The Life Audit
By Caroline Righton (Broadway Books, $14.95 paper)
Bookstores are packed with books that claim to help you focus on your passions, make the most of your time and achieve your goals. “The Life Audit” aims to accomplish all those things, though it may be challenging for people who are not detail-oriented to stick with Righton’s process. She includes 48 charts documenting 10 key areas: health, relationships, home, image, money, work, leisure, citizenship, soul and mortality.
1. Write down every detail you can about your life for four weeks. Afterward, you’ll have a clear idea of who you really are and what you want to change.
2. Be objective as you examine which relationships in your life are truly important to you and which can be allowed to wither away.
3. “Make appointments with hairdressers, barbers and spas for early in the day, before they fall behind schedule.”
4. Once you’ve reduced the clutter from your day, you can begin to see how any extra time and money can be used for the things you really want to do.
5. “Make `waste not, want not’ your mantra, and become diligent about not throwing any food away.”
