How am I showing up?

I've spent a lot of my life around ambitious people. I've also spent a lot of time being ambitious myself.

We measure businesses. We measure careers. We measure money. We measure whether somebody got the promotion, built the company, bought the house or achieved whatever they said they were going to achieve.

But I don't remember many people sitting down and asking themselves whether they're being a good son.

Or a good father. Or a good sister. Or friend. Or partner.

And perhaps more importantly, what does good actually mean to the person on the other side of that relationship?

I've had conversations with people who are doing extremely well in one part of their life and, when you start asking about everything else, they realise something has quietly disappeared. They haven't seen their friends. They rarely call their parents. They are permanently working. They have put almost all of themselves into a relationship. Or they spend so much time looking after everybody else that there isn't much of them left.

I don't think the answer is to try to become a ten out of ten at everything. You can't. There are only so many hours in a week and only so much attention you can genuinely give.

The more interesting question is whether where you're putting that attention reflects the life you actually want.

And there is another side to this. Sometimes improving your life isn't about adding anything. It might be about stopping something. A commitment you no longer care about. A relationship you maintain almost entirely through guilt. A project that has been going nowhere for years. People who repeatedly take much more from you than they give. Or simply a habit that is consuming hours of your life without you ever consciously choosing it.

That doesn't mean cutting everybody off the moment they become difficult. Relationships have difficult periods. Families have responsibilities. People need us. Sometimes we need to give more than we receive.

But occasionally you need to look at your life from above and ask: where is all of me actually going?

That's what I want this exercise to help you see.

There is a comforting idea that with enough organisation we can fit everything in. A successful career. A close relationship. Present parenting. Good friendships. Family. Exercise. Learning. Community. Travel. Rest. And somehow a little time for ourselves.

Real life doesn't work quite like that.

Every yes occupies time that cannot be spent somewhere else. Every relationship needs some degree of attention if it is going to remain a relationship. Every responsibility takes something.

The question therefore isn't how to give everything more. It is: what deserves more of me now? And equally, what deserves less?

Priorities change. The people and responsibilities that matter when you are twenty may not be the same when you are forty, sixty or eighty. Having children changes things. Losing someone changes things. Building a company changes things. Age changes things.

Sometimes a relationship that once mattered enormously naturally becomes less central. Sometimes somebody we assumed would always be there suddenly reminds us that time isn't unlimited.

This isn't an exercise in guilt. It is an exercise in allocation.