Okay so I thought I’d share my journey through this. 

In this post I said that I’d written out the main streams of my life. That’s not to say that I’m 100% doing all these things all the time. It’s just that these are the vague areas of my life that I do or want to do because I think they are valuable to me.

The first attempt at these streams looked like this: 

• Work (9 to 5)
• Own work
• Health
• Social
• Spiritual
• Home
• Self-care
• Learning
• Relaxation
• Family
• Pushing boundaries
• Sex
• Organising
• Money

I then came across Cal Newport’s 4 C zones for focussing on enhancing the deep life: 

Community (family/friends etc)

Craft (quality work and leisure)

Constitution (health)

Contemplation (matters of the soul)

This made me realise I should probably bring my sub-streams into main streams so I can see the forest through the trees. However, his streams didn’t fully work for my sub-streams, and recognising that there’s no set in stone solution, I made my own (for better or worse).

I don’t know if Cal’s categories should cover all aspects of life, or just those that focussing on would enhance the deep life, but I wanted to be holistic about all areas of my life because there’s a whole section of my life which is just admin shit that needs to get done and will take up time, but I wouldn’t necessarily gives my life deep meaning. However, I want to make sure I’m tracking that properly i.e. making sure the list is complete.

I then further iterated the list above to my current situation: 

• Admin – Home (e.g. taking out bins, food shopping, washing clothes, washing dishes, cleaning)
• Admin – Money (e.g. looking after money, saving, investing, budgeting)
• Admin – Self-organisation (e.g. doing the work of working this out falls under here, to-do list, calendar management, review of all this)

• Craft – Skill development (e.g. I’m currently learning to drive, I want to enhance my communication skills)
• Craft – Own projects (e.g. doing the blog falls under here)
• Craft – Work (my 9 to 5 – takes up about 10 hours a day including commute, so pretty time-expensive)

• Health – Body (e.g. exercise, nutrition/eating, sex, posture, grooming)
• Health – Mind (e.g. relaxation, being in nature, meditation, journaling)

• Self-realisation – Learning/Reminding (e.g. reading spiritual books, solitude) 
• Self-realisation – Practicing (e.g embodying kindness, love and understanding in my day-to-day life)
• Self-realisation – Adventure/awe/beauty (e.g. doing things that make me feel a sense of adventure and awe)

• Team – Partner (e.g. how I’m spending time interacting with my significant other, planning for wedding)
• Team – Family (how I’m spending time interacting with family)
• Team – Friends (how I’m spending time interacting with friends)
• Team – Community (how I’m spending time interacting with friends)

You can draw up these streams how they fit your life e.g. if you have kids then you would have a separate stream, or multiple, for kids. If you have a particular hobby, then you have that as a specific stream.

I’m more or less happy with these streams for now. I think Self-realisation/Spiritual and Team/Community, sit predominantly in Health – Mind, but I think for me it’s better to separate them out as specific areas.

I am thinking that leisure, relaxation, self-care all fit into Health – Mind, but I’m not sure if I’m going to draw them out of that into a separate bucket. I’ve also got grooming (shaving, haircut, brush teeth, shower) under Health – Body, but not sure if that needs to go under Admin. In any case, I can iterate if the buckets don’t work how I need them to. 

Also some activities cross multiple categories, which is also fine. Just pick one that doesn’t seem off the mark.

Do the 80%, forget perfection.