Life’s Matrix
Wish you had more time to devote to things that make you happy? Start by making an inventory of how you spend your time right now.
Life’s Matrix is a simple tool that you can use to visualise what you spend your time on vs what you’d like to spend your time on. Regrettably, it can’t give you more time, but it can give you the possibility to make more conscious choices about how you decide to spend your time. And even though we all feel that we need more time, another perspective is that all we have is time. A whole life, actually. Perhaps the most potent question is: how do you choose to spend it?
Begin like this:
- In the template, make a note of everything you spend time on.
- For each activity, decide on which quadrant it belongs.
- Lower left; the things you neither want to do and you do little of
- Upper left; the things you have little desire to do but to a lot of
- Lower right; the things you really want to do, but do very little of
- Upper right; the things you both love to do and do lots of.
3. Have a look at your matrix. Take a minute to congratulation yourself for choosing everything in the upper right corner and in the bottom left corner. Reflect on the other two quadrants that show the discrepancies between what you do and what you want to do.
4. Think about what even a small change in these quadrants would mean to you. What would it meant to you if you could do more of the things you want, and less of those that don’t stimulate you? How would that affect you? What would those close to you see and notice, if you did more things that made you happy?
5. Is there perhaps one small change you could make right now, in order to make more time for activities that charge your battery?
6. Do some things feel impossible to change? Maybe they are, at least right now. Nonetheless, allow yourself to start with the thought: “If everything was possible, I would…” and see where that takes you.
I hope this matrix makes room for new thoughts about how you’d like to spend your time and perhaps even makes a first change possible. Life is short, so do more of what makes you happy!
Get the template here: