Check in: How well are you doing across all roles in your life?

✏️ Here's a simple exercise to help

How are you doing? No, really, how are you doing? Are you showing up the way you want to in all aspects of your life? Are you taking care of yourself the way you want to (getting enough sleep, activity, and nourishment)?

This week I want to share an exercise that I think may be enlightening.

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First, a little background.

Every so often, two disparate ideas spontaneously combine in my mind to create something new. This happened just the other day. I was in the middle of a conversation when suddenly two different ideas that I hadn’t thought of in a long time — one I learned from Steven Covey in the 1990s and another that I discovered at a corporate offsite in the 2000s — presented themselves as an elegant and fun concept together.

Let me explain.

1. Hats 🎩

We all wear different hats. Most of us wear multiple hats. We may be parents, partners, employees, managers, neighbors and more. And the hats we wear may change over time.

Steven Covey calls these roles:

We live our lives in terms of roles—not in the sense of role playing, but in the sense of authentic parts we’ve chosen to fill. We may have important roles at work, in the family, in the community, or in other areas of life. Roles represent responsibilities, relationships, and areas of contribution.

Much of our pain in life comes from the sense that we’re succeeding in one role at the expense of other, possibly even more important roles. We may be doing great as vice-president of the company, but not doing well at all as a parent or a spouse. We may be succeeding in meeting the needs of our clients, but failing to meet our own need for personal development and growth. [emphasis added]

Source: Steven R. Covey, First Things First, First Fireside Edition, 1995, p. 82

This is the key insight.

Steve Covey continues on:

Identifying roles gives a sense of the wholeness of quality life—that life is more than just a job, or a family, or a particular relationship. It’s all of these together. Identifying roles may also highlight “important but not urgent” areas that are currently being neglected.

Source: Steven R. Covey, First Things First, First Fireside Edition, 1995, p. 84

2. Spider chart 🕸️

Many years ago, I was at a corporate offsite seated at a banquet round table in a sea of identical round tables filled with colleagues from across the country. In between presentations from executives was a session where the results of an employee sentiment survey were being shared. And that is how I came to learn about spider (or radar) charts. They look like this:

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spider-chart-on-level-of-perception-of-Engagement-All-employee-levels_fig7_227452915

At the time, I had no idea how to interpret it. It seemed complicated - trying to tease out the practical meaning of how different employee groups had evaluated their respective managers on a dozen or more qualities. I don’t believe I’ve used a spider chart since that day. Until now.

3. Exercise ✏️

Here are the essential steps of this exercise:

1. Identify each of your current roles (combining as necessary to keep to seven or fewer).

2. Label each role on a radar/spider chart.

3. Assess how well you are meeting your goals in each area on a scale of 1-10.

Take as much time as you need. Go through this process without judgement.

When you are done, take a look at the resulting graph and notice what you see. Intuitively, you may have known you weren’t working out as much you used to but to see your relative performance in all aspects of your life at once, together, and in context can be powerful.

Here is a sample of what it might look like (yours will be unique to you):¹

(If you’re not familiar with Sharpen the Saw, it’s a Steven Covey concept of renewal in four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.)

Partners

If you have a partner or spouse, I encourage you to consider doing the exercise above together. Complete it individually and then share the results with each other. See what jumps out for each other. Discuss and explore how you can encourage and support each other to live the life you want to live together.

How to do this exercise

Creatively

I recommend using paper and your favorite crayons, colored pencils or markers to do this exercise. Why? It’s more fun and less clinical than sitting at a computer and using a spreadsheet (which is how I created the sample above).

First sketch the rough framework and write each hat or role around the outside.

Then you can choose a unique color for each hat you wear or role you have in your life.

Rather than plotting a line, color in the pie slice for each role up to the level that feels accurate.

The end result will be uniquely yours — and a great visual to keep as a reminder of your current reality (and the gaps you may want to address) moving forward.

Photo by Mahbod Akhzami on Unsplash

Microsoft Excel

If the idea of drawing with colored pencils doesn’t appeal, it’s easy to do this in Excel, too. (The sample shown above was created in Excel.)

To do this, just input your roles and ratings and then Insert | Radar chart. (If you’d like to use the template I created, send me an email).

However you may choose to do this exercise, I hope you find it to be worthwhile and enlightening.

If you’d like to discuss any insights you have or strategies to improve, please join us in the subscriber chat this week.

And if you find this helpful, please feel free to share with others who could benefit. Thanks very much.

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I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Be well,

-Bryce

1. When you do it, use your actual roles as labels — i.e. family, parent, manager, coach — instead of the generic Role x that is shown in this sample.