The wheel of life: what it is and how to do one

What are the eight areas of the wheel of life?

There's no single official list, and you should rename or swap any of these so they fit your life. A common set of eight is:

• Health: how you feel physically (energy, sleep, fitness, how you eat and move).
• Money: your sense of security and control around finances, not how much you have.
• Career or work: whether what you do with your days feels worthwhile and fairly rewarded.
• Relationships: your closest connections, such as a partner, or the people you're most intimate with.
• Family and friends: the wider circle of people you belong to and lean on.
• Personal growth: whether you're learning, stretching and becoming more yourself.
• Fun and recreation: how much room there is for play, rest and things you do purely because you enjoy them.
• Environment: the spaces you live and work in, and whether they lift you or drain you.

Eight is a guide, not a rule. You might add spirituality, contribution or romance as its own slice. Pick the areas that actually make up your life.

Wheel of life questions for each area

A number is easier to give when you've asked yourself a real question first. Before you score each area, try one or two of these:

• Health: How do I usually feel when I wake up? Is there something my body keeps telling me that I keep ignoring?
• Money: Do I know roughly where my money goes each month? How much do I worry about it at night?
• Career or work: Do I mostly dread Monday or not mind it? Do I feel fairly paid and fairly treated?
• Relationships: Who could I call at 2am? Do I feel close to my partner, or just alongside them?
• Family and friends: When did I last laugh with friends? Is there anyone I miss and haven't contacted?
• Personal growth: What have I learned this year? Am I stretching at all, or just getting through?
• Fun and recreation: When did I last do something purely because I enjoy it? Do I still know what that would be?
• Environment: Does my home feel like a place I can rest? Is there one corner that drains me every time I see it?

You don't need to write the answers down, though it helps. The point is to score from something real rather than a passing mood.

How to do a wheel of life, step by step

You can do this on paper or with the interactive worksheet below, which draws the wheel for you. Either way, the steps are the same:

1. 1Choose your areas. Start with the eight above, then rename, swap or add any so the wheel fits your life.
2. 2Score each area from one to ten. Ask how satisfied you feel with it right now, where one is very unsatisfied and ten is fully satisfied. Go with your first instinct.
3. 3Mark and join the scores. Put a dot on each segment at its score, counting out from the centre, then join the dots to see your shape.
4. 4Notice the overall shape. Is it roughly round, or badly out of balance? Neither is good or bad. It's just your starting point.
5. 5Find the gap that bothers you most. Not necessarily the lowest score, but the one with the most feeling attached to it. That's where your energy is.
6. 6Pick one area to nudge up by a single point. Ask what a six instead of a five would look like in practice, and what one small thing would start moving it.
7. 7Score it again in a few weeks. Watching the shape change over time tells you more than one perfect snapshot.

Resist the urge to fix every low score at once. That's the fast route to doing nothing. The interactive worksheet draws your wheel as you score it, and saves your result so you can compare it next time.

A wheel of life example

Here's an illustrative example (a made-up person, not real data). Sam is 46, works full time and cares for an elderly parent. Sam's scores are:

• Health: 5
• Money: 6
• Career or work: 7
• Relationships: 6
• Family and friends: 4
• Personal growth: 3
• Fun and recreation: 2
• Environment: 6

Plotted, the wheel bulges towards work and caves in on the fun and growth side. Fun is the lowest score, but when Sam asks which gap bothers them most, the honest answer is friends: they haven't seen anyone outside the family in months, and that's the one that brings a lump to the throat.

So Sam picks family and friends, and asks what a five instead of a four would look like. The answer is modest: one evening a month with an old friend. The first step is a single text this week to suggest a date. Sam doesn't touch the other seven areas for now. Interestingly, if the evening out happens, fun may rise a little too, because areas often lean on each other.

How to read your wheel

Once your wheel is drawn, look at it a few ways before you decide anything:

• The overall shape. A fairly round wheel, even a small one, means the areas feel roughly in step. A spiky wheel shows where your energy has gone and where it's been missing.
• The lowest two or three. These are candidates, not instructions. A low score you've made peace with may matter less than a middling one that hurts.
• The feeling, not just the number. Notice which score you felt a pang writing down. That's usually where you care most.
• The links. Some areas pull others up or down. Poor sleep can drag down health, work and relationships at once, so lifting one can lift several.
• The surprises. If an area scored higher than you expected, that's worth noticing too. It may be something you can lean on.

How to score it honestly

The whole value of the wheel comes from scoring it honestly, so a few things help:

• Rate how satisfied you feel, not how good it looks from outside or how good it "should" be. This is for you, not for show.
• Go with your first instinct. The number that pops up before you start reasoning is often more honest than one you argue yourself into.
• Don't compare areas to each other, or to other people. A six in health means how you feel about your health, full stop.
• There are no wrong scores and nothing to feel bad about. A low number isn't a failure. It's just information about where to look.

Common wheel of life mistakes

The wheel is simple, which makes it easy to use in ways that don't help. Watch for these:

• Trying to fix every low area at once. Eight new projects usually means none of them happens. Pick one.
• Scoring what it looks like rather than how it feels. A good salary can still feel like a four if it comes with constant worry.
• Aiming for all tens. A wheel of tens isn't realistic or necessary. Life is busy in different places at different times.
• Treating it as a verdict. A low score says where to look, not what kind of person you are.
• Doing it once and forgetting it. The value grows when you score it again and see what's actually changed.

When to use it

The wheel is most useful at the turning points: the start of a year, after a big change, or any time you feel stuck and can't name why. It's a thinking tool, not a verdict on your life. A low-scoring area is an invitation, not a judgement.

Once you know which area you want to move, the next step is turning it into a real plan: a specific goal, a when-and-where for the first action, and a step small enough to start this week. The when-and-where part is the one piece with solid research behind it: a 2006 review by Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, pooling 94 tests, found that people who planned when and where they would act followed through more often.

When to get more support

If several areas have been very low for a long time, and life feels heavy across the board rather than just out of balance, take that seriously. Low mood that won't lift, losing interest in things you used to enjoy, or struggling to get through the day are good reasons to talk to a GP, who can point you to the right support.

When things are heavy, you deserve real support, not just a worksheet.