The Life Audit

1. What do you do right now?

Your work, business, or school. What it is, how long you've been doing it, and roughly what it brings in.

2. What does a normal weekday look like for you?

When you wake up, what fills the day, where the hours actually go, when you sleep.

3. What are you trying to build or change in the next year?

As concretely as you can.

4. Where is faith in your life right now?

Prayer, church, Scripture, confession, or nothing consistent. Skip it if it doesn't apply.

5. What's the one thing you keep promising yourself you'll do, and don't?

One sentence.

6. How long has this been going on?

When did you first promise yourself you'd fix it?

7. How often does it happen?

Give a number: days per week, or days this month.

8. What have you already tried to fix it?

For each attempt: how long it lasted and what ended it. "Nothing" is a real answer.

9. What did you plan to do that day?

The exact task, how long it should have taken, and by when.

10. What did you actually do instead?

As close to hour by hour as you can remember. Include the phone, videos, "research", planning, errands, anything.

11. What else did you put off that day?

Anything you told yourself you'd do later.

12. Right before you switched, what was the very next step in front of you?

For example: "I'd finished the outline and the next step was recording it." "I'd opened the laptop and the next step was messaging a client."

13. What thought made switching feel okay?

For example: "I'll just check one thing." "I need to research this first." "I'll start after lunch." "I'm not in the right state." "I don't know what to do next."

14. What did switching give you right away?

Relief, comfort, escape, stimulation, a feeling of progress, avoiding uncertainty, avoiding embarrassment, something else?

15. If you had done that next step, what would it have exposed you to?

Being judged, being rejected, finding out it doesn't work, being seen, boredom, discomfort, or nothing at all?

16. When do you usually stop or switch?

For example: when the next step isn't clear, when it gets boring, after a bad result, at a certain time of day.

17. Where else does this same thing show up in your life?

Faith, relationships, health, money, or nowhere else.

18. How do you usually explain why this keeps happening?

Write it the way you'd say it to a friend.

19. Describe a day when you actually did the work. What was different about it?

The time, the place, the task, your mood, who was around, what was at stake.

20. What do you say matters most to you right now?

21. If a stranger watched your last seven days, what would they say matters most to you?

Based only on where your time, money, and attention actually went.

22. What has this already cost you?

Put a number on at least one thing: money, months, clients, opportunities, health, peace.

23. Who else is affected by it, and how?

Even if they've never said anything.

24. What have you started calling "just how I am"?

Something you once wanted to change and now describe as part of your personality.

25. If next year looked exactly like this one, what would be hardest to admit to yourself?