A psychologist once asked me to imagine my life as a pie made up of different segments. For example, segments that represent how much time and energy I was spending on work, friends and family, leisure time etc. What would the ideal balance of these segments look like and how could I achieve that balance?

She asked me this at a time when work had almost completely taken over, to the exclusion of other aspects of my life, without me really noticing. You can read about the impact this had on me in my blog post “From anxiety to learning about resilience”.

Even though I am now more conscious of keeping the different areas of my life in balance, I still find that work and career is the one segment which likes to start to take over, shrinking the other slices.

I think I am now able to spot when this is happening more quickly than before. However, it was an observation my husband made that I had recently been spending a lot of time upstairs on the computer in the evenings which triggered me to reassess what my pie was looking like. Had my focus narrowed too much so that one segment was starting to take over again? Were some pieces getting squeezed out or was it a question of tweaking when I was choosing to do different things?

I recently quit my job to give me the time and energy to work out what I want to do next in my career. It took a while to adjust to the complete freedom and the lack of structure in how I spend my time. I was questioning how I was choosing to spend my time and feeling guilty about what I was choosing not to do.

I hadn’t realised it at the time, but looking back I can see that I needed a break from work and so I was choosing to make headway in decluttering and cleaning the house and getting on top of domestic tasks. I did want to use some of my time to progress the jobs on the house that had been put off for years. Clearing the study so I could actually see the desk again would also enable me to be more productive when I did come to focus on work. However, the guilt came from not focusing on my career straight away, which is interesting as that is the segment which usually does take over.

I would actually like to split the career segment into its own pie by developing a portfolio career rather than having one full-time job. After a couple of months, I am feeling more energised to focus on career development and I am exploring several avenues. Hence spending more time on the computer in the evenings.

Career changing in quite a dramatic way brings a whole host of different emotions and thought patterns. However, while I have included fun as a leisure and hobby section in the pie below, I am actually now having fun in the career segment too!

What does your pie look like at the moment; how are you spending your time, where is your focus and energy?

Are you happy with the size of each segment?

If not, what could you do to adjust the balance?

Blog post photograph: fahrwasser / stock.adobe.com

• Finding fulfilment