Does your business fit the life you want to live?
I made this five-minute check from the five questions I ask about my own business.
You rate ten sentences about a normal week in your business. You get one score for each of the five questions and a place to start this week.
The check adds up your answers in your browser, so it needs JavaScript. Without it, you can read the five questions and the ten sentences below.
Your answers stay in your browser and are not sent anywhere. They are gone when you close the page.
The check is not a scientific instrument. I wrote it for people who already run a business. If you have not started yet, the five questions on the coaching page are a better place to begin.
Think of a normal week in the last three months. How well does each sentence fit?
Question 1 of 5 Which work do I still want to do personally?
I spend my working week on work I want to do myself.
I have handed over or stopped doing the tasks I do not want to do myself.
Question 2 of 5 Which responsibilities give me energy, and which ones empty the tank?
The responsibilities I carry in the business give me more energy than they take.
I look forward to a normal working week.
Question 3 of 5 How much of the business depends on my hours?
If I work fewer hours for a month, I earn about the same.
When I take two weeks off, the business keeps running.
Question 4 of 5 What pace can I sustain?
I could keep up the pace I work at now for three more years.
When something unexpected comes up, I can fit it in without giving up time I had planned to be off.
Question 5 of 5 What must remain possible outside work?
In a normal week, I get to the things I want time for outside work.
When work clashes with a private plan, I keep the plan.
Choose an answer for both sentences to go on.
Your result
Each question has a fit score from 2 to 10. A high score means the two sentences fit your week, and a low score points to something worth looking at.
Look here first
Your five scores are the same, so the questions come in their usual order.
The other four questions
Which work do I still want to do personally?
Fit of 10
Tasks often stay with you because doing them is quicker than handing them over. This week, go through last week’s calendar and mark the hours you would keep if you could choose again.
A new client or a bigger order can put new tasks on your own desk. This week, write down the kinds of work you want to keep doing personally, so you can check the next job against them before you say yes.
Which responsibilities give me energy, and which ones empty the tank?
Fit of 10
A single responsibility is easier to change than the whole business, so it helps to know exactly which ones empty the tank. This week, list everything you are responsible for, from sales to invoices, and put a plus or a minus next to each.
There may be one responsibility that empties the tank, and it is easy to overlook when the rest works. This week, look for it and decide whether it has to be yours.
How much of the business depends on my hours?
Fit of 10
An income that depends on your own hours can be a choice you have made on purpose, and it also puts a price on every week you take off. This week, pick one client or one offer and work out what you were paid and how many hours it really took, including the ones you did not invoice.
When income does not follow your hours, something else carries it, perhaps people you trust or an offer that does not need you in every delivery. This week, write down what it is and how the business would manage if it changed.
What pace can I sustain?
Fit of 10
You decide much of a week’s pace earlier, when you agree to deadlines and to how much work you take on. This week, look at what you have promised for the coming month and find one thing you could move or turn down.
A pace you can keep up probably comes from the jobs you turn down and the deadlines you do not promise. This week, write those down so you remember them when someone offers you a large job.
What must remain possible outside work?
Fit of 10
Free time in general is hard to defend when a client asks for something, and a fixed entry in the calendar holds better. This week, write down the one or two things that must remain possible and put the first in next week’s calendar before the client work goes in.
Time outside work holds as long as the weeks look like the ones you have now. This week, look three months ahead and see whether a busy period or a new client is about to test it.
Keep the result
The page does not save your result. You can email it to yourself or copy it.
The email button opens a draft in your own email program. Nothing is sent until you press send.