Measure What Matters: Your Values

Living a Meaningful Life

“Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence…” This is part of a beautiful poem written 5 centuries ago by a poet named Kalidasa! I find the poem both inspiring and a challenge—I mean, how does a person make “today” well lived?

I often wonder whether I’m living a full and meaningful life. And to be honest, there are days when I don’t think so. (Don’t get me wrong, there are many days that are glorious and purposeful).  

Of course, I’d like to live as full a life as possible so I have to ask myself the difficult question: Am I spending my time how I want to be living my life? Am I living a life that is authentic, meaningful and balanced?

To answer these questions, I had to think about how I might measure meaning and personal growth. Measuring meaning and personal growth—Really?

How I used to think about my time

As I reflect back over the years, I recall that in college I measured my week by how many hours I studied (not enough), how many miles I ran (too many), how many friends I saw (not enough) and what grades I made (could have been better).

How I think about my time now

Until recently,  I measured my week in hours worked (just about right), how many friends I’ve visited with and community activities I’ve participated in (not enough), how many creative projects I’m involved in (also not enough) and how much time I’ve spent with my family (just about right). While tracking my time by activities works, it somehow misses something more significant—I am not thinking about if my activities reflect my values. And that is what I want to do.

How I now measure what I value

So to help me “see” if how I’m spending my time reflects what I value, I’ve identified 6 different values that I can measure and track.

This is how I do it: Each week I review how I’ve spent my time and attach a “value label” to each. Instead of labeling my activities by time (e.g., how much time I’ve spent at the gym), I now make a judgment about whether that activity, say, added to my wellbeing. If so, I put that into the “Added to My Wellbeing” slice of the pie. In this way, slices of the pie represent different ways I live my values. 

At the end of a week, I can then evaluate if the way I’m spending time is how I truly how I want to be spending my life.  

For example, I tried Karaoke. For me, I’ll put that under “Don’t intend to do that again!” However, going walking in the morning with my dog goes into the category of “Added to My Wellbeing.”

While you don’t see any specific activity there, such as going to the gym or reading, I know where they go—going to the gym is in the theme of “Added to My Wellbeing,” and reading is in the theme of “Growth or Challenging.”

But What’s the real benefit to doing this?

The real benefit of doing this is to see activities as more than activities. Yes, going to the gym is an activity that can be counted. But the real benefit of going to the gym is improving my wellbeing, which is the actual motivation behind going to the gym in the first place.

Since there is only so much time in a day tracking time in this manner helps me decide if I’ve got the pie chart I want to have. It helps me see if I need to kick-out some activity in order to make room for another that actually helps me make today well lived.

So, what’s your Life's Pie Chart look like?

About the author: Recognized by LinkedIn as a "Top Voice" in Health Care in 2015, author Julie Kliger is passionate about improving health care. She is a consultant, author and speaker. She specializes in healthcare quality, organizational change and improvement.