Free tool
Give and Take
Name the things competing for room in your life, then drag them around and watch what happens to everything else. Give work more room and sleep gives ground; make space for grief and something else moves over. That is the whole point: the picture will not let you pretend otherwise.
Most balance exercises let you rate every domain highly and feel briefly better. This one is zero-sum by construction, which makes it less comfortable and considerably more honest — what you end up with is a map of decisions, not intentions.
Private by design: labels and layout live only in this browser tab — nothing is sent, saved, or stored anywhere. Save image downloads a PNG to your own device.
Each area has a handle inside it — slide it right to claim more room, and everything else gives way. Drag the dot to move an area, drag it to the edge to remove it (it turns grey first, so nothing disappears by surprise). Use “Add an area” for anything new.
“You can do anything, but not everything.”
— David Allen
Questions worth asking the picture
- Which area is bigger than you meant it to be? How did it get that way?
- What had to shrink for that to happen — and did you agree to it?
- Is there something with no space at all right now? Is that a season, or a pattern?
- Make a second map of how you would want it to look in six months. What is the first dot you would move?
Common questions
What is this actually showing me?
A picture where space is finite. Each named area claims the part of the canvas closest to its marker, so nothing can grow without something else giving ground — the same arithmetic as a week, a paycheque, or a nervous system. Most life-balance exercises quietly let you rate everything a nine out of ten. This one will not: the trade-off is built into the geometry, so what you end up looking at is a set of decisions rather than a wish list.
How do I use it with a client?
Three ways work well. Ask for the picture as it is now, then a second picture of how they would like it to look, and talk about the distance between them. Or use it for parts work: name the parts that show up in a hard week (the manager, the critic, the one who wants to hide) and let their sizes be honest. Or use it after a loss, when grief has taken up more room than a person expected and it helps to see that reflected rather than argued with.
Is there a right shape?
No, and it is worth saying so out loud to anyone who asks. A balanced-looking picture is not the goal — during a newborn year, a crisis, a dissertation, or a caregiving stretch, a lopsided map is an accurate map. The useful questions are usually whether the shape is chosen or merely inherited, and whether the small areas are ones the person is at peace with losing.
Is anything I type saved or sent?
No. Everything happens in your browser — no account, no upload, no server involved. Labels and layout are not stored anywhere, so closing the page clears it entirely. If you want to keep a picture, Save image downloads a PNG to your own device; if a client is mapping something sensitive, nothing is left behind on the machine.
This is a reflective exercise and general education, not therapy or assessment. It measures nothing and diagnoses nothing — it is a way of looking. If the picture brings up more than you expected, that is worth taking to a person.
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