The pie of life

Looking at aspects of your life

In this task you'll be looking at the balance and satisfaction of your lifestyle. We'll list some of the main elements that could be a way of defining a full and satisfying life. After all, work is just one aspect of life; where does it fit into the full picture of of how you want to spend your time?

In the first step, think of your typical week, indicate what proportion of your time you allocate to each area of your life at the moment.

For example, a week is 168 hours. If you sleep 8 hours per night, this would be 56 hours. Try calculating how much time you spend in a typical week doing each of the activities that make up a full, balanced, healthy and satisfying life.

Instructions:
Use the arrows on the next screen to distribute the hours of the week between the eight lifestyle areas.

Get started

1. Fun and recreation

2. Domestic tasks (cleaning / eating)

3. Personal development / study

4. Working

5. Health and fitness

6. Time with family / friends / significant other

7. 'Giving' e.g volunteering / community engagment

8. Sleep and relaxation

Finish

How do you divide the time in your week?

Fun and recreation 0hrs

Domestic tasks e.g cooking / cleaning / eating

0hrs

Personal development / study / learning 0hrs

Working 0hrs

Health and fitness 0hrs

Time with family / friends / significant other 0hrs

'Giving' e.g volunteering 0hrs

Sleep and relaxation (0hrs a day) 0hrs

168 hours
(Time in the week available)

Your results

Now that you've completed both tasks allocating the time you spend and the satisfaction you take from each lifestyle area, we have created the graphs below to illustrate your results. These should therefore help you to identify not only how you spend your time, but also how happy or satisfied you are with the activities that occupy your time.

Pie of life

This pie of your life image should help you visualise how you currently spend your time. You may also have noticed some overlaps between the different activities.

Bar chart

This bar chart shows how satisfied you are with each of the lifestyle activities.

Reflection

Do you have a balance of different activities in your life?
Are you happy with how you spend your time on the different aspects?
Do you spend the right balance of time doing the things you enjoy?
Likewise, how much time do you spend doing the things you least enjoy?
Are there aspects of your life you would like to change?

You may also have noticed some overlaps between the different activities. Work can be fun; you may be eating, shopping or doing domestic tasks with family or friends. The aim is to make the most of each experience undertaken and to get an ideal blend of the activities you enjoy and that you find satisfying/fulfilling.

Now that you have had a chance to compare between what you do and how happy you are, in the final step of this task we'll ask you to think ahead to create a pie of life that you'd like to aim for in the future.

Your results

You now have 2 sets of images; one indicating how life is at the moment, and the other for how you would like life to be.

Your future pie of life

This pie chart shows how you would like to spend your time in the future.

Reflection: part two

Think about the 2 sets of images and try answering the following questions:

What are the differences between the two sets of images - now and the ideal future?
What aspects of you life do you want to change?
Is your vision of the future realistic?
What barriers or challenges could you face to achieving the life you strive for?
What will you need to do to achieve your vision of the ideal future?
Are there 1 or 2 things you could do now that will help you start to work towards your ideal vision of the future?

Summary

Work is just one aspect of life, but where does this fit into the full picture of how you want to spend your time?

This task encourages you to think about where work fits into your life, how you want to spend your time and how satisfied you strive to be in life. You can use this task to visualise the future balance you strive for in your life, whether that be focused at immediate changes you can make to your life – or medium to longer term vision of the future 1, 3 or 5 years+.

You are likely to face barriers and challenges but can you think of ways you can overcome these or minimise the impact of these and keep your vision of the future? What goals can you set yourself to start working towards achieving your goals and vision of the future and strive for a life you’ll love.

Click 'print or save' below and you can get all 3 of your charts and the reflection exercises to save to PDF or print right now. After you close this window any progress will be lost.

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