How To Review Your Success in Work and Life

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus

This is an exercise in building self-awareness to identify opportunities for your own personal growth and greatness.

Are you on track with your work and life?

That depends on what you want to accomplish, what experiences you want to create, and what you’re optimizing for.

The trick is to figure out a set of questions that help you check your performance in a way that woks for you.

A proven practice is to use questions that help you reflect on where you are vs. where you want to be. 

Questions are effective because they direct your attention and they help you add clarity and focus.

To get you started, I pulled together a set of examples you can use to check your performance. 

Some of these may work better for you than others.

How Clayton Christensen Measure a Life

Before we take a tour of different lenses to evaluate your work and life, I want to take a moment to step back and take a big picture view.

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and author, has a simple philosophy on how he measures his life:

“…by the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.”

In a world of confusion, chaos, and complexity, what a simple, yet profound view.

Here are more thoughts on how to measure a life.

You’re Worth It

Another important concept to keep in mind is that if you wan to feel worthy, you have to choose you.

In an epic talk by Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability, Brown revealed what separates the people that have a strong sense of love and belonging from those that don’t.

Here is how Brown put it:

“There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggled for it …

and that was that people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging. 

That’s it. 

They believe they’re worthy.”

If you haven’t already flipped that switch, that is really where to start your work.

It’s hard to succeed if you fight yourself, and why fight yourself if one of the world’s best researchers figured out the only difference from those that feel worthy and those that don’t is a belief.

You can choose that belief, and don’t let anybody, including yourself, stop you.

Keep a Balanced Scoreboard

Another thing to keep in mind when you rate yourself in anything is to keep a balanced perspective.

Long ago, Tony Robbins realized that when people lose perspective, they can get so down on themselves or so low to even consider taking their life.

Tony saved many lives by helping people refocus on what they have in their life and what they’ve done right.

Try the Steve Jobs Test

Steve Jobs asked himself a simple, but cutting question each morning:

“‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’

If the Answer is ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

While you may not find your answer or your calling right away, at least you can start to pay attention to little nudges toward your dent in the universe.

7 Categories to Rate Your Life (the Life Hot Spots Framework)

Review your life with the Life Hot Spots Framework.

You can identify opportunities for improvement in life with the Life Hot Spots Framework.

Rate each of these on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is absolutely awesome:

1. Mind
2. Body
3. Career
4. Emotions
5. Relationships
6. Financial
7. Fun

You simply ask yourself, “Where am I on a scale of 1-10 in terms of my mind?”, “Where am I on a scale of 1-10 in terms of my body?”, etc.

This will give you a simple, balcony view of areas that might need more of your energy and focus.

Keep in mind these are your scores for you, simply to help you figure out where you might want to invest.

For more information on this approach, see the The Life Hot Spots Framework.

10 Categories to Rate Your Life According to Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins recommends rating your life using 10 categories.

Rate each of these on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is absolutely awesome:

1. Physically
2. Mentally
3. Emotionally
4. Attractiveness
5. Relationships
6. Living Environment
7. Socially
8. Spiritually
9. Career
10. Financially

Note that when it comes to attractiveness, it’s ultimately an energy thing.

You’ll notice that you’ll attract in your life a similar kind of energy that you generate in your life.

10 Common Challenges According to Stephen Covey

According to Stephen Covey, these are the 10 challenges that many people tend to report on and work on:

1. Finance, Money
2. Life balance, not enough time
3. Health
4. Relationships – spouse, child/teen, friend
5. Raising and disciplining children
6. Self-doubt
7. Uncertainty, change
8. Lack of skills, education
9. Lack of meaning
10. Lack of peace

Again, think of these categories or buckets simply as a lens for self-awareness.

If they aren’t relevant for you, then skip them.

You might find that the right lens or category might unlock an opportunity for improvement.

12 Categories to Rate Your Life According to Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina recommends rating your life using 12 categories.

Rate each of these on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is absolutely awesome:

1. Work
2. Financial
3. Relationship
4. Home & Family
5. Physical Health
6. Mental
7. Social
8. Emotional
9. Spiritual
10. Character
11. Contribution
12. Fun & Adventure

For more on this approach, see Work from Your Strengths.  Train Up Your Weaknesses (Steve Pavlina.com)

Ask Yourself 4 Questions Whether You are on Track at Work?

Here are a few simple questions to check whether you are on track at work:

1. Do I have autonomy?
2. Do I have interesting challenges?
3. Do I see a clear relationship between my effort and reward?
4. Do I work with people I like?

Review Your Work with the Success at Work Framework.

You can identify opportunities to improve your work with the Success at Work Framework.

By asking questions in the following buckets, you can find areas that need work or find sticking points:

1. Thinking / Feeling
2. Situation
3. Time / Task Management
4. Domain Knowledge
5. Strategies / Approaches
6. Relationships

For example questions, see The Success at Work Framework.

Michael Watkins on Checking Whether You’re On Track in a New Job

In his book, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins suggests diagnosing yourself against the following core challenges when you start a new job:

1. Promote Yourself – Are you adopting the right mind-set for your new job and letting go of the past?
2. Accelerate your learning – Are you figuring out what you need to learn, from whom to learn it, and how to speed up the learning process?
3. Match strategy to situation – Are you diagnosing the type of transition you are facing and the implications for what to do and what not to do?
4. Secure early wins – Are you focusing on the vital priorities that advance long-term goals and build short-term momentum?
5. Negotiate success – Are you building you relationships with your new boss, managing expectations, and marshaling the resources you need?
6. Achieve alignment – Are you identifying and fixing frustrating misalignments of strategy, structure, systems, and skills?
7. Build your team – Are you assessing, restructuring, and aligning your team to leverage what you are trying to accomplish?
8. Create coalitions – Are you building a base of internal and external support for your initiatives so you are not pushing rocks uphill?

Michael Watkins on Checking Your Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is your belief about your ability to influence events that affect your life. Your self-efficacy beliefs determine how you think, feel, motivate yourself, and behave.

In The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins shares ways to build your foundation for self-efficacy.

Pillar 1: Adopting Success Strategies

1. Promote yourself.
2. Accelerate your learning.
3. Match strategy to situation.
4. Secure early wins.
5. Negotiate success.
6. Achieve alignment.
7. Build your team.
8. Create coalitions.

Pillar 2: Enforcing Personal Disciplines

1. Plan to plan.
2. Judiciously defer commitment.
3. Set aside time for the hard work.
4. Go to the balcony.
5. Focus on influence process design.
6. Check in with yourself.
7. Recognize when to quit.

Pillar 3: Building Your Support System

1. Assert control locally.
2. Stabilize the home front.
3. Build your advice and counsel network.

Use Your Insight for Your Personal Growth and Greatness

You now have several lenses to look more deeply into the facets and categories of your work and life.

One of the most important points to ponder during your reflection is:

Who do you want to become?

As you create clarity around what a better version of you might be, this is your chance to shake off whatever shackles you feel are holding you back.

This is your chance to kiss your limiting beliefs bub-bye and to come to terms with who you are and who you want to become.

It’s a journey of self-discovery to make sure you aren’t simply becoming your parents’ expectations or your friends’ expectations or society’s expectations.

As Dr. Suess put it:

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Do you.

Choose Self-Acceptance AND Personal Growth

You can accept yourself as you are while working on your personal growth.

Actually, let’s put it more bluntly:

If you don’t fully accept yourself as you are, while working on your personal growth, you’re doing it wrong!

Steve Pavlina said it best:

“I believe most people simply compromise. They don’t fully accept themselves as they are, but nor are they fully committed to lifelong growth.

I think that’s a lame solution though.

Why not have both? Why not fully accept yourself as you are and also be totally committed to lifelong growth?

Can’t you enjoy both?”

Here’s to your path of personal growth and greatness coupled with deep self-awareness and self-acceptance, warts and all.

You Might Also Like

8 Questions to Check If You’re on Track as a New Leader
The 3 Pillars for Self-Efficacy
The Life Hot Spots Framework
The Success at Work Framework