Our ‘life Audit' Walk... And Why You Should Do One Too!

Couples should talk, right? We all know that. It's the most basic tenet of marriage guidance. But face it, the communication gets fragmented In the hurly-burly of life, and Jobs, and children's myriad needs and troubles, and the hundred things that go wrong with houses and cars and overdrafts and holiday plans and tax returns and ageing parents.

So, we spend years In crisis management — firefighting, reacting valiantly to events, and batting away potential disasters one by one. I used to have a recurring dream In which I was at the bottom of a pit, like a children's ball pond, and people kept throwing down plastic balls at me, and I had to throw them back before I got buried, and they came bouncing down around me faster and faster until I woke up in a panic, remembering the kitchen drain, the difficult unwritten letter, the school-trip money, the dry-cleaning...

But, as any business guru will tell you, dealing with events day by day is only the half of it. You need some sort of strategy. To manage anything, even a family, you sometimes have to stand back for a moment to see how close you are getting to your mission statement (even though it probably just reads, 'Keep going, keep everyone upright and smiling and solvent, that'll do'). You almost need to draft an Annual Report to Shareholders, even though the shareholders share a bed. On the human-resources front, you also need to check that management colleagues are all singing from the same song sheet, and want the same things.