A Wider Look at What's Begging for Your Attention

The last three emails were all about leadership effectiveness: your skills, your commitments to your team, and how your team experiences you as their leader. This week, a wider question. What about everything else in your life that's important? A quality life can't just be all about work and career, right?

Work responsibilities can become all-consuming if not kept in proper perspective. Meetings, decisions, deadlines, the team. The next thing, then the next thing after that. There's always more to do, and most of what's job related feels like it can't wait.

What rarely happens is stepping back to look at everything that's competing for your time and attention. Health, family, finances, friendships, the things you know are important, but keep putting off. The whole picture should be prioritized, not just the part you're paid to think about.

Without that wider view, it's easy to make real progress in one area while slowly losing ground in another. Before you know it, you find yourself in a pattern where sleep becomes a luxury; an important relationship loses focus; or a goal you cared about six months ago hasn't made any progress.

Even though you know what's important, you don't realize there's a gap until something gives.

That's what this week is about.

Free Download: Life Balance Wheel

The Life Balance Wheel provides a simple way to ensure you don't lose sight of that wider view.

You pick the six areas of your life that matter most right now, score each one from 1 to 10, and the life balance wheel fills in automatically. The shape of the wheel will tell the current story. A round wheel reflects a balanced life that is rolling along smoothly. A lopsided wheel will highlight where there may be friction.

What makes the tool work is its flexibility. You pick the categories. Health, family, finances, friendships, faith, personal growth, rest. Use the standard list, rename them, or build your own. The categories should reflect what's important to you.

The whole thing takes about ten minutes. There's a Word version if you want to print it and fill it in by hand, and an Excel version that draws the wheel automatically for you as you enter your scores.

What you'll come away with is a clear visual of where the important things stand in your life, and an honest read on which area is pulling you down most. Based on your results, you will make one specific commitment to focus on in the next 30 days.

Life Balance Wheel →

As a reminder, the leadership assessment, 10 key questions quiz, and 360 leadership feedback tool all looked at one part of your life: leadership. This one looks at your entire life experience.

Together, the four tools give you a way to see yourself clearly at every level, from your skills, to your commitments to your team, to how your team experiences you, to how leadership fits inside everything else that matters.

To your success,

Richard

P.S. Balance doesn't mean every area scores a 10. It means the shape is round enough to roll fairly smoothly. A 7 across the board is healthier than a few 10s and a 3.