LifeScaping Planners
"Life by Design" – imagine it, plan it, create it!
Where Assessment Meets Action
Sacred Balance Wheel
A Tool for Whole Soul Health & Wellness
Understanding the Medicine Wheel
The Medicine Wheel is an ancient symbol used by many Indigenous peoples to represent the interconnectedness of all aspects of life. It teaches us that proper health and balance come from nurturing all parts of ourselves—not just our physical bodies, but also our minds, emotions, and spirits. Like the Sacred Tree with its roots, trunk, branches, and leaves all working together, we too must tend to all dimensions of our being.
This assessment is divided into four elements corresponding to the four directions—Spiritual (East), Emotional (South), Physical (West), and Mental (North)—each with three categories, for a total of twelve life domains for self-evaluation. The goal is not perfection, but awareness, balance, and growth toward the Integrated and Congruent Soul—where all aspects work together symbiotically.
The Four Elements and Twelve Life Domains
The Sacred Balance Wheel organizes your life into four essential aspects of your Whole Self, each containing three vital life domains. True wellness requires health and fitness in each aspect AND balance and harmony among them—the Integrated, Congruent Soul working together symbiotically:
SPIRITUAL (East)
Illumination, Vision, Wisdom
- Spiritual Practices
- Higher Purpose
- Inner Peace
The East represents dawn, new beginnings, and spiritual awakening—where we connect to our higher purpose, cultivate our relationship with the sacred, and seek wisdom beyond the material world.
EMOTIONAL (South)
Heart, Growth, Relationships
- Relationships
- Emotional Health
- Self-Expression
The South represents summer, youth, and the warmth of human connection—where we develop our capacity to love, express emotions authentically, and nurture relationships with ourselves and others.
PHYSICAL (West)
Body, Introspection, Embodiment
- Nutrition
- Movement
- Rest & Renewal
The West represents autumn, the setting sun, and turning inward—where we honor our physical vessel, practice self-care, and reflect on how we inhabit and nourish our bodies.
MENTAL (North)
Clarity, Eldership, Knowledge
- Critical Thinking
- Learning & Growth
- Mindfulness
The North represents winter, eldership, and mental clarity—where we cultivate wisdom, engage in conscious thought, and develop the discipline of a focused mind in service to our community.
Each domain deserves attention; each aspect requires balance. When one area suffers, the whole wheel becomes unstable. The LifeScaping approach recognizes that when Body relaxes and grounds, Heart can calm, Mind can find peace and stillness, and all three can attune to Spirit. This entrainment allows your parts to come together in harmony—the Congruent Soul is far wiser than any individual part.
LifeScaping Planner
The Six P's of Time — Work to Live, Not Live to Work
The LifeScaping Planner is the comprehensive planning system that helps you design intentional weeks aligned with all 12 Sacred Balance Wheel domains. Unlike traditional time management focused solely on productivity, this system honors a truth people voice near the end of life: they wish they had not worked so hard and had stayed closer to the people they love (Ware, 2012). The longest-running study of adult life found that the quality of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of health and happiness as we age (Waldinger & Schulz, 2023).
The Math of Your Life
| Time Category | Hours | Remaining |
|---|---|---|
| Total hours in a week | 168 | 168 |
| Sleep (8 hours × 7 days) | −56 | 112 |
| Daily routines (getting ready, meals, transitions) | −12 | 100 |
| Productivity (work, responsibilities, obligations) | −50 | 50 |
You have 50 hours each week to truly live your life.
This is the time for Personal restoration, People connection, and Peers community.
These 50 hours determine the quality of your existence.
The Six P's Framework
The Six P's categorize the function of your activities across two complementary modes. The Medicine Wheel shows WHAT needs attention; the Six P's show HOW you spend time. Together, they create a complete framework for intentional living.
RELATIONAL MODES — WHO You're Being With
Three concentric circles of connection—from self at the center, through intimate bonds, to broader community:
PERSONAL
Solo restoration, self-care, individual rejuvenation. The light at the center of the wheel. Without Personal time, you have nothing to give to others.
PEOPLE
Inner circle: intimate partner, family, close friends. The 2-5 people you'd call at 3 AM. Sacred time with those who know you most deeply.
PEERS
Outer circle: faith community, social groups, teams, cohorts, extended network. The broader social identity that comes from both belonging to something larger and serving others.
FUNCTIONAL MODES — WHAT You're Doing
The infrastructure and output that makes life function:
PLANNING
Strategy, vision, reflection, quarterly reviews, goal-setting. Thinking time—clarifying objectives, assessing progress, making intentional decisions.
PREPARATION
Administration, setup, maintenance, education, skill-building. The infrastructure that makes everything else work better.
PRODUCTIVITY
All duties: career, household, childcare, volunteer work, maintenance. Necessary time that serves the Relational modes, not the other way around.
The Key Insight
Schedule the Relational Modes FIRST. Block your Personal, People, and Peers time before filling in Productivity. If you schedule work first, relationships get the scraps. This is backward—the relational modes are what make the functional modes worthwhile.
"Personal makes everything possible. People make everything meaningful. Productivity makes everything sustainable."
Multi-Scale Planning
True life design needs both vision and daily practice. Each time scale has a home in the LifeScaping suite:
| Scale | Where you plan it |
|---|---|
| Ideal Day | Calendar → Day view → Ideal Day Designer: build your Ideal Workday and Ideal Renewal Day in 30-minute blocks, then fill any date with one click. |
| Ideal Week | Ideal Week Planner: your model week across all Six P’s and 12 domains, with hours by mode. |
| Month | Calendar → Month view: day themes, events, holidays, and important dates. |
| Quarter | Power QTR: one Quantum Leap habit per month, 12 weekly objectives, plus a renewal week. The Calendar’s Quarter view shows them on your real weeks. |
| Year | Calendar → Year view: your Annual LifeScape and a Model Year, your ideal dream year, to copy into any real year. |
Real-World Application
Life rarely matches the ideal, and it doesn’t have to. With one click the Calendar fills a real week from your Ideal Week. Each day has an energy check-in, your top priorities with a small first step, and an evening reflection, and each week ends with a short Weekly Review. Having the template lets you course-correct on purpose instead of drifting back into old patterns.
Who This Planner Serves:
- Anyone completing the LifeScaping assessment suite who wants to implement their insights
- People committed to sustainable success rather than burnout patterns
- Individuals seeking to honor all life dimensions, not just career productivity
- Those who want to design their life rather than merely react to demands
- Anyone ready to make the shift from "default mode" to "design mode"
The LifeScaping Planning Suite
From Insight to Your Real Calendar
Your assessments show what needs attention. These three tools carry that insight into how you actually live. They share your plan automatically in the same browser, so a goal set in Power QTR shows up on your Ideal Week and on your Calendar.
Power QTR
Pick one habit to launch each month and keep it running while the next begins.
- Focus suggestions from your Balance Wheel and Stewardship results
- Weekly objectives with if-then plans
- Habit reminders for your phone calendar
Ideal Week Planner
Design the week that makes your quarter possible, with relational time placed first.
- Activities for all 12 life domains
- Color your week by the Six P’s; see hours by mode
- Standard, ADHD, and Recovery editions
LifeScaping Calendar
A working calendar for real life, built on the Six P’s.
- Model Year, Annual LifeScape, and day themes
- Fill a week from your Ideal Week; Ideal Day Designer
- Daily check-in, Weekly Review, and export to Google, Apple, or Outlook
Your plan stays private
Everything you enter is saved in your own browser on your own device. It is not sent to us. Use Download Backup in any planner to keep a copy or move it to another device.
Specialized LifeScaping Planners
Adapted for Your Unique Needs
ADHD Edition
Work With Your Brain, Not Against It
The Ideal Week Planner rebuilt for ADHD brains: Foundations first (sleep, movement, meals, and the people you love), 12 life areas with ADHD tips, a live Foundations check, and a calendar that makes time visible with energy check-ins, first steps, and transition buffers.
You're not planning to be perfect.
You're planning to work with your brain, not against it.
Recovery Edition
Recovery First, One Day at a Time
The Ideal Week Planner rebuilt for recovery: non-negotiables first (meetings, sponsor, therapy, sleep), 12 life areas organized by SAMHSA’s four dimensions of recovery, and a Recovery check that flags empty high-risk evenings and weekends.
Recovery-First Principle
If work demands threaten recovery activities, recovery wins. Always. Your recovery comes first right now.
Both editions share one Ideal Week with the standard planner, so the Calendar and Power QTR work with them automatically.
LifeScaping ADHD Planner
Designed for ADHD Success
Understanding Your ADHD Brain
ADHD is less a shortage of attention than difficulty regulating it: steering attention, effort, time, and emotion toward what matters later rather than what is loudest now. These self-management skills are called executive functions, and in ADHD they develop differently (Barkley, 2015). Trying to force a neurotypical productivity system onto an ADHD brain is like running Mac software on a PC. It doesn’t work, and it’s not your fault.
The Dopamine Reality
Brain imaging shows differences in dopamine signaling in the reward and motivation pathways (Volkow et al., 2009). In daily life, that often means:
- Interesting, urgent, new, or shared tasks are easy; important-but-boring ones feel like pushing a car uphill
- You naturally seek stimulation and novelty
- Time blindness: there is “now” and “not now”
- Starting and switching tasks take more effort
- Strong emotions are harder to downshift when you’re tired or hungry
The ADHD Edition Approach
The ADHD Edition keeps all 12 Sacred Balance domains and groups them into four ADHD-friendly clusters:
FOUNDATIONS — Schedule These First
Sleep and ADHD care, movement, and regular meals. Exercise has moderate benefits for attention in children (Cerrillo-Urbina et al., 2015), and a steady wake time helps a body clock that often runs late.
CONNECTION & MEANING
Family and relationships, spiritual growth, and service. Putting connection on the calendar protects it from forgotten plans and interruptions.
REGULATION & RENEWAL
Emotional regulation and self-care, recreation and novelty, creativity and interests. Interest is fuel for an ADHD brain; planned fun keeps it from showing up only as procrastination.
SYSTEMS & OUTPUT
Visual cues and environment, finances and admin, and focused work in your best-energy hours, with stop alarms so hyperfocus doesn’t swallow the evening.
Put the plan where the action happens
Cognitive behavioral therapy for adult ADHD teaches exactly these skills (calendars, task lists, breaking tasks down) and outperformed relaxation training in a randomized trial (Safren et al., 2010). The ADHD Edition and the Calendar make them visible, timed, and kind enough to restart.
LifeScaping™ Healing & Recovery Planning System
Recovery & Balance
Recovery-First Philosophy
Unlike traditional LifeScaping, the Recovery Planning System prioritizes ALL recovery-related activities. This means that activities supporting your recovery take precedence over other commitments, ensuring your healing remains the foundation of your daily life.
Understanding Recovery as a Full-Time Commitment
Early recovery isn't something you do in addition to your regular life—it IS your regular life. Your brain is healing, your patterns are changing, and your entire identity is being rebuilt. This planner recognizes that reality.
The Four Dimensions of Recovery
Addiction changes the brain systems for reward, stress, and self-control, and those systems can heal with time, support, and treatment (Volkow, Koob & McLellan, 2016). The Recovery Edition keeps all 12 Sacred Balance domains and organizes them by SAMHSA’s four dimensions that support recovery:
HEALTH — Recovery First
Your recovery program and meetings, therapy and emotional health, and physical health, sleep, and exercise. Mutual-help groups such as AA and twelve-step facilitation helped more people stay continuously abstinent than other established treatments (Kelly, Humphreys & Ferri, 2020).
COMMUNITY
Family and relationships, sober social connection, and service. Adding even one sober-supportive person to your network was linked with better outcomes (Litt et al., 2009), and helping others in recovery helps the helper (Pagano et al., 2004).
PURPOSE
Spiritual growth, work and school, and creativity. Meaningful daily activity rebuilds a life worth protecting, while watching for overwork, since stress is a strong relapse trigger (Sinha, 2008).
HOME
Nutrition and wellness, finances, housing, and stability, plus sober fun. Planned evenings and weekends cover the hours when unstructured time is most risky.
The Recovery-First Principle
If work demands threaten recovery activities, recovery wins. Always. Your recovery is your job right now.
From Surviving to Thriving
As recovery stabilizes, the planner evolves with you:
- Early recovery: Heavy focus on Health: meetings, therapy, sleep, and body healing
- Mid recovery: Community and Purpose grow, with recovery embedded in every week
- Long-term recovery: Full life balance with recovery as the ongoing foundation
- At every stage: a slip is information, not a verdict. Reach out quickly, adjust the plan, and keep going (Marlatt & Gordon, 1985)
If you are in crisis, call or text 988. For free, confidential treatment referrals 24/7, call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357. If someone may be overdosing, call 911.
