I’m going to share that framework with you and I hope that some of you will find it useful. It’s called the Six Domain Theory. So this is my hypothesis: we all want to do a lot of things in life, but it can get overwhelming to do all of it at once. I know it did for me. So I took a step back and I looked at everything that I wanted to do and I divided it into domains. Roughly everything I wanted to do fell into six domains. Each of these domains is important for my health and for my well-being. Each of these plays a vital role, and if something were to go wrong in any of these domains, then I, as a person, would suffer.
So, what are these six domains?
1. Physical – This is the domain that relates to my physical health. Everything that affects my health, like my sleep, diet, and exercise, all of that comes into this domain.
2. Professional – That is, things that I’m doing to further my career. Now, if you’re a student, your studies and academics also get included in the professional domain.
3. Personal – Now, these are things that I would like to do for myself, for my own interest, for my own growth, not in exchange for money but just because I want to do them. These are things that I relate to, like a hobby.
4. Financial – This has everything to do with how much money I have, how much cash I have in my bank accounts, how many assets I own, and what investments I’ve made. Basically, investments that give me a sense of safety and security for the future.
5. Social – This covers all the relationships that I have made and grown over the years—my parents, teachers, friends, partner—all these relationships together form the social domain.
6. Spiritual – Now, this can be a little abstract, but the spiritual domain relates to questions about your own purpose in life. What is your story? Why are you here? What is your relationship with the universe? It deals with identity, purpose, and existentialism.
So, the way I see it, these are the six domains that cover all of my actions. Everything that I’m doing is to fulfill some need in one of these six domains. Now, there are some principles that I have observed when it comes tlife o these domains. The first principle is that we want to grow in all these domains but not at once. At different times, our priorities may lie in different domains. So at one particular time, you may think that one domain is the most important, but after some time, your priorities change and you start focusing on another domain. For example, in the first quarter of your life, your professional domain might be the most important, and in the next one, your social domain, then financial, and then spiritual. So the most important domain may cycle as you go through life, but the truth is that all of these are important eventually.
– The second principle is that if you are not doing so well in one domain, we might overcompensate by focusing more on another. I’ve seen this both in myself and in others. For example, if I have a bad day at work, I might end up focusing on my friends. Or if I have a fight with a friend, I might think that my work is the most important thing in my life. So priorities can change not just with age but also with changing circumstances.
– The third principle is how do you know if a domain is doing well. This is when you realize that you have the freedom to do more and more things in that domain. You get to explore things you’ve never explored before and you’re facing new challenges every day.
– And the fourth principle is about mental health. I believe that mental health is a combination of all these six domains. I believe that the path towards mental health and peace of mind is working on improving all these six domains equally. So if I have to prioritize, I would say that the physical domain is the most important one because it makes working on all the other domains easier and more enjoyable. So if you have to pick one domain to work on every single day, that would be your physical health.
– But let this framework be a guide to you in how you are spending your time and effort doing different things. This is how you can manage your life by writing down your expectations of each domain and reviewing them every three months to see how far you have progressed. I hope you find this framework useful. If you did, let me know. And if you have any questions, put them in the comments below.