Work-Love-Play-Health Dashboard

Rate four areas of life on satisfaction and on the energy you put in, look for the area where the two have drifted apart, check it against two weeks of notes, and change one thing with a boundary people around you know about.

Practice, not research: the dashboard comes from life design (Burnett & Evans, 2016) and has not been tested. The reason to catch a gap between effort and return early comes from burnout research, which is strong (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Maslach & Leiter, 1997). The 0 to 10 scales are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• Work has been taking more than its share for a while and you want to see the whole picture before you decide what to change.
• You are about to take on more (a new role, a business, studies) and want to know what it will cost elsewhere.
• Your goals look on track but you feel worn down, and you want to find out why.

Skip it when:

• You first need to define your values and what good work means to you: use 1.8 Workview & Lifeview. This page tracks balance over time against that compass.
• You are exhausted for a long period or worried about your health: talk to occupational health, your doctor or another professional. This page is for planning, not for health assessment.
• The problem sits in how your work is set up (workload, control, fairness) rather than in your life as a whole: use 4.12 Wellbeing & Ethics Checklist with your manager.

The dashboard is a practitioner tool from life design (Burnett & Evans, 2016). It is untested and claims only that a life looked at across four gauges is easier to steer than one judged by work alone. Its weight comes from a neighboring research line that is strong: burnout research places exhaustion and disengagement not in personal weakness but in lasting mismatches between a person and their conditions of work and recovery (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Maslach & Leiter, 1997). Burnout is classified as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical diagnosis (World Health Organization, 2019), so this page does not measure it. It reads energy and satisfaction in all four areas.

The mechanism is early detection. Effort and return drift apart quietly, and an area can run on high effort and low return for a long time. So you rate the two separately, check your ratings against two weeks of notes, and end with a boundary, because the dashboard only measures; the boundary is what changes anything.

Rate each area 0 to 10 twice: how satisfied you are, and how much time and energy you put in. Add one line on what is behind the numbers. For Health, write about habits and routines only, never diagnoses or medical details.

Strong answer: "Work: satisfaction 5, energy 9. Two evening calls a week with the Oslo office, and the reports I enjoy get done on Sundays." (Illustrative.)

Illustrative example: the role, the company and all ratings are made up.

A project engineer at a construction company in Sweden coordinates with a sister office in Oslo and has felt worn down since the autumn.

Section 1: work, satisfaction 5, energy 9 (two evening calls a week, enjoyable reports pushed to Sundays). Love 8 and 6. Play 2 and 1 (stopped going to choir). Health 5 and 3 (the training habit lapsed).

Section 2: over-investing in work; under-investing in play; love is the sweet spot. Trade-off: evening calls against the choir.

Section 3: the log shows the best days are site visits with a real problem to solve; the worst are standing status meetings with no decision. She asks her manager for one more site day a month.

Section 4: more: play, choir every Thursday, two hours a week. Less: work, Oslo calls moved into office hours, three hours freed. Boundary: no calls after 17:00 on Thursdays, agreed with her manager and the Oslo coordinator.

Section 5: monthly check-ins on the last Sunday; by month two, play is at 5 and work satisfaction at 6. Illustrative figures.