Your career is only a part of your total life and thus must balance with your lifestyle and be congruent with your other areas of interest. It may happen that after looking more deeply at your lifestyle and life goals you will decide to make certain adjustments to your career path.

Consider the following questions:

• Would you like to incorporate some skills you have acquired from your extra curricular activities into your next job?
• What interests or studies would you like to pursue?
• What are your financial goals? What income do you need to meet your life goals?
• Are you a workaholic? How much time do you want to set aside for family, hobbies, relaxation?

Have a think about it...

There are 168 hours in a week of which around 53 hours are spent on sleep. The remaining time can be divided into the five broad components of any person’s life:

• Self-development: time spent on planned new learning activities of any kind
• Hobbies and Interests: activities you do for relaxation and enjoyment
• Paid work: all time spent working, work-related travel and commuting
• Family: the relationship aspects of family life
• Domestic work: all house maintenance activities such as cleaning, washing up, gardening etc

A proportion of these components relative to each other varies from person to person. Below is an example of possible balance among the five areas of one’s life.

Have a go! Determine your individual balance by completing the following exercise.

1. Draw a circle on a piece of paper and insert how you spend your time at present on weekly on monthly basis, or if you are not working, how you spent your time during your most recent employment. Identify areas that required most and least of your time.

2. Now, insert how you would like to spend your time in the next few years. Make sure that this reflects your priorities, values and life goals.

3. Compare the first circle with the second one and identify the actions you need to take to make the second circle a reality. Will the actions to support achieving your goals bring about this desired change?

4. Transfer the main findings of this exercise and aspects and goals of your life to your Career Map.