The Wheel of Life: a ten-minute check on how your life is really going

The Wheel of Life is a coaching tool that asks you to score how satisfied you are with eight areas of your life, and then draws those scores as a wheel so you can see at a glance where the balance has slipped. It's traditionally credited to Paul J. Meyer, who founded the Success Motivation Institute in 1960, and most coaches use a version of it today. In PiViva it takes about ten minutes, and it's one of the kindest and most useful places to begin.

Why does life sometimes feel off when you can't say why?

Some weeks everything is technically fine. Work is busy but manageable, everyone at home is well, and the bills are paid, and yet there's a nagging sense that something isn't quite right.

When you can't put your finger on what's wrong, it's very natural to do more of whatever already seems to work. You put in a few more hours at the job you're good at, or a few more sessions at the sport you enjoy, and it feels productive and reassuring.

Meanwhile the part of your life that's actually running on empty gets no attention at all, simply because you haven't stopped to look at it. That might be your friendships, your health, or the fun you used to have before life got so full, and it tends to stay hidden until you give yourself a moment to look at the whole picture.

What is the Wheel of Life, and where did it come from?

The Wheel of Life divides a life into areas, such as work, money, health, relationships and fun, and asks how satisfied you are with each one today.

It's traditionally credited to Paul J. Meyer, an American who founded the Success Motivation Institute in 1960 and built a business teaching goal setting and personal development from Waco, Texas. There's no surviving document that pins the wheel to him, so it's fair to treat that as tradition. What is certain is that it has been a staple of coaching for decades, and if you've ever worked with a coach, there's a good chance you've filled one in.

The thinking behind it is simple and rather comforting: it's very hard to set sensible goals for a life you haven't looked at as a whole, and the wheel lets you do exactly that in a few minutes.

How do you use the Wheel of Life in PiViva?

You score each of the eight areas from one to five. There are no right or wrong answers, so it helps to give the score that's honest today, the one you'd say out loud to a good friend over a drink.

Two numbers come out of the exercise, and each tells you something different. The first is your Life Balance Index, which is the average of your eight scores and tells you how things are going overall. The second is your Balance Variance, which measures the spread between your scores and tells you something the average can hide. Two people might both average three, with one scoring three in every area and the other scoring a mixture of fives and ones, and those are two very different lives.

Then you pick one low area to work on, just one, for the next three months. This is where many of us trip up, because it's tempting to look at three low scores and try to fix them all by Friday. Choosing one gives it the attention it deserves, and the progress you make there often lifts the other areas along with it.

What if your wheel looks lopsided?

Most wheels do, and that's absolutely fine. A lopsided wheel is the useful result, since it shows you where a little care will make the biggest difference.

You can take your lowest area into Goal Setting and give it one clear goal. If you'd like the bigger picture for the year ahead, Yearly Vision uses the same eight areas, so the two sit together nicely.

It's worth retaking the wheel every quarter. PiViva keeps every version, so you can compare January with June and see what has moved. In 2016 Benjamin Harkin and his colleagues brought together 138 studies on monitoring progress, and found that checking how you're doing regularly makes it more likely that you'll reach your goals. The wheel gives you a gentle, regular check of that kind.

For many people, it's the natural place to start. Ten honest minutes with it can show you where your life is ready to grow, and that's often the beginning of real and lasting change.