Four Spaces

Morning friend.

I have had the privilege of sitting beside a lot of very different people in my life.

Successful founders and business leaders.

Sports stars whose lives have been built around performance.

Covert agents and spies carrying parts of themselves very few people will ever see.

People who knew they had only weeks left to live.

Children walking onto a Jiu Jitsu mat for the first time and beginning to discover themselves.

Friends.

My own family.

And, of course, the person I have spent the most time with.

Myself.

Living a fairly unconventional life has probably required me to ask myself some difficult questions more often than most.

I left home young and joined the military.

I spent half of my life without anyone knowing who I was, then walked away from that covert career at the top of my game.

I spent 46 days alone at sea with nowhere to go, nobody to distract me and very little opportunity to hide from myself.

What felt right at one stage of my life would have felt completely wrong at another.

But underneath many of the conversations I have had with other people, and many of the conversations I have had with myself, sits one fundamental question.

Does the life I am actually living look anything like the life I want?

I think most of us know what matters to us.

Family.

Health.

Work.

Friendship.

Purpose.

Adventure.

The harder question is whether the way we spend our finite time, energy and attention reflects any of it.

A few years ago, I started looking for a simple way to make that visible.

I drew four circles on a piece of paper.

I called them:

HOME.

WORK.

SELF.

OTHERS.

Home is your closest family unit.

Work is whatever you do professionally.

Self is the part of your life that exists entirely for you.

Training. Reading. Thinking. Resting. Whatever fills you back up.

Others is everything outside those first three.

Friends. Extended family. Community. Service.

Then imagine you have twenty chips.

Those chips represent all of the time, energy and attention you have available over a given period.

A day.

A week.

A year.

Twenty chips.

That is all you get.

Now place them into the four spaces according to where your life has actually gone.

Not where you think they should go.

Not where you tell people they go.

Where they really went.

You might be sitting at the dinner table with your family while your mind is still answering emails.

Your body is in Home.

Your chip is in Work.

Be honest.

Perhaps your four spaces look like this:

HOME — 4

WORK — 13

SELF — 1

OTHERS — 2

There is nothing automatically wrong with that.

That matters.

This is not a test.

There is no perfect score.

I am not interested in something called work-life balance where every circle somehow gets five chips and everybody goes home happy.

Life doesn't work like that.

Sometimes Work demands more from us.

Sometimes Home does.

There will be times when a friend, parent or someone in our community needs us and Others consumes almost everything we have left.

There may even be periods when we knowingly put chips somewhere we would rather not.

That is life.

What matters is knowing.

Because there is a difference between making a conscious sacrifice for a season and waking up years later to discover that a space you value has quietly been living on scraps.

Balance I have no time for.

I am interested in harmony.

That sense that the important parts of your life are sitting roughly where you want them.

That things feel right.

That there is room for real joy.

Now take another piece of paper.

Draw the same four circles again.

You still have twenty chips.

But this time imagine your life a year from now.

Not somebody else's idea of a good life.

The life that would feel right to you.

If you could choose how your time, energy and attention were being spent, where would you place the chips?

Do it now, before you read on.

The two pictures might look very similar.

If they do, that is useful information.

They might not.

I have watched people stop dead when they see the difference.

Someone who tells me their family is the most important thing in their world discovers that Home has been getting three chips.

Someone exhausted by the weight of life realises Self has been getting none.

Someone who thought they needed a new job discovers that Work isn't actually the problem at all.

Sometimes what feels wrong becomes obvious when you can finally see it.

And the most important part of the exercise isn't either picture.

It is the space between them.

If Self is at one today and you want it at four, something needs to change.

If Home needs another three, those chips have to come from somewhere.

If Work is at fourteen and you want it at eight, saying you want to work less changes nothing.

Six chips need a new home.

Because there is one rule you cannot negotiate with in life.

You cannot create a twenty-first chip.

More hours are not coming.

Your attention is not infinite.

Neither is your energy.

Changing your life therefore isn't always about adding something.

Often it is about choosing what receives less.

That is where intentions become important.

Where goals become useful.

Not goals created because January arrived or somebody on the internet told you to dream bigger.

Real goals that close the distance between the life you are living now and the life you have just said you want.

We can get into how I do that another week.

For now, four circles and some honesty are enough.

Let's take a moment to debrief together:

Where are your twenty chips today?

And does that picture look anything like the life you say you want?

Your mission right now:

Take ten minutes.

Draw your Four Spaces.

Allocate twenty chips honestly across your life as it is now by writing a number in each space.

Then draw them again for the life you would choose a year from today.

Look at the difference.

Don't judge it.

Just notice where the biggest gap sits.

That space is trying to tell you something.

That's enough for now.

More next Sunday.

Mike

Hold the Line · Do the Hard Things