Areas · Life Design · Free
See which parts of your life your days are going to.
See how your habits and goals spread across eight life areas, on a balance wheel set against how much each matters, with a weekly time budget.
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A wheel drawn from what you didEach of eight areas gets a wedge as long as the share of its habit check-ins you kept in the last 7, 14 or 30 days. An area with no habit due is scored by its goals’ progress instead.
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Set against how much it mattersFinish a Life Audit in Compass and the wheel draws how much each area matters as an outline. The list under it turns from “QUIETEST” to “FURTHEST BEHIND”, the areas furthest below that line.
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168 hours, budgetedGive each area the hours a week you mean it to have. With Hours on, “PLANNED VS ACTUAL — THIS WEEK” sets that plan beside the time you tracked.
Your first wheel
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File what you already have
When you create or edit a habit or a goal, pick its life area. Life Areas fills itself from those choices, so there is nothing to add in the module.
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Read the wheel
Open Life Areas. Tap a wedge to read it, for example "Health · kept 10 of 12 · tap to open", and tap it again to open that area's page.
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Write a focus note
On an area's page, tap "Edit" under "FOCUS NOTE" and write what you want to protect in that area. It stays at the foot of the page.
Every step, in detail
- 1 Give your habits and goals a life area when you create or edit them. Areas fills itself from those tags.
- 2 Open Areas. The wheel draws each area's score; tap a wedge to read it, and tap it again to open the area.
- 3 On an area's page, tap "Edit" under "FOCUS NOTE" to write what you want to protect in that area.
- 4 Tap the "..." menu and choose "Time Budget" to set the hours per week you want to give each area.
Eight areas on one wheel
Each wedge is one area, as long as the share of its habit check-ins you kept in the focus period. With a finished Life Audit, an ink arc marks how much the area matters to you, and a wedge that stops well short of its arc is what the list under the wheel calls furthest behind.
Sample · eight areas on Tuesday, Oct 20, 2026, with a Life Audit finished on Sep 29 · tap a wedge to read it, tap it again to open it
Kept, last 7 daysMatters, from your Life Audit
Rate how much each area matters in a Life Audit, and the wheel draws it as an outline.
Read the wheel
Change the window, or take the audit away.
The wheel keeps the app’s order, Health at twelve o’clock, whatever the scores. Only the lengths move.
| Area | Counted from | Score | Matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health | 10 of 12 check-ins | 83% | 5/5 |
| Wealth | 0 of 1 check-ins | 0% | 4/5 |
| Craft | 5 of 5 check-ins | 100% | 3/5 |
| Family | goals | 30% | 5/5 |
| Mind | 4 of 7 check-ins | 57% | 4/5 |
| Relationships | nothing | — | 5/5 |
| Learning | 1 of 3 check-ins | 33% | 3/5 |
| Other | 1 of 7 check-ins | 14% | 1/5 |
Shaded rows are the ones listed under the wheel.
Relationships has no habit and no goal filed under it, so it has no wedge and reads “—”. Wealth draws nothing either, but for another reason: its one Sunday habit was due once in the last 7 days and missed, so it scores 0%. With the audit, Relationships still leads the list, because an area with nothing counted falls the whole way short of how much it matters. Small gaps are left out: Other keeps 14% against a 1 out of 5, a shortfall under the tenth the list ignores.
The same areas as a list
“View as List” in the ⋯ menu trades the wheel for BALANCE OVERVIEW, a bar for every area on one card. The AREAS cards sit under both views. Settings decides the rest: whether the bar card shows, the order of the cards, the days a score counts and which areas appear at all.
Sample · the same eight areas · flip a setting, or hide an area
- 100% Craft 1 habit · 2 goals 20h / wk planned
- 83% Health 2 habits · 3 goals 7h / wk planned
- 57% Mind 1 habit · No goals 3h / wk planned
- 33% Learning 1 habit · 1 goal 5h / wk planned
- 30% Family No habits · 2 goals 14h / wk planned
- 14% Other 1 habit · No goals
- 0% Wealth 1 habit · 1 goal 2h / wk planned
- Low focus Relationships No habits · No goals 4h / wk planned
Hidden areas are removed from the index and balance overview. Their data is preserved.
Sorting puts an area with nothing counted level with 0%, so Relationships sits beside Wealth at the end; a tie keeps the fixed order. A card cuts its percent down where the wheel rounds, so an area at 57.9% reads 57% on its card and 58% in the middle of the wheel. Hiding an area takes it off the wheel too, and the others share the circle between them.
Where a score comes from
A score is the check-ins you kept over the check-ins that were due, for every habit filed under the area, across the focus period, today included. Only when no habit in the area was due does it fall back on the area’s goals. Here is how three of the sample’s areas get their numbers over the last 7 days.
Health · from its habits
10 kept of 12 due.
Morning mobility is daily; the breakfast is weekdays only, so the weekend asks nothing of it.
| Habit | We 14 | Th 15 | Fr 16 | Sa 17 | Su 18 | Mo 19 | Tu 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Morning mobility | kept | kept | kept | missed | kept | kept | kept |
| Protein-forward breakfast | kept | kept | kept | not due | not due | missed | kept |
- Kept
- Missed
- Not due
10 ÷ 12 = 83%, the length of Health’s wedge. Over 30 days the same habits come to 39 of 52, 75%.
Family · from its goals
No habit is filed under Family, so nothing was due. Its score is the average progress of its active goals.
- Plan the family reunion40%
- Build the treehouse20%
(40% + 20%) ÷ 2 = 30%, whatever the focus period.
Relationships · nothing to count
No habit and no goal. People, projects and decisions filed under it don’t count toward a score.
- Low focuson its card
- —on the wheel
- nothing countedwhen you read its wedge
For example · one habit, two areas
A habit counts toward its own area and toward the area of the goal it serves.
- Mind
- Learning
Each check-in, kept or missed, is counted once in each area.
An area’s own page counts differently: always the last 7 days, and habits only. Family scores 30% on the wheel and its card, but its page reads 0%, because nothing there was due.
168 hours, budgeted
“Time Budget” in the ⋯ menu gives each area the hours a week you mean it to have, out of the week’s 168. With Hours on, the time you tracked since the week began is set against each budget, and an area that runs past its budget turns amber.
Sample · the week of Sunday, Oct 18, 2026 · move through the week, or change a budget
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Health2.5h
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Wealth0h
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Craft8.5h
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Family5h
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Mind1h
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Relationships0h
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Learning1h
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Other0h
Set ideal weekly hours for each life area. Bars show time tracked in Hours this week against each budget.
Planned vs actual — this week
The plan stays put. The week fills in.
Actual time is everything Hours tracked under an activity type with that life area, from Sunday to the day you pick.
- Planned
- Actual
Swipe the chart to see every bar.
1h tracked this week has no life area yet — link a Life Area on those activity types in Hours.
The week’s 168 hours
55 budgeted113 unallocated, hatched
The budget is kept on this device with the app’s settings, not in your synced data. The week starts on your calendar’s first day, so on a Monday-first calendar Sunday’s hours belong to the week before. “Hours unallocated” counts down from 168 in whole hours and goes below zero if you budget more than the week holds. With Hours off, the chart gives way to a “Track actual time” card, and each bar shows the last 7 days of the area’s habits instead.
Tips
- If an area keeps showing "Low focus", linking one small habit to it is enough to start a score.
- The "Focus Period" setting changes the scores on the wheel and the cards. The area page always shows the last 7 days.
- In Hours, give each activity type a life area. Tracked time with no area shows as unassigned in the time budget.
- Do a Life Audit in Compass once or twice a year. Without one, the wheel can only tell you which areas are quiet, not which of them matter.
Questions
About Areas day to day.
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How is an area's score worked out?
It is the share of scheduled habit check-ins you kept over the focus period, the last 7, 14 or 30 days, set under "Focus Period" in Settings. A habit counts toward its own area and toward the area of the goal it serves. If no habit in the area was due, the score is the average progress of its active goals.
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Why does an area say "Low focus"?
No habit and no active goal is filed under it. People, projects, decisions and learning don't count for this. An area with habits that were never due in the period reads 0% instead.
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What is the outline on the wheel?
How much each area matters to you, from your last finished Life Audit in Compass. A 5 out of 5 reaches the rim. Below the wheel, "FURTHEST BEHIND" lists up to three areas whose score falls more than a tenth short of that line, the biggest gap first. Without an audit the list is "QUIETEST", the three lowest scores.
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Can I add or rename areas?
No. There are eight fixed areas: Health, Wealth, Craft, Family, Mind, Relationships, Learning and Other. Under "VISIBLE AREAS" in Settings you can hide the ones you don't use. Their habits and goals keep their area.
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Why does an area's page show a different score from the wheel?
The page always counts the last 7 days of habits, whatever the focus period, and has no goal fallback. An area scored by its goals on the wheel reads 0% on its own page.
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Where is the time budget kept?
On this device, with the app's settings, not in your synced data. Each area takes 0 to 168 hours a week. With Hours on, the time you tracked since the start of the week is set against it, and time from an activity type with no life area is counted apart.
Works with
Where Areas hands off to the rest of HourLife.
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Habits
Each habit has a life area, and its check-ins drive that area's focus score.
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Goals
Goals are counted per area, their progress sets the score when an area has no habit due, and the habits serving a goal count toward its area too.
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Compass
Your last finished Life Audit says how much each area matters, which the wheel draws as an outline.
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Hours
Time you track in Hours appears on the area page and against each area's weekly budget.
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Projects
Projects tagged with an area are listed under "ACTIVE" on that area's page.
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Decisions
Decisions recorded for an area are listed under "CONTEXT" on its page.
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People
People linked to an area appear on its page and in its stat chips.
Read and try
Books from the library that Areas puts into practice, and something to try on paper or in the browser.
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Designing Your Life Bill Burnett, Dave Evans Burnett and Evans's health, work, play and love dashboard. Areas draws a wider wheel against what matters.
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Essentialism Greg McKeown McKeown on choosing the few things that matter, which the gap between time spent and importance shows.
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The Happiness Project Gretchen Rubin Rubin gave each month to one area of her life. Areas shows which of yours get the time.
Already have HourLife?
Life Areas is under Life Design in the module list, and it is free. Its ⋯ menu holds "View as List" (or "View as Wheel"), "Time Budget" and "Settings". Today can carry an "AREAS" card that opens each area's page.
Areas is in the Library, under Life Design. If it isn’t there, turn it on in Settings → Look & Feel → Modules.
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