How To Set Better Boundaries with Life Hot Spots

In my previous post, I wrote about How To Organize and Prioritize Your Life with Hot Spots.

In this post, I’ll show you how I apply Hot Spots to life.

Hot Spots are the categories I use for skilled living.

This is the big picture. It’s how I chunk up my overall time and energy.

There are certain areas in life that if I invest in, I get rewarded. On the other hand, if I ignore these categories, I get penalized.

The Life Hot Spots Framework (7 Categories for Life)

Here’s the starter set of categories I use for thinking about the areas in my life that need focus and energy:

Hot Spot	Description
Mind	The Mind bucket includes investing time to learn thinking techniques and keeping my mind sharp.
Body	The Body bucket includes investing time to keep my body in shape. It includes learning patterns and practices for health. The most important basics are eating, sleeping, and working out.
Emotions	The Emotions bucket includes investing time to keep my emotions healthy. It includes learning emotional intelligence and keeping my emotions in check. It’s about learning skills for feeling good.
Career	Career includes activities and projects for my job and my professional services.
Finance	includes investing time to learn patterns and practices for building and sustaining wealth.
Relationships	The Relationships bucket includes relationships at home, work, and life.
Fun	Fun includes investing time to for play and doing whatever I enjoy.

How To Set Boundaries Using the Life Hot Spots Framework

I set minimums and maximums for my hot spots in terms of time and energy. This keeps me from getting over-invested. I use my hot spots to set boundaries. For example, I set a max on career and a min on relationships, body, and fun.

Hot Spot	Boundaries (minimums and maximums)
Mind	–
Body	Min of 3 hrs.
Emotions	–
Career	Max of 50 hrs.
Finance	–
Relationships	Min of 8 hrs.
Fun	Min of 3 hrs.

So step one was deciding to spend no more than 50 hours each week on my career hot spot.

That forced me to bite off only what I could chew.

That’s how I started improving plate management and pushing back effectively. I can only spread my life force over so much.

The categories help support each other.

They can also work against each other.

Tickler List of Things to Think About in Each Hot Spot

Here are some simple prompts to help you think of Hot Spots in your life. The list is not complete or exhaustive and it’s not meant to be.

You may want to add some other Hot Spots for your life, such as spiritual or social.

The key is to have a simple heat map of what’s important for you.

It’s a high level way to remind you to spread your life force across your meaningful buckets.

It’s a way to more thoughtfully invest in yourself.

Hot Spot	Examples
Body	Dental Eating (Nutrition) Exercise (Sports, weightlifting, Pilates, yoga, martial arts … etc.) Health/ Medical (Disease, prevention, medicine, illness, hereditary or acquired diseases … etc.) Senses (Auditory, gustatory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and visual) Sleeping Stress Systems (Cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, excretory, immune, skin, muscular, nervous, reproductive, respiratory, skeletal)
Career	Activities Deliverables Development Expectations Outcomes Projects Relationships Roles Tasks
Emotions	Emotional Intelligence Feeling Good (Dealing with depression, loss, … etc.) Emotions (Acceptance, anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) Empathy Passion
Finance	Active Income Budget Business Credit Insurance Investment Nest Egg Passive Income Retirement Real Estate Savings Spending Taxes
Fun	Free-time Hobbies / Interests Indoor recreation Outdoor recreation Travel Vacations
Mind	Anxiety Clarity Creativity Critical Thinking Learning Mental Models Optimism Vision
Relationships	Family Work Other