Design Your Life: A Practical Guide to Doing a Life Audit

Hi there,

What’s the Story?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how easy it is to drift.

One busy week blends into the next, projects pile up, messages stack, and suddenly months have passed without us really asking:

Is my life actually moving in the direction I want?

This week on the Changing Minds Podcast, I did something different. Instead of teaching more concepts, I walked you through a full life audit: money, time, health, relationships, and where your attention goes.

This newsletter gives you the written version: a set of questions and simple frameworks you can use to reset your life, get honest with yourself, and decide what really matters now.

If you want a guided version, you can pause and journal along with; you can listen to the full episode here.

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Design Your Life: A Practical Guide to Doing a Life Audit

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes 14 seconds

Most of us don’t end up with the life we designed. We end up with the life we’ve been busy in.

A life audit is a structured pause. It’s you stepping out of the chaos for a moment and asking:

Where am I now?
Where do I actually want to be
What needs to change today

Instead of vague reflection, a life audit is organised into clear areas and questions. In this edition, we’ll walk through five core domains: money, time, health, relationships, and attention—and a simple decision framework you can apply to each one.

1. Your Money: Seeing the Full Picture

Money may not be the most important part of life, but it’s one of the easiest to measure, and it quietly shapes almost everything else.

Start with clarity:

How much am I earning?
Yearly, monthly, and every couple of weeks.
How much am I spending?
Again: yearly, monthly, and biweekly.
Where is it going?
Groceries, rent or mortgage, subscriptions, transport, eating out, random impulse buys, “I-don’t-even-remember” categories.
How much are you saving and investing?
Biweekly, monthly, yearly.

Don’t fix yet. Just see. A life audit begins with an honest snapshot, even if you don’t love what you see.

Then ask possibility questions:

How might I earn more?
How might I spend less—without making life miserable?
How might I save or invest more?

You’re not committing yet. You’re brainstorming.

Finally, use the core decision framework:

What do I need to start doing with money?
What do I need to stop doing completely?
What do I need to do more of?
What do I need to do less of?
What do I need to do better?
What do I need to keep doing?

And then the big one:

What’s most important now?

If there were one financial change that would make a meaningful difference, what would it be?

2. Your Time: The Weekly Reality Check

We spend money. We also spend weeks. A time audit asks: What does my life actually look like on the calendar?

Map three kinds of weeks:

Typical week – your normal working days and evenings.
Occasional week – travel weeks, disrupted schedules, unusual commitments.
Holiday/vacation week – when you’re “off.”

For each, write down how your days actually go. Not how you wish they were, but how they are.

Then design your ideal versions of those same weeks:

What would a great Monday look like?
How would I structure evenings so I don’t just collapse into the couch?
What would a satisfying weekend actually include?

Now apply the same framework:

What do I need to start doing with my time?
What do I need to stop doing that’s wasting it?
What do I need to do more of (deep work, rest, connection)?
What do I need to do less of (doom-scrolling, pointless meetings)?
What do I need to do better (planning, batching, saying no)?
What do I need to keep doing because it’s working?

And again: What’s most important now?

Maybe it’s a boundary. Maybe it’s a calendar change. Maybe it’s one blocked-off hour.

3. Your Health: Energy as a Metric

If money and time are the structure, health is the fuel.

Ask yourself:

How fit am I right now (0–100)?
How healthy am I?
How flexible am I?
How much energy do I have on an average day?

Then get specific:

How well am I sleeping?
(Not just how long, but how good does it feel?)
How much am I moving during the day—not just workouts, but steps, breaks, walks?
How often am I exercising, and what kind of exercise am I doing?
How well am I eating, honestly?
How healthy are my habits around alcohol, smoking, or other substances?

Once again:

What do I need to start doing for my health?
What do I need to stop doing that clearly harms it?
What do I need to do more of (sleep, movement, lifting, stretching)?
What do I need to do less of (junk food, late nights, extra drinks)?
What do I need to do better (form, consistency, planning meals)?
What do I need to keep doing because it’s serving me?

Then ask:

What’s the single most important health change I can make this month?

4. Your Relationships: Who’s Around You?

Your nervous system is shaped by the people you’re around.

Reflect on:

What are my relationships like overall—family, friends, partner, colleagues?
How much time do I spend with people I genuinely like?
How much time do I spend with people who drain me?
How well do I communicate with the most important people in my life?

Then:

How could I spend more time with people who energize me?
How could I spend less time with people who constantly pull me down?
How could I improve the quality of the time we spend together?

And again, the same structure: start, stop, more, less, better, keep—then what’s most important now for your relationships?

5. Your Attention: The Invisible Driver

Finally, where does your attention go?

Ask:

On an average day, what do I feel most of the time?
What would I like to feel more of?
When I’m online, what am I actually paying attention to?
News? Arguments? Comedy? Learning? Comparison?
What do I read, watch, and listen to most?
How does all of that make me feel afterwards?

Then flip it: