “quality” time you allocate to certain areas. Time is not necessarily a deciding factor because I spend 13hours away from home each day for the purpose of work and I spend 1.5hrs per day for health yet health is a number one priority on my list. However, it can help you put some things into perspective such as these examples: You might watch TV for 2 hrs and study for 30mins. You see how that could highlight an area that needs changing or walk the dog for an hour and spend 10mins with your child and no time with your spouse.
- if you choose to, you might want to make up some graphs so you can visualise these aspects and recognise what’s dominant and what’s not. You can draw them freehand or use software. Excel has a basic graphing tool. I included one below just to demonstrate the visual effect.
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF A TYPICAL WEEK:
description (priority- area) time slice of 100%
- Normal work week ( 3 – work) 40%
- Went for Bushwalk with family( 2- family & 4- recreation) 10% & 10%
- Went to Yoga Meditation (6 – spiritual) 5%
- did 4 gym classes (1 – Health) 10%
- paid bills and trading (7 – Finance) 5%
- 2 Japanese classes and night classes for media (5 -Eductation) 10%
- Cleaned out linen cupboard, weeded back garden(8 – house) 10%
Simple pie chart based on time slice.
You can visually see the balance of your life in this graph based on time which is not relative to priority but it highlights areas where you may want to spend more or less time. Do this exercise from time to time as your life will go through shifts every so often. Remember the objective here is to take a look at your life and how you are spending it, managing it and identify if you are neglecting things that are special to you. Take control of it before someone else does. Try and spread yourself across all aspects of life to give yourself variety and to ensure no one thing dominates your life.
I hope you find this exercise of value in your life. Chrissie.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Chrissie,
This is great reading and can show up the ‘holes’ of where we are not putting enough energy and attention into our interactions.
Thanks very much and all the best,
Antonia
Chrissie,
You have no idea how helpful it was…
Thank you!
Zol
Glad it helped Zol 🙂
Hey mum, good reading, I’ll do a pie chart for me when I’m next online. I’ll probably be too scared to look at it because I already know how mine stacks up but thanx anyway for the info.
Love nik
Yes I need to do another one myself. There are no hard and fast rules it’s just a fun exercise that gives you some insight.
i would like to have my own map drawn
What a terrific exercise! I am doing a presentation to a group of people who are planning for retirement. They will be all different ages and at different lengths of time from retirement. Your exercise would work great for allowing them to take stock of their life now and what they want it to be at later stages of life, all the way to retirement.
Would you be willing to let me use it in my presentation? If so, may I give you credit and list your blog?
I will respect your decision either way. Thanks so much.
That was really helpful…
Thanks…
I see a lot of interesting content on your website.
You have to spend a lot of time writing, i know how to save
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very nice concept very helpful for us
It is very helpful.
I think it can be simplified further.
hi. I found your work really useful and I was thinking if I could credit your name for my work in school? I just need to know your last name and the date of publishing probably. This is for my school work by the way. If you don’t want the information to be that public, you could send me an email that I provided. Thank you very much 😀
So glad you can use it – go right ahead !
There are many ways to do this I agree !
Thankyou !
Time to build a new website and expand on this project – it has proven a strong foundation for designing ones life – I will post the website link when its done and share some great tips with balancing all of those things in your life.
Thank you soo much this has helped me to do my research work,. I appreciated.
Hi thank you so much,your work I see is a guide to my research. Appreciate much for your work.