Parents, grandparents, mentors, and coaches share a wish: to help a young person build a happy, fulfilled life. A simple visual exercise invites young people to set goals that reflect their own interests and aspirations. It begins with three questions:
- What do I like doing?
- What am I good at doing?
- What do I want to spend time doing?
The third question asks them to make a choice. They may enjoy an activity or have a talent for it without wanting to make it a priority.
Bringing these dimensions into harmony is central to personal alignment. Our interests, abilities, and priorities change, so alignment is something we revisit throughout life. For more on this idea, see A Note on the Power of Alignment.
Learning to choose where to spend time helps us navigate two common pitfalls: pursuing one interest at the expense of everything else, and spreading ourselves across so many activities that none receives enough attention for mastery or deep enjoyment.
Learn to Choose Early
Many adults struggle to decide which pursuits deserve their time. Young people can begin to develop this judgment while their interests and habits are still taking shape.
Sports, music, academics, creative work, friendships, and new experiences all compete for attention. A young person may continue an activity because it is familiar, because friends do it, or because an adult expects it. They may also have interests no one has thought to ask about.
The exercise below helps make those choices visible. It gives a young person a way to reflect on what matters to them and gives a trusted adult a window into their thinking. With the young person leading the exercise, the adult can ask questions and offer support in a way that invites conversation and respects their independence.
Although designed with young people in mind, the exercise can be useful at any age. The underlying principles are also explored in this video on personal alignment and fulfillment.
Step 1: Make an Activity List
Start several days before you plan to work through the exercise together. Ask the young person to list activities they currently spend time on, along with anything they would like to try.
Use pencil and paper, a phone app, or a document. Keep the list open for additions and changes as ideas arise. The aim is to capture a picture that feels complete to them.
An adult can offer a starter list or point out an overlooked interest: “What about cooking?” or “You spend a lot of time on logic puzzles.” Let the young person decide what belongs on the list and how to describe it.
Move on when they feel the list represents their interests.
Step 2: Choose What Matters Now
Ask them to place each activity in one of four groups:
- Top priorities: Activities they most want to invest time and effort in now.
- Keep doing: Activities they enjoy and want to continue regularly.
- Occasional enjoyment: Activities they like but do not need to do regularly.
- Pause or stop: Activities they are ready to step back from.
Encourage honest answers. If a long-standing activity lands in “Pause or stop,” take it as useful information. Ask what has changed and listen before discussing existing commitments or practical constraints.
These choices reflect what matters now. They can change as the young person gains experience.
Step 3: Select Skills to Develop
Focus next on the activities in “Top priorities” and “Keep doing.”
Identify which involve skills the young person wants to develop through practice, effort, and experience. Examples include soccer, drawing, piano, math, cooking, climbing, and coding.
Other pursuits may be valuable mainly for enjoyment, connection, or discovery, such as attending a concert or visiting a museum. Keep them on the activity list, but leave them out of the skill map unless the young person identifies a particular capability they want to develop.
The distinction depends on their purpose. Watching films might be recreation for one person and part of learning filmmaking for another.
Step 4: Draw a Personal Pursuits Map
The map shows how the young person sees their current capability and where they would like to be in five years.
On a large sheet of paper:
- Draw the center. Make a small circle and write their name inside it.
- Add the spokes. Draw one line outward from the circle for each skill selected in Step 3. Space the lines evenly around the center.
- Label the skills. Write one skill beside each spoke.
- Agree on the scale. The center represents just beginning. The outer edge represents advanced capability in that activity. Discuss what that might look like for each skill.
- Mark current capability. Ask them to place an X on each spoke to show where they think they are today.
- Connect the current marks. Join the marks with straight lines and shade the enclosed shape. Label it Current Capability.
- Mark five-year aspirations. Ask: “Where would you like to be in this skill five years from now?” Choose a horizon far enough away to imagine beyond today’s limits, yet close enough to picture progress they could achieve with sustained effort and support. For some, three years may work well. For a younger child, use their future age: “When you turn 15, what would you like to be able to do?” Use the same horizon for every skill on the map.
- Connect the aspiration marks. Join them with straight lines. Use a different color or pattern to distinguish the space between the two outlines. Label the second outline Future Aspiration and note the target age or year.
The map records their perspective. It does not need precise scores or a symmetrical shape to be useful.
A Personal Pursuits Map created during a tenth-birthday exercise. The inner outline shows self-assessed current capability; the outer outline shows five-year aspirations.
Step 5: Turn the Map into Choices
The conversation about the map is where much of its value emerges.
Ask questions such as:
- Which skills are you most excited to develop?
- What would you like to be able to do that you cannot do yet?
- Where would practice, instruction, or encouragement help?
- What might you spend less time on to make room?
A large gap between current capability and aspiration suggests something to explore. Ask what the young person imagines and why it matters. A small gap may mean they are content with their current level or would prefer to direct their effort elsewhere.
Use their answers to choose a manageable focus for the coming months. Agree on a concrete next step, such as joining a class, establishing a practice routine, trying an activity, or pausing a commitment.
Adults can then direct their support toward priorities the young person has helped choose.
Revisit as Interests Change
Keep the map somewhere the young person finds useful, such as a desk or bulletin board. Return to it at a birthday, before a school year, or when interests or circumstances change.
Allow enough time between reviews for experience and growth. Ask what they have learned, what still matters, and what they want to revise. The purpose is to build a habit of reflection and choice. Some skills will become more important. Others will recede. The map should change with the person.
A question as broad as “What do you want to do with your life?” can be difficult to answer. This exercise offers a more approachable starting point: What do you want to develop, and how will you make room for it?
Over time, young people can learn to manage a portfolio of pursuits that reflects their interests, develops their abilities, and makes good use of their time.
For the broader framework, read Personal Alignment: How to Increase the Odds of Being Happy and Leading a Fulfilled Life.
