Drawing Circles and Finding Balance

Venn Diagrams are often overlooked. Most of us look at them as a joke or meme, either as two unconnected circles or overlapping circles about sci-fi monsters. You don't see them much in everyday life as you might see pie charts. If we took Venn Diagrams seriously and looked at them from a different angle, we might see a tool to help us find balance, that holy grail of modern life.

 When we try to find balance in our lives we usually start by listing activities and topics at the same level. For instance, "spending time with family" is an activity (spending time) and a topic (family). We are not defining how that time should be spent, only that we want time to spend. The same is true with "Me" activities. If you're like me, you want to find time to exercise more and take care of your health, so that's another circle. And of course there's a work circle and for many of us, it is the dominate circle.

So where does the Venn Diagram fit in to all of this? Change your starting point from a list to themes such as: self, family, and professional. Then start listing activities that are clearly defined.

You will start to have a better way of defining what is important to you. You might also find ways to overlap activities. For instance, in the example above "Exercise more", "Play with the kids", and "Help MK with soccer practice" - all these have a similar goal which is exercise. That overlap is the Venn Diagram. Yes, I admit, the example was overly simplistic, but that is the point! 

Your activities should be simple bullet points under the larger theme. Saying that you want to be "happy" is wonderful, but if you don’t define it, you won't move in that direction. There are only 24 hours in a day that each of us have. Rather than looking at one list of activities that are dis-joined from one another; breaking down your goals into themes and then simplistic lists can help you accomplish balance in your life.