Work/Life Balance Excel Chart

Todays post is by a guest author; Christine Dix who has a different view to work life balance than myself

Last week I was taking part in a discussion of work/life balance with a group of peers, all of whom are in the same situation as we are – they are studying, working, have families and would like to have a life as well! We all knew that we need balance but agreed that it is difficult to achieve.

One participant told us of a book she was reading The Acorn Principle: Know Yourself, Grow Yourself by Jim Cathcart.

She said it was a great book and that it advocated a good method of determining your work/life balance. She explained that he divided life into about eight areas of responsibility (she couldn’t remember exactly what they were) and you draw them like spokes in a wheel. Each spoke is divided into 10 sections – 10 being lots of time spent and one not much. An even web around the spokes indicates a balanced life.

I left determined to buy the book.

I decided to see if Microsoft Excel has a spider web chart – it does! It is called a Radar chart. I made up my own life responsibilities and decided to use the range 1 – 5 for time spent.

It worked! I like it because the visual representation of the imbalance of my life is quite shocking. I have been spending a lot of time on our course to the detriment of everything else including my work and health. I resolved to make the changes necessary to balance my life so that next week’s chart will look more like the second chart.

This is the worksheet I used:

There are some great tip sheets at the this site explaining the components of balance, how to recognize imbalance and why we should aim to achieve work life balance.