What does success look like? Is achievement in life about realising your big goals or maintaining a good work-life balance?

In many ways, success is a bit of both. Certainly, unless we maintain some balance, we will likely undermine our ability to achieve our goals. It is important to remember that the journey to achieving our ambitions is actually as important as the destination itself. Success is daily progress, continual personal growth and character development, as well as hitting our targets.

“Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success.” – Zig Ziglar

So, if we want to achieve success and our life goals, we need something equivalent to work-life balance. The problem with thinking about balance in these terms is that it is purely binary. But work is an aspect of life, not a separate entity, and there are many other aspects of our lives that we should consider when maintaining balance. I found this out the hard way when I burnt out, physically and emotionally.

The danger of getting out of balance: physical and mental burnout

One day I woke up, but I could hardly move. I felt smothered under a leaden blanket – utterly drained of energy. Trying to sit up induced waves of fatigue making me fight for breath. What was happening? It was as though someone had replaced my body. This faulty one could surely not belong to me.

I assumed I had some infection, probably the flu. But a day in bed became a week and I was still no better. By the end of the second week, I was getting scared. I had never been ill for this long before. I wondered if I would ever recover.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” – Jack Welch

But it was not a virus that I was suffering from, it was fatigue. I had burnt out. I was suffering from complete mental and physical exhaustion. Having run my tank to empty, and my body had shut down. I did eventually recover, but it was many weeks before I was close to normal.

On top of feeling bad physically, I also felt terrible mentally and emotionally. I had not realised how much of my self-worth related to my physical well-being until it was taken away from me. I also felt guilty. Guilty for letting people down at work. Guilty that my wife had to look after me. And guilty that I did not have a ‘proper illness.’

And why now? I had been tired before. In my military career, on exercises and operations around the world, I had been frequently tested to the limits of my endurance. But now? My colleagues were my friends, and I was passionate about what I was doing. I lived in a comfortable flat with a loving wife. How could I be so weak as to collapse?

Avoiding burnout by keeping balance

In the aftermath of my burnout, I started to examine my life and the causes of my exhaustion. Medically, I had not developed full-blown chronic fatigue syndrome but my illness had shaken me. Situationally, there was no one moment or big event that tipped the balance. My collapse was the compounded effect of a lifestyle I had been living for several years.

I realised that I needed to to keep my life in better balance and to do this I would need metrics, like dials on a car, to monitor. I researched what were considered the key things that are needed to keep physically and mentally healthy, and then created my own way of managing my well-being. This became my mental activity monitor.

“Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance.” –  Epicurus

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Keeping life balance by watching your metrics

When I am ski-touring I rely quite heavily on my watch. That is because it does a lot more than just tell the time. It is also an altimeter and smartwatch which allows me to monitor metrics such as my speed, elevation, and heart rate. When trying to pace myself, high in the mountains, over long distances, the ability to be able to measure my progress is invaluable. Watching the dials gives me the short-term indicators to ensure longer-term success.

That is why, in The Right Questions Framework, the tool we use to monitor our balance and ensure success is the Activity Monitor. This conceptual tool helps to think about the factors that we need to manage in order to stay in good physical and mental health, as well as keeping on track to achieve our goals.

The Right Questions Balance Tool: The Activity Monitor

The conceptual Activity Monitor is broken down into four major quadrants that each have four further sub-divisions. Each of these sixteen elements can be used as a metric to manage our well-being across various important aspects of life.

This breaks down in the following way:

• Body
  • Health, fitness
  • Diet, nutrition
  • Sleep, rest
  • Vacation, holiday
• Heart
  • Emotions, feelings
  • Family, community
  • Friends, network
  • Relationships, romance
• Mind
  • Career, vocation
  • Money, finance
  • Learning, personal development
  • Safety, security
• Soul
  • Mindfulness, thankfulness
  • Spirituality, faith
  • Reflection, understanding
  • Fun, recreation

To help make these qualitative factors more quantitative, we can rate how we think we are doing in each area by giving ourselves a score from 1 to 10.

A higher rating usually means we are doing okay whereas a lower ranking reflects an area where we likely need to take action. A low score is like a dial going into the red that warns us that this area is unsustainable. For example, you might not get the sleep you need one day, but if this continues it is likely to compound into a problem.

We may have some scores that are middling or not quite as high as we would like. In these cases, we can then assign actions to help improve the rating. We can ask ourselves, what do I need to do to increase this score by one?

The Activity Monitor Balance Questions

To help you think about your rating, here are some questions to help you:

Body

• Health, fitness
  • How much exercise have I had today/this week? Is it enough?
  • How is my general health? Am I well or sick?
• Diet, nutrition
  • Am I eating at appropriate times or am I snacking too much?
  • What proportion of my meals would be considered healthy?
• Sleep, rest
  • Am I getting more than 7 hours of quality sleep at night?
  • Am I watching screens, snacking or drinking alcohol or caffeine just before trying to sleep?
• Vacation, holiday
  • When is my next day off and how will I protect my recovery time?
  • When was your last vacation? When should you have your next holiday?

Heart

• Emotions, feelings
  • How do I feel today, am I happy or sad, energised or depressed?
  • How well am I managing my negative emotions such as anger or fear?
• Family, community
  • Am I spending quality time with my family and loved ones?
  • How well am I connected to my community?
• Friends, network
  • How well am I maintaining and deepening my friendships?
  • Am I connecting with new individuals and increasing my network with positive people?
• Relationships, romance
  • How fulfilled do I feel in my relationships?
  • Am I getting quality time with my romantic partner or significant other?

Mind

• Career, vocation
  • How satisfied do I feel in my career at the moment?
  • Am I progressing the way I want to in my work?
• Money, finance
  • How secure do I feel financially?
  • How worried am I about money?
• Learning, personal development
  • What are my development goals and how I am progressing?
  • What new thing did I learn today?
• Safety, security
  • Are threats in my physical environment affecting my thoughts and emotions?
  • Am I fearful about the response of people to what I think, say, or do?

Soul

• Mindfulness, thankfulness
  • How thankful am I, or can I be today?
  • How well am I doing in taking time to find peace and enjoy the moment?
• Spirituality, faith
  • How well am I acting out what I believe in?
  • Am I prioritising the things I care most about?
• Reflection, understanding
  • How well am I developing and reaching my potential?
  • How closely am I living to my core values?
• Fun, recreation
  • How much fun have I had today or this week?
  • How much space do I have for my pastimes and recreation?

Improve your life balance and increase your daily sense of well-being

Monitoring your metrics doesn’t just help you maintain balance; it also gives you a daily sense of well-being. It is satisfying to achieve goals, no matter how small, and the measures on our dashboard allow us to tick off small achievements every day.

For example, today I went for a short walk (reflection and mindfulness), wrote an article (vocation), did some exercise (fitness), and had a healthy lunch (nutrition) while listening to a French podcast (learning). After work, I will have supper with my kids (family), play a game (fun) and then make sure I get to bed on time (sleep).

So, you can see, when I look at my day I feel good about it. The metrics give me a sense of achievement, even on an ‘ordinary’ day. This in turn increases my sense of well-being and improves my mental health.

We may not always feel like we are making significant progress towards achieving a big life goal on any single day, but these incremental measures help us. When we look at the smaller things we accomplish, we can be satisfied and appreciate the journey as well as the destination.

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

I have a portfolio career. I have developed this career steadily over the course of more than a decade. Over this period my work has developed from side-hustles and freelancing into a proper career; one with purpose, direction, and development opportunities. This career allows me the flexibility and variety I crave. I get to work on the things I love, support my family and enjoy the lifestyle that I want.

Sound too good to be true?

Well, I will share how I have built this career and made it financially sustainable. But before we go on let’s look at what a portfolio career is and isn’t.

What is a portfolio career?

What does the term portfolio career mean and how does it differ from a side-hustle?

A portfolio career is either having several jobs at once or a number of jobs for a short time. The former definition is increasingly the most frequently used term and it is the meaning I will be referring to in this article.

I would also suggest that a portfolio career is not just a side-hustle or even multiple side-hustles. These things are similar, as there are multiple jobs involved, but a portfolio career is different to a side-hustle in the way strategy is different to tactics.

A side-hustle is generally a short-term tactic to improve cash flow or to start a new venture. These side-hustles can develop into a portfolio career, but they are usually a means to an end rather than the end itself. For example, you might do a part-time job to pay the bills while you are building a writing career or launching a start-up. Equally the writing or start-up might be the side-hustle that you do alongside your full-time job. The side-hustle, therefore, supports a transition or goal.

A portfolio career is less of a goal and more of a long-term career choice. It is a career strategy that builds multiple work opportunities and revenue streams into a coherent whole. This choice allows a particular lifestyle, career progression and set of opportunities. The jobs themselves may not appear related, but they are designed together, as I will demonstrate later.

Why would you want a portfolio career?

A portfolio career is not for everyone. It is not the only or best sort of career; it is just a choice. As with many decisions in life, it comes down to what you value most. The advantages and disadvantages of any career are generally linked to this balance and choice around these values.

People hold a variety of different values. These are almost always good things, but how we choose to prioritise those principles or beliefs defines our specific values. That prioritisation makes our choices differ from other people. For example, stability and flexibility are both great but it is hard to have both in your work. You often need to prioritise one over the other.

In the case of portfolio careers versus a traditional career path you might be weighing up these or similar values:

Traditional Career	Portfolio Career
Stability	Flexibility
Specialism	Variety
Security	Opportunity
Structure	Freedom

They are almost two sides to a coin; if you choose one advantage then you lose out on the other. The flip side of any choice becomes the disadvantage, the opportunity cost, of that decision. But we shall see later how to build a career to offset these downsides.

What sort of career is best for me?

Whether a more traditional or portfolio career is best for you really depends on what you value and what you are passionate about. There are no easy answers. A lot of the people I coach are trying to work out exactly these sorts of things and it takes time and reflection to really make the right decision.

It is important to remember that you can find your vocation, use your passion and stay true to your purpose in either type of career. For example, I have many friends who are doctors. They are passionate about what they do but, to follow that vocation, they need to specialise rather than multi-task in their career. No one would question that what they do does not have an incredible value, particularly in the present pandemic. The same could be said for a lot of other professions and vocations.

How do you build a portfolio career?

If you decide a portfolio career is right for you then to build one you need to maximise the things that align with your values and design the career to offset some of the potential risks and downsides of this sort of career. Therefore, you need to think about the role that each job or income plays in the overall career and financial picture.

To demonstrate this point I will use a farm analogy. One good thing about this analogy is that it shows that a portfolio career is nothing new. In fact, you could argue, developing a working life with multiple income streams has been around longer than the ‘work and then retire’ model. The farm, small-holding or cottage industry are all long-existing examples.

To keep things as simple as possible we are going to limit our model to four elements. That does not necessarily mean we have exactly four jobs or income streams, but we need to fulfil the purpose of each one.

For our portfolio career we will need:

• The farmhouse
• The cow
• The chicken
• The cash-crop

What should go in a portfolio career?

So, using this metaphor let us look at what should go in a portfolio career to support these elements. Each part of the portfolio has a career and financial purpose, as can be seen in the following table:

	The Farmhouse	The Cow	The Chicken	The Cash-Crop
Purpose	Stability	Structure	Productivity	Passion
Income type	Fall back	Assured cash flow	Top-up cash	Windfall
Productivity	Slow	Steady	Intermittent	Volatile
Activity	Consolidate	Manage	Build	Experiment
Feels	Solid	Reliable	Useful	Inspirational

We design the whole career working on how to maximise the things we value (for example the opportunity and flexibility) while managing and offsetting the potential downsides (like stability and security).

In this way it is like a financial portfolio, or a house build if you prefer these alternative analogies:

Farm Analogy	The Farmhouse	The Cow	The Chicken	The Cash-Crop
Financial Analogy	Asset/Pension	Bond/accumulation investment	Investment income/dividends	Speculative Investment
Property Analogy	Foundations	Structure	Fittings	Furnishings

Managing the elements of a portfolio career

So, let’s look at how we develop and manage each of these facets in turn.

The Farmhouse

The farmhouse gives stability. The same goes for a traditional career but in a portfolio career, you need to be much more mindful of what your career fall-back is and how you underpin your long-term finances.

For me, this stability comes through property. I am not saying this is the right choice for everyone, just as an example of how I have built this financial foundation. My attraction for property is partly due to being an engineer by education and because I worked in the construction and housing industry. Therefore, I have always seen property not just as a home but as an investment opportunity.

I know that many people now are struggling to get onto the property ladder, and this may seem an unachievable dream but, by way of encouragement, I started off small and you might be able to do the same too.

My progression into property developed along these lines:

• Pay off student debt
• Save for a deposit
• Buy the first property (that needed renovation) with my partner
• Renovate property and create a second bedroom
• Get a lodger
• Start to rent out property whilst on holiday
• Use a job opportunity to move out, rent out our first property
• Save to buy a second property as we were renting

Let me point out the timeframe. It took me years to save up for a deposit and another ten years to go from one property to two. But we bought the first property knowing we needed income as soon as possible. The lesson? Start small but plan long with this sort of asset.

Using the gig-economy and developing passive income

When starting small you can join the gig economy. This allows you to start getting an income but also comes with some downsides. In our case, we had to compromise on our privacy when we got a lodger. We had to do a lot of work to advertise and prepare our flat to rent it out in the holiday season. The point is we started to leverage what we had.

What can you do? Maybe you can do something similar or rent out some storage space, workspace, a car-parking space? If you don’t have a property, what other asset could you leverage? You can rent out cars, household appliances and pretty much anything you can imagine in today’s gig economy.

Developing a passive income

In the world of Timothy Ferris, this ‘Farmhouse’ would be considered a passive income. It is a mature asset that brings a steady income or could be sold to raise capital. But anyone who has tried to get a passive income knows, developing a passive income is anything but passive! It generally requires time, money, and lots of hard work. If you want a business that gives you a passive income you first must build that business. If you want investments, online products, writing or property to be that financial base, you have to build them first.

So as mentioned before, start small but plan long. And start as soon as possible if you don’t have something already.

The good news is that once this part of the portfolio is built it is relatively low maintenance. The idea here is to consolidate the income stream and hold the asset for the long term.

The Cow

The farmhouse gives stability but may not bring much, or enough, in terms of cash flow. This is where the cow comes in. The cow brings a steady, reliable income.

For me, in work terms, this has been my career as a Reservist in the Military. This is a part-time job, one that provides a steady income, but it also gives me meaningful career progression and opportunities for personal development. I have been in the Reserves for more than 15 years and it is not something I could have done for that long if it was not something I enjoyed. It is not just a job to pay the bills (although it does help to do this), it is a career itself. As a leadership coach, being an Army Officer also keeps me honest and forces me to practice what I preach!

For you, it may be another sort of part-time role somewhere. It might be that you change your present full-time role to become a part-time one. This will take some negotiation with your employer, but I know plenty of people who have achieved just that.

The financial role of ‘the cow’ in the portfolio can be another investment or asset that provides a steady income. It is like having bonds or other investments that give you a steady return. Nothing dazzling, just reliable. If you are fortunate like me and can also make that something you value and enjoy, so much the better.

The Chicken

So now the baseline cash flow is assured. What next? Well, this is where the chicken comes in. The chicken gives top-up cash. It has some worth as an asset, but its real worth comes through its productivity. What it produces is also not enough to cover cash-flow needs on its own, but it boosts overall income considerably.

In financial terms, the chicken means that once we have paid the bills (hopefully these are covered by the Farmhouse and Cow), this is the extra we need for discretionary spending and luxuries.

This might court controversy but foreign holidays, designer clothes and eating at restaurants are all in this financial category. I am not saying you should not want or have these things (most of us do), but just remember where they are on the priority scale. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, these are similar to the basic physiological needs of food and clothing, but expensive coffee is more about self-actualisation than survival (although it doesn’t always feel that way in the morning!)

I say this as at times when building my portfolio career, I have had to do without some of these nice things in order to progress. Buying our first property completely cleaned us out of funds and for several years we had to watch every penny. But that budgeting allowed us to consolidate our finances and progress in our careers.

So, adding a chicken to the portfolio increases our income to more comfortable levels. Coaching, facilitating, and consulting is my ‘chicken’. It is a more intermittent cash flow, as it depends upon my business development and the time of year, but this creates an income that goes above my basic needs. The income is intermittent but generally very good when it does come in.

It is also not just a job that I am doing for cash. I love this work – particularly coaching leaders – and I find it deeply satisfying. But it is also very time consuming, so I must limit this work and, as a result, the income that comes with it. I need to do this to provide time for the final element of the portfolio career.

The Cash Crop

The cash crop is the part of the portfolio that is high risk and high reward. It is likely to be the thing you are most passionate about but won’t bring you an immediate income, or at least not enough of one that you can live off.

The cash crop gives the opportunity for creativity and experimentation and, if we are lucky, for a financial windfall. But there is also the chance we could fail at the loss of our time, and potentially some income, in the short term.

It might be that sometime in the future, the cash crop of today becomes the chicken, cow or even the farmhouse of your future career, but for today it is a new venture.

For me, my writing, public speaking and online business come into this category. I love creating and communicating content to a large audience.

As I seek to try out new things and nurture this part of my career it takes a disproportionate amount of time compared with the income it creates. So why do I keep doing it? Because it is my passion.

Also, the more this part of my portfolio career increases the more it supports the underlying reasons for seeking a portfolio career in the first place. It gives me a variety, challenge, and flexibility that I would not get otherwise.

So, what is it that you would dearly love to do? What do you do in your free time that you would also love to get paid for? These passions can be developed to become cash crops. You just need to think creatively.

For example, I love walking. No one is going to pay me to go walking right? And yet that is what I do. I coach people while I walk, I record my podcast while I walk, I make business calls while I walk. The fact is that you can take just about anything you enjoy, pivot the idea, and make it part of your work life.

When should you start your portfolio career?

The best time to start building a portfolio career is now. That doesn’t mean you have to quit your present job right away, maybe not at all, but you do need to start planning.

What sorts of jobs and opportunities do you think could make up the various aspects of your career and income? Using the analogy here, what would you list under each heading. They could well be blank. Don’t worry, they were for me at the beginning too! It also took some time for the various elements to settle into the structure.

The important bit is working out the next step. This should be something that you can achieve today. To help with the next step ask yourself: what is the best thing I can do today to take myself closer towards my dream?

Whatever your answer to this question is it probably requires an allocation of resources. How will you use your time and money? Maybe you need to set up a standing order from your bank to start building up some savings. Or perhaps you need to find a time every day you can commit to your passion. It could be that you need to hunt for that side-hustle or part-time job.

Whatever it is, put it in your diary now. (I nearly wrote dairy – the farm analogy has gone deep!) And once you have achieved that step, ask the same again: what is the best thing I do now to help me progress?

Will it work?

A portfolio career has worked for me. If it fits your values, you can make it work too.

I have been blessed to come through the pandemic in good shape and a lot of this I can put down to my career choices and how I built my portfolio together. I am not saying that it has been easy, but I can attest to the financial resilience of a portfolio career.

But as I said at the beginning, my career did not come together overnight. One of the greatest bits of career advice I ever had was from a former manager. They told me:

“Many people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and vastly underestimate what they can do in five or ten years.”

This wisdom helped me to plan and measure success over a different time frame. In the age of rapid fame and instant gratification, this is counter-cultural, but the advice has served me well.

And I think that is a great place for me to stop and for you to start. What is it you need to do today to develop your career?

Remember: start small, plan long, but start now.

Good luck on your adventure!

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What is the Wheel of Life in coaching and what does it do?

The Wheel of Life is a useful coaching tool that is used to examine how balanced we are across different spheres or roles in life. It is a great way to get an overall feel for how content we are and identify key areas for growth. It is particularly helpful for people concerned about achieving a work-life balance.

The philosophy behind the process is that life is connected and we should aspire to have balance across all the areas of our existence. Therefore it is not so much ‘work-life balance’ but recognising work as being an integral part of life, and therefore having a more holistic approach to how we attain contentment.

If we feel we are failing in one section of our lives, then it will have an adverse effect on our overall wellbeing and happiness. In other words, if we let our friendships or health deteriorate it is likely to have a negative impact on our work performance or our relationship with our significant other.

It is worth noting that the coaching application of the Wheel of Life can include a spiritual application but is different from the Buddhist Wheel of Life. The latter represents the cycle of reincarnation; birth, death and rebirth.

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

Dolly Parton

How do you fill out the Wheel of Life?

The ‘wheel’ is a circle, usually broken down into eight segments (but can be up to 12), where each segment or spoke represents an aspect of life. In each segment, you score yourself 0-10, with 0 being at the centre of the wheel and 10 being at the outside of the circle. Reaching the outer edge of the circle or wheel represents being completely content in that zone.

Once you have scored each section you can quickly see where you believe you are falling short of your own ideal situation. This gives focus and helps to prioritise where a change is going to have the greatest positive impact. The biggest gaps in scores indicate the greatest discontent and prompt the question: how can I increase my score in that area of life? By answering that question one can set goals to improve that aspect of life.

Free Wheel of Life Template

Here is an example template that you can copy and use:

Examining Life Roles

One way of using the Wheel of Life is to examine the most important roles that you play in life and measure your performance or contentment in each one. Roles might include:

• Spouse/Partner
• Parent/Child/Home-maker
• Leader/Manager
• Team Member
• Community Member
• Employee/Employer
• Creative/Artist/Musician
• Student/Learner
• Sports Person/Games Player
• Steward of Finance/Environment/Resources

This list is not exhaustive and it is important to pick the roles that are most relevant and important to you.

Steps for using roles in the Wheel of Life:

1. Start with a blank wheel and then add in your most important roles.
2. Score each one and reflect on which areas you need to work on most.
3. Set time-bound goals to improve in that area
4. At the end of the set time period revisit the wheel and re-score yourself to measure progress.

Segments of Life

Another way to use the Wheel of Life is to think about aspects rather than roles in life. These generally include:

1. Family/Relationship/Romance
2. Community/Social/Friends
3. Health/Wellbeing/Fitness
4. Life Planning/Management/Financial Security/Money
5. Career/Work/Vocation
6. Spirituality/Morality
7. Fun/Recreation/Leisure
8. Personal Growth/Development/Learning

You can follow the same steps, as used for roles in the previous section but replacing the roles with the 8 key areas using the words that resonate most with you.

Questions to help with the Wheel of Life

To help delve deeper into how you are doing at each spoke of the wheel or in each segment you can consider the following questions.  You could rate each one on a 0 to 10 scale and then take an average to get your overall score for each section:

1. Family/Relationship/Romance/Significant other

• How would you rate your romance, intimacy and quality time with your spouse/partner/significant other?
• What score would you give the quality and quantity of your time and communication with your closest family members?
• What score would you rate your relationship with your children and/or parents?
• How content are you with your relationships with your extended family?
• How would you rate the quality of your home environment?

2. Community/Social/Friends

• How would you score the breadth and depth of friendships that you enjoy?
• Do you feel like you have sufficient quality time with your most important friends?
• How would rate the time you have to socialise and make new friends and connections?
• What value would you give to the support you get from friends and your community?
• How would you score your contribution to your community and the environment?

3. Health/Wellbeing

• What would you score for the quality of your eating habits and diet?
• How content are you with your health and fitness?
• What score would you give to the quality and quantity of your sleep?
• How would you score your emotional health and mental wellbeing?
• How would you rate your impact on the environment?

4. Life Planning/Management/Financial Security/Money

• How financially secure do you feel on a scale of 0-10?
• What score would you give to your ability to set and keep to a budget?
• How free of debt are you? (10 being completely free of debt)
• How would you rate the quality of your savings, investments and pension to support you in the future?
• What rating would you score yourself in terms of financial independence or freedom?

5. Career/Work/Vocation

• How happy and fulfilled do you feel in your career or vocation?
• How content are you with the hours you work?
• What score would you give to your ability to prioritise and manage your time?
• How effective and skilled would you say that you are in your job?
• How content are you with your work prospects, progression or promotion?

6. Spiritual/Moral

• How aligned do you feel to an overall vision, purpose and direction for your life?
• How aligned would you say you are – in thought, word and deed – to your moral values and principles?
• What score would you give to the time you have off-line for personal reflection, prayer or meditation?
• How happy are you with the legacy you are building and will leave behind?
• How accountable do you feel for your spiritual or moral direction?

7. Fun/Recreation

• How would you rate the quality of time you have each week for leisure and recreation?
• Are you content with your ability to pursue your passions or hobbies?
• How would you rate the time you have for fun and laughter?
• Do you feel you are getting enough holiday or vacation time?
• How energised do you feel?

8. Personal Growth/Learning/Development

• How would you rate your continued education and personal development?
• Are you content with the time you have for reading, listening and learning?
• How self-aware would you say that you are?
• Are you content with your opportunity to develop existing strengths and learn new skills?
• How effective would you say you are in setting and achieving personal goals?

When you have filled it out it will look something like the example in the picture below.

Have a look at your scores. If you have an area or even just one particular question with a low score then that is a great place to focus on. Ask yourself: how could I increase this score by one? What would it look and feel like to be at that higher score and how could I get there? Then you can set yourself your specific goal to close the gap.

Wheel of Life Free Downloadable Tool

To make it even easier you can download this Excel spreadsheet template that has all the questions on the first worksheet. When you put in the scores it will automatically calculate your average score and populate a Wheel of Life (or Web of Life) on the second worksheet tab.

Well done and good luck!

Life balance, like forming new habits, does not happen overnight. But, taking the time to examine your life with a tool such as the Wheel of Life provides an excellent start.

You may want also want some help in identifying your goals and developing your plan. I have the pleasure of working alongside many amazing individuals and organisations doing exactly that. If you would also like some assistance, in person or online, then please do drop me a line. You can email me via the contact page.

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Have you ever felt burnt out? I have.

One day I woke up but I could hardly move. I felt smothered under a leaden blanket – utterly drained of energy. Trying to sit up induced waves of fatigue making me fight for breath. What was happening? It was as though someone had replaced my body. This faulty one could surely not belong to me.

I assumed I had some infection, probably the flu. But a day in bed became a week and I was still no better. By the end of the second week, I was getting scared. I had never been ill for this long before. I wondered if I would ever recover.

But it was not a virus that I was suffering from, it was fatigue. I had burnt out. I was suffering from complete mental and physical exhaustion. I had run my tank to empty, and my body had shut down. I did eventually recover, but it was many weeks before I was close to normal.

The guilt of burning out

On top of feeling bad physically, I also felt terrible mentally and emotionally. I had not realised how much of my self-worth related to my physical wellbeing until it was taken away from me. I was like Samson, shorn of his locks. I also felt guilty. Guilty for letting people down at work. Guilty that my wife had to look after me. Guilty that I did not have a ‘proper illness.’

And why now? I had been tired before. In my military career, on exercises and operations around the world, I had been frequently tested to the limits of my endurance. But now? Now I was working for a church. My colleagues were my friends, and I was passionate about what I was doing. I lived in a comfortable flat with a loving wife. How could I be so weak as to collapse?

A slow-motion car crash

In the aftermath of my burnout, I started to examine my life and the causes of my exhaustion. Medically, I had not developed full-blown chronic fatigue syndrome (that lasts for more than six months) but my illness had shaken me. Situationally, there was no one moment or big event that tipped the balance. My collapse was the compounded effect of a lifestyle I had been living for several years.

I had been like a car, brakes locked, sliding slowly down an icy road, drifting inevitably towards the crash barrier. I realised that if I had been wiser, then my crash could have been avoided. There had been tell-tale signs that I was in a downward spiral. It was just that I was oblivious to them. My dashboard was flashing warning lights, but my eyes were just fixed on the road ahead.

When we drive a vehicle, we know we can accelerate hard or go fast for a time, but we cannot run that way for long. We must manage the strain on the engine. It is also essential to frequently refuel, check the oil and water levels. Vehicles require servicing after a specific duration or mileage.

The metaphor of driving helped me to understand my situation. It made me wonder, what are the dials on my dashboard? What do I need to monitor to make sure I don’t empty my tank or crash again? How should I retain balance?

Work-life balance or whole life balance

People often talk about work-life balance, but this makes us think of a scale with work on one side and the rest of life on the other. This picture does not do justice to the complexity of our lives and our vocation’s interconnectivity with other aspects of life.

One model I found much more illuminating was the Wheel of Life which takes a much more holistic view of how our lives are made up and where there might be an imbalance. This is a great tool and one I still regularly use for myself and my coaching clients.

I also re-examined my personal values. This was also very informative. By identifying my core values and comparing those to my decisions and life choices I could identify the small compromises that had compounded over time. Even straying, just by a little, from my moral compass meant that over time I got further and further from where I has set out to be.

Bringing all of this together I created my dashboard – a set of personal dials that have helped me to avoid burnout in the fifteen years since my burnout. I grouped these dials into four categories that covered heart, body, mind, and soul. For each sub-category, I have included questions that can help in monitoring your levels.

The burnout prevention dashboard

HEART

Emotions

Emotions are natural and good but if we do not monitor them then they can become ever more erratic or extreme. Therefore, ask yourself:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel (1 being depressed and 10 being joyful)?
• Are you losing your temper faster or slower than usual?
• When you get angry are you holding onto those feelings longer or shorter than usual?
• Do I feel I am in control or do I feel trapped in my situation?

Relationships

Whether we are introverts or extroverts we all need quality social interaction. We also need to realise that some relationships give us more energy (on balance) and others leave us wanting. Examine your network and ask yourself:

• Who gives you energy and who drains it?
• Are you spending more time with those that sap energy or give energy?
• Which energy-draining relationships should be stopped?

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BODY

Health

This is not just whether we are ill or not, this is whether we are keeping fit and healthy. We all need adequate exercise and a good diet. So, ask yourself:

• How much exercise have I had today/this week? Is it enough?
• Am I eating at appropriate times or am I snacking too much?
• What proportion of my meals would be considered healthy?

Sleep

The most important aspect of rest, and the most regularly abused, is sleep. Put simply we need sleep to live. Our physical wellbeing and ability to fight infections, our cognitive abilities and memory, our emotions and mental health are all dependent upon sleep. Scientific research has shown that adults need at least seven, but generally closer to eight or nine hours of sleep. If you think you are an exception to that rule, then you should read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. We should all ask:

• Am I getting more than 7 hours of quality sleep at night?
• Am I watching screens just before trying to sleep?
• Am I snacking or drinking alcohol or caffeine too close to bedtime?

Vacations 

As well as sleep we should also plan other rest periods. Weekends and holidays provide the chance to have a rest from the pressures of everyday life. Unfortunately, our interconnected world and smart devices can make it hard to disconnect at times. Therefore, it is important to plan vacations and protect them.

• When is my next day off and how will I protect my recovery time?
• When can I switch off my phone/email/social media for at least a day/week?
• When was your last vacation? When should you have your next holiday?

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MIND

Safety

As per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, our security is a basic human need. If threatened, we are already likely to be in a highly stressed state and displaying fight, flight or freeze responses to our situation. Once physically safe we also want to be psychologically safe; in a space where we can think, experiment, and learn without fear. Check:

• Are threats in my physical environment affecting my thoughts and emotions?
• Am I fearful about the response of people to what I think, say, or do?
• Am I able to plan for and think through challenges, or am I just reacting to them?

Learning 

We all need mental stimulation. Without it, our brains stagnate. We must plan our personal development and embrace the challenges that we face and growth opportunities. We need to remain curious, keep trying new things and not be worried about getting things wrong. We need a growth mindset. To monitor this, you can ask:

• What are my development goals and how I am progressing?
• What new thing did I learn today?
• Which mistakes did I make and what can I glean from them?

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SOUL

Reflection 

Self-actualisation sits at the highest point on Maslow’s hierarchy. This is where we are reaching our full potential. To get to this place we need to understand our purpose, we need to understand why we are doing what we are doing. This requires time for reflection and remembering to keep asking the big questions of life, such as:

• What does long-term success look like for me? Am I working towards that today?
• What is my purpose; why am I doing what I am doing? What are my values?
• How am I developing and reaching my potential?

Mindfulness

Whether we call ourselves spiritual or agnostic, religious or atheist, there is plenty of evidence to show the importance of mindfulness and being thankful. Whether we are offering up prayers to a higher power or just taking time to appreciate the moment, there is room for remembering the now, as well as thinking about the future. Think:

• What am I thankful for today?
• How can I find more peacefulness today (for example a walk, meditation, or place of quiet)?
• How am I feeling right now? Take some deep breaths and scan your mind for anxiety and your body for tension.

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Keep watching the dials to manage your physical and mental health

I can testify to how painful it is to burn out. The good news is that it is largely avoidable, but we need to be proactive if we want to avoid crashing. It requires self-awareness, time for reflection and honest self-inquiry to monitor how we are doing and maintain a sustainable pace.

But it does not have to take long once you have identified the gauges you need to monitor. Take some time now. Think about your dashboard. What are the dials you need to watch? Which ones are in the red just now? What do you need to change? Adjust your speed and course now; don’t run the risk of crashing out!