Today, I’m going to share a quick and easy activity that I found in My Little Bullet Book, by David Sinden. Yep – I caved and bought a Bullet journal, even faster than I gave into reading the Harry Potter series. And whilst I can’t say that I’m not completely un-skeptical as to the supposed powers of the Bullet journal, I’ve definitely picked up some useful titbits along the way.
Here’s one of them – the ‘Wheel of Balance’ – which basically invites you to score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on every aspect of you life.
For the last decade of my life, my balance has been completely unbalanced. If I had completed this in my first 5 years as a teacher, I’d have probably just cut out the career section and ignored everything else. Because there was nothing else. I was a zombie attached to a laptop.
I remember when I finally reached breaking point and decided to leave my first teaching job. Mr. G told me to envision my day as a pie chart and look at how I was spending my time – and how I could change it. I realised that I was spending 95% of my day working, thinking about work or complaining about work. When I decided I was going, I thought of that pie chart every day and I told myself that my pie chart needed to show that I’d spent time looking for a job. Because ultimately that was the only thing that was going to pull me out of my misery. And thinking of things in this way really helped me to avoid guilty feelings when I had to skip marking or emails in order to write applications.
Though starting my own business certainly hasn’t made me any less career-focused, I definitely participate more nowadays in the other areas of my life. And I make sure that as hard as I work, I make time for other spokes of the wheel.
I keep this wheel of balance in mind now.
I keep it in mind. But that doesn’t mean that it’s balanced. We can’t do it all. If you’re putting everything into your job, it’s only natural that something else will go. If you’re training for a marathon, your exercise may well go up, but you might see your friends and family less.
Personally, I just think having an awareness of this is all that matters. Different sections are bound to go up and down with inconsistency. Being aware of this allows you to know where you’re doing well and where you’ll need to pick up the slack next.
Anxious-Ambition.com 