Two scores per area → one picture
The wheel of life.
Eight areas of your life, two scores for each. How satisfied you are today, and how much that area matters to you. The number we are after is the difference between the two. At the end the page draws your wheel, asks you to pick one single area and asks for a small action with its check date. One thing I tell you right away: there is nothing scientific here. The wheel photographs how you feel. And an honest picture is already half the work.
How it works
Three steps, no tricks.
For each area you give two scores. How satisfied you are today, and how much that area matters to you. Score from the gut: the first figure that comes to mind is usually the true one.
The page draws the wheel and computes the gap between importance and satisfaction, area by area. A 4 in an area you barely care about weighs less than a 6 in an area that means everything to you. That is the real number.
You choose one single area, the one that works as a lever. Then a small action to repeat every week, and a check date one month out. The rest you download and take with you.
The wheel of life is a classic coaching exercise, and no study validates it as a psychometric test. I tell you before you start, not in small print at the end. This version adds the double score, the gap and the choice of one single area. It is not there to measure you. It is there to put on paper how things stand, because a written picture stops the thoughts that keep circling. Origin and limits are in the sources at the bottom of the page.
The exercise
Score how things stand today.
Today, precisely. You already know how you would like things to be, and how they were last year matters little. For each area you first score how satisfied you are, then how much that area matters to you. From the gut, and on you go.
The picture
Your wheel, today.
Where the gap weighs most.
The gap is importance minus satisfaction. A 4 in an area that matters 3 to you can wait. A 6 in an area that matters 10 cannot. I declare the thresholds I use, so you read the ranking with my own eyes. From 3 up the gap weighs. At 1 or 2 you keep an eye on it. At zero or below you are in balance, or you are investing a lot in an area that matters little to you. That is a data point too.
Another threshold I use: below a 7 of satisfaction, an area deserves attention. A wheel scoring 10 everywhere, though, is not the goal. Chasing it is the recipe for burnout. A few areas in the second row is the norm of a real life.
One single area. Seriously, one.
In front of a crooked wheel the instinct says fix everything at once. I have tried it myself, and I have watched many people try: eight good resolutions on Monday, all on the floor within two weeks, plus a sense of guilt that was not there before. That is why the exercise asked you for a lever, the area that, improving, pulls the others along. Often it is not the worst one in the ranking.
Your leverage area:
What would it take to go up one point, not five?
Truly small. If it does not fit in a normal week, it is not the right one.
I set it 30 days out. The wheel gets redone once a month, like the photos of a building site. On that date you rescore the eight areas and compare the two pictures.
A wheel like this, at times, opens more questions than it closes. Let's look at it together over a coffee: thirty minutes, no strings attached.
What now?
You have the picture. Now use it.
Who is behind this
Dr. Donato De Tullio. For more than ten years I have been running projects in large European multinationals. I have had a crooked wheel myself: after 8 years in science I worked as a warehouse worker at Decathlon and rebuilt a career from zero. Today I manage 8 logistics centers across Europe. It's all on my LinkedIn.
Alongside my job as a manager, I help people who run their own project decide and move, with the 5D Method: data, direction, decision, destination, desire. If after the wheel you feel you need a hand for the whole path, there is Decision Lab, the one-on-one decision-making program.
Done the wheel?
Let's look at it together.
30 minutes, free, over a virtual coffee. You tell me about your wheel, the leverage area you chose, and we bring the weekly action into focus. In English, Italian or German.
The sources
Where the wheel comes from.
The origin. The wheel of life comes from classic coaching. It is attributed to Paul J. Meyer, a pioneer of the field and founder of the Success Motivation Institute, in the 1960s. Many variants have circulated since, with different areas and names. It remains a practical coaching tool, not a psychometric test validated by research.
The professional use. The satisfaction score alone says little. That is why here you also give the second score, how much each area matters. I borrow the idea from the Valued Living Questionnaire (Wilson and colleagues, 2002), the instrument that measures precisely the distance between importance and lived life. Then you look for the leverage area, choose one only and set a check. If you want to read further, two guides in English: the one on PositivePsychology.com and the one by Scott Jeffrey.
The use I make of it. For me it is the starting picture. You start from facts put on paper, not from thoughts circling in your head. And no diagnosis, to be clear. If an area of your life seriously worries you, the right person is a health professional, before any exercise.
The wheel is yours and nobody asks for your email to take it home. If it helped, have a look at the English home, try the Stay-or-Leave Test, or visit the full site in Italian, and we can always talk over a coffee.