You must have seen talk about life audits all over the internet. I’ve done some form of a life audit for the past 6 years and called it my “Personal Progress Report”. This process got me through medical school, my first job, and helped me manage my expectations when it came to my mental health. But what is a life audit? In this article I’ll explain what it is, the benefits of doing one, and the different ways you can do your own to maximise your emotional well-being and success.
No time to read the whole post? Read the summary here.
Do a Life Audit to Reset Before New Beginnings
Table of Contents
What is a Life Audit?
A life audit is a structured way of evaluating our lives. The purpose of a life audit is to reflect on our present circumstances, set new intentions, renew old ones, and learn how to move forward. It’s an attempt to live a life that prioritises what is important to us.
It helps us understand ourselves better and make good choices about our future. It isn’t only about fixing problems. It’s also a chance to be proud of what we’ve done so far. It helps us learn from the past to plan better for the future.
What are the Benefits of Doing a Life Audit?
Save Energy For What Matters
Whether we like it or not, we have a limited amount of energy each day. There are some responsibilities we cannot escape from and these usually take up a lot of that energy. What remains has to be carefully spread out between our relationships, goals and free time. A life audit helps us figure out where most of our energy is going. Is it going to the right thing?
If we’re using most of our energy doing work we hate or spending time with people who weigh us down, it might be time to redistribute that energy to something more fulfilling.
Regain control
If we don’t pay close attention to the road, it’s easy to veer off course. Life works in the same way. Many times, we find ourselves going through the motions without thinking about it much. This may be because we’re too busy to pause or because we think we can’t change anything.
When we do a life audit, we get a chance to stop and look at where we are in life. How close are we to our destination? Are we spending enough time taking in the view?
A life audit helps us view life at different angles and figure out where to head next. It puts you back in charge of your life course.
Practice Graditude
As I mentioned earlier, a life audit is an opportunity for self-reflection. It gives us a chance to look back at our accomplishments, giving our self-esteem a boost. Beyond just achievements, it also provides time for us to appreciate what we have and the people we were fortunate enough to spend time with. It helps us reaffirm what brings us joy and lets us know to incorporate more of that into our lives. It makes such what we value aligns with what we do.
Strategise
Self-reflection allows us to clarify our goals. We may have been working on something for a while and getting nowhere. Why might that be? A life audit helps us review our goals and identify areas we need to improve. During a life audit, we collect a lot of information about ourselves and we can use this to develop a strategy to ensure personal growth and success.
How to do a Life Audit
Doing a life audit isn’t an exact science, and methods vary depending on who you ask. I’ll tell you about how I’ve been doing mine for the past 6 years. The important thing is to figure out what works for you. Grab a pen and a notebook and let’s begin.
Step 1: Self-reflection
To understand where you are and how you got here, as well as to set your future intentions, you need to understand your values. Reflecting on your values can give you insight into the differences between what you think you value and what your actions or circumstances reveal about what you truly value. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What gets me out of bed in the morning?
- Am I proud of the things I do in my daily life?
- What would my ideal life look like, if I had no restrictions?
- What is the best version of myself I can picture 5 years from now?
Spend a few minutes writing down the answers to these questions before you move on to the next step.
Step 2: The Grand To-Do List
The grand to-do list was a way for me to dream big on paper – a sort of semi-structured braindump to get myself to imagine all the possibilies. My grand to-do list process has two components:
Categorise your life
Create a mindmap. Having reviewed your values, what are the areas of your life you think you should pay the most attention to? This could be work, academia, hobbies, health, relationships, etc. Whatever comes to mind, write it as a heading in your mindmap.
What falls under each of those headings? For example, your “health” heading might include going to the gym, and improving your diet. Here are some ideas to fill out the space under your headings:
- Past, present and future goals
- Previous hobbies or things you’ve given up that you’d like to try again
- Skills you want to build on
- Projects that you want to take on (but maybe haven’t been confident enough to)
Fill out your mindmap with everything that comes to mind. The more ridiculous the better. Add things that to you seem completely unrealistic or out of reach. Here’s a generic example to get you started:
Be as detailed as possible. This will help you later on in the process.
Evaluate each Category of your life
Take a second to make a mindmap or list of your own. Now answer the following questions:
- How satified are you in each of aspect of your life? Give each of your categories a rating.
- How important are each of the items on your list. Don’t think too hard about what is practical. Focus more on how it makes you feel.
- Are your past goals still relevant, or have your dreams and values changed? Delete goals that no longer align with what you want.
- Look at your remaining goals. Edit them to align with your values. Be detailed in your descriptions.
Step 3: Mental Inventory: I Should, I Want
The mental inventory is something I picked up from “The Bullet Journal Method” by Ryder Caroll. It’s a method to declutter your mind and understand how you are using your time. Start a new page and divide it into 3 colomns:
- What I AM doing
- What I SHOULD be doing
- What I WANT to be doing
Categorise your grand to-do list items into each category. There will be some things on your list that are inescapable, like doing taxes or laundry. However, there are things in your “I am doing” column that you probably don’t want to be doing. How can you change you change that? How many items in your “Should” column are only there because of the expectations of others?
Cross off the things in each column that no longer serve you. There are some things you want to be doing that seem impossible right now. The next step shows you what to do with those.
Step 4: Obstacles and Barriers
There’s a reason why you haven’t reached your biggest dreams. Perhaps they seemed too far-fetched, and you never gave them a shot. But more often than not, it’s because something was blocking your path. Throughout life, we come across many challenges, and it’s up to us to decide if it’s worth trying to overcome them or not. Here are some common obstacles or barriers you might face that could stand in the way of your goal.
- A lack of skill or knowledge
- Financial barriers
- Low self-esteem or confidence
- Procrastination
Make a list of obstacles you have to achieving your goals. Take a moment to think about (a) whether its worth the effort of trying to work past them and (b) how you might be able to do that. I wrote an article about how to make your goals happen, and in it I detail some ways to move past your obstacles. You can read it here.
With whatever is left on your list, move on to the next step.
Step 5: Define your goals, Build your systems
By now you have a list of goals that are very important to you. A list of goals you think could change your life in small, and maybe in big ways. That’s where most people stop. They put away their notebooks and forget all about it. Or worse, they let those goals exist only in daydreams. But, this is the point where the hard work comes in. I’ll use an example to illustrate.
Say that your goal is to learn the guitar. That is a vague goal. The SMART tool for setting goals is useful here. By when do you want to be able to play? How will you measeure your progress? Is your goal to play your favourite songs or join a band? Look at each goal on your list and define them according to the SMART framework.
Next, you need to identify some milestones. How will you measure your progress? For example, it could be something like, “I want to play my three favorite songs from my beginner’s songbook in three months.” To reach this first milestone, how much daily practice will you require? What specific skills do you need to learn, and where can you acquire them? This framework is effective for tackling any of your goals. Create a plan to incorporate each step toward your goal into your daily routine.
For a more comprehensive step-by-step guide on how to make your goals a reality, you can check out this article.
Summary
A life audit is a structured way of evaluating your life, reflecting on present circumstances, setting intentions, and renewing old ones.
The benefits of a life audit include:
- Saving energy for what matters
- Regaining control of your life course
- Practicing gratitude
- Strategizing for personal growth and success.
The process outlined in this article is one I’ve used and adapted over several years from different sources. It includes the following steps:
- Self-reflection,
- Creating a grand to-do list by putting your life into categories
- Creating a mental inventory of things you are, should be and want to be doing
- Identifying obstacles and barriers
- Defining goals with the SMART framework. The importance of setting milestones and building systems to achieve goals is emphasized. The article encourages readers to make their goals a reality by incorporating them into their daily routines.
Conclusion
The method I’ve described above isn’t for everyone, but it is a good starting place to figure out what could work for you. Self-reflection is the basis of a life audit and without it, we’d all find ourselves going in circles. I hope that you’ve found this piece insightful. Leave a comment if this has helped you in any way or if you have your own methods that work better for you.