You can see what mine looks like in [[My Vision Board]]. A holistic way to rate your life, categorized by 10 key areas. Popularized by [[Ali Abdaal]] in [[Feel Good Productivity Application]]. ## Why I find it a powerful reminder to integrate [[Wholeness]] into your life. I personally enjoy it because it's a values-based form of planning that doesn't have a heavy emphasis on work and [[Hustle Culture]], and instead allows for [[Attention-centred productivity]]. I see it as a tangible and personalized implementation of [[Maslow's hierarchy of needs]] so we can meet our unique needs for [[Self-transcendence]]. For those who are a [[Polymath]] with various interests, a wheel of life can help promote balance instead of hyper-fixation with only a select few areas. ## What - At the start of the year, in our [[Yearly reviews]], we create an ideal wheel of life for the next year to act as our north star. - For each area, you choose a rating between 1-10 on how **satisfied** you want to be. It's subjective since everyone has different ideal visions of what a 10 looks like, and you could still be delighted despite not being close to that perfect vision of yourself. A good benchmark is to do an assessment of how satisfied you feel right now or from the past year. - But remember, this "ideal" wheel of life is only a compass. It's not something we're bound to for the rest of the year. [[Keep goals adjustable and short-term]]. Expect it to change as we better understand our current values and priorities. - Then, every week, we rate ourselves on these areas from 1-10 to see if we're staying true to the version of ourselves we are striving towards. - To make each rating more concrete, we can think of a [[12-Month Celebration]] you would want in each area. This is what we can quickly revisit and remember every day when revisiting [[My Vision Board]] - A way of framing it: - ![[Feel-Good Productivity#^ean1h9]] - To make consistent progress in these different areas, we can think of things to adopt like [[Keystone habits]] - To visualize this wheel, the vault uses [[Datacore]] and [[Obsidian Charts Plugin]] - During longer [[Periodic reviews]] like [[Monthly reviews]] and [[Quarterly reviews]], we will also have charts to visualize our average ratings for that period. This helps us reflect on where we are. ### Areas Aside from the three areas inside the three categories, there is also a 10th rating not inside the wheel, which is [[Joy]]. This is how enjoyable the process of growth has been, to appreciate [[Journey before destination]]. #### Health ##### Body Physical well-being, fitness, and overall health. This can include: - Physical activity - Diet - Sleep ##### Mind Mental health, cognitive well-being, and emotional balance. This can include: - Focus - Managing stress - Clarity of thought - Elements of [[Cognitive Behavioral Therapy]] — thoughts, behaviors, feelings ##### Soul Spiritual well-being and/or connection to meaning in life. This can include: - [[Connectedness]] - [[Wisdom]] - Inner tranquility - Mindfulness and presence - Emotional fulfillment (connectedness) - Time for meaningful practices - Authentic expression - Leads to purpose and connection ![[2024#^a4m9y1]] #### Work ##### Mission Fulfillment in your career or job, including alignment of your work with your life purpose, values, and personal mission. This can include: - Doing what you're good at - [[Ikigai]] - [[Purpose]] ##### Money Financial well-being, income, savings, and overall financial health. This can include: - Your feelings towards money – are you feeling financially secure? - Control and clarity over finances ##### Growth Personal and professional development and learning. This can include: - Setting and completing meaningful goals - Intellectual growth #### Relationships ##### Romance Connection and fulfillment in the realm of romance. ##### Family Quality of relationships with family members and the overall family dynamic. - support - communication ##### Friends Satisfaction and connection with friends, companionship, and social circles. ## How You can see an example ### Steps *Ideally done at the start of the year* - Rate where you currently are in each area from 1-10. - Rate where you want to be by the end of this year. - Think of a [[12-Month Celebration]] you would want to achieve by the end of this year that you want to work towards ### Usage - At the start of your day, you can visit [[My Vision Board]] to align your daily plan with your long-term intentions #### Tracking and iteration Two parts: - In my weekly review, I rate my progress from 1-10 based on how the week went - During my monthly reviews and quarterly reviews, based on the averages from my weekly reviews I can find time to think of modifications to my habits or ratings for each part of the wheel. #### Quantifying ratings There are different ways you can approach measuring these ratings: - Personal intuitive satisfaction - Ratings that are lower than expected can be used as a time for deeper reflection - Based on the general principles of the area I outlined in [[#What]] - Specifically in relation to your [[12-Month Celebration]] - I usually look at my habits for input consistency and progress. To learn more about setting that up, you can visit [[My habit tracking workflow]]. To facilitate these ratings, consider creating reflection prompts you can follow that you feel help best based on the above. ### Customizing your wheel of life areas Ever since version 2.5, the areas and configuration for charts rendered using Datacore are now reusable and adjustable from a single source of truth 🥳 You can go to [[My Wheel Of Life Config]] to edit the following fields via metadata or with the list input fields: - `AreasFields` for the metadata values the ratings will be stored inside the weekly note - `AreasLabels` for the displayed names you want to show when rendering the chart - `AreasColors` for the colors you want to use for each Your changes will apply to all existing charts (this may take a reload of the code block, note, or app). Although these are updated, you will still need to do manual changes: - Update the input fields and metadata in weekly reviews to be - Update the headers and input fields in the yearly review to match this ### Rendering the charts There are two main chart types: The ideal version that can be used anywhere, which gets the values from the current yearly note. ```` ```datacorejsx const { IdealWheelOfLifeChart } = await dc.require("Hidden/Datacore/Views/WheelOfLife.jsx"); function View() { return <IdealWheelOfLifeChart/> } return View ``` ```` The periodic version that gets the averages of weekly ratings based on the name of the current note (2025, 2025-Q1, 2025-M01). ```` ```datacorejsx const { PeriodicReviewWheelOfLifeChart } = await dc.require("Hidden/Datacore/Views/WheelOfLife.jsx"); function View() { return <PeriodicReviewWheelOfLifeChart/> } return View ``` ````