Visualizing “Life Balance” as Multiple Blocks of Time

There was a time where I felt my life was missing something. I wasn’t sure exactly what that was, but I had an idea of what I did want, and I knew that “happiness” might be related to discovering what they were.

To that end, I created a series of experimental forms: The Day Grid Balancer (DGB) to explore the possibility that life balance might be measurable. Unlike my other forms, the source files are released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA to encourage community remixing.

How to Use It

The DGB has two versions, each designed to be used over the course of a week. Every day, you keep track of things you did related to one of 8 areas of your life.

There is no set way of using these forms, as they are provided so other people can mix their own version. The form as-offered has places to write down what you want to do.

• DGB01 works like a weekly planner. Fill-in the bubbles when you spend some time on one of the balance areas.
• DGB02 works like a weekly to-do list. Fill-in a bubble whenever you get something done on the list according to the day.

You may have a better sense whether you were hitting all your life goals at the end of the week.

You’re encouraged to download the PDF file and modify it.

See? (click the picture below to enlarge it)

If you have Adobe Illustrator that’s probably the easiest way to edit. This PDF is unlocked and retains all the editable text and vector objects to play with. You can also use a PDF reader to examine (and perhaps edit) the text.

More Information

In the first release, some of the more genteel readers of this blog took exception to the language. For general release I’ve substituted the words “DANG” and “DARN” for the original phrasing.

If you prefer the original wording, you can download the following ZIP archive of all 4 variations: Semi-Explicit Language Versions, A4 and US Letter Color

The first version of this form appeared in May 2009. You can read the original post for insight into the design. Enjoy!