Inspiration: 'The Timeline Exercise'

Putting events into perspective.

This Timeline Exercise can offer you a unique perspective and map of your life journey. To see where you are relative to your past work & life events; a Frame of reference, and help you choose areas of focus moving forward.

Over time, you may find that past events need to be recalibrated and rescored relative to new events, or changed circumstances. Everyone’s Frame of Reference shifts and evolves, relative to, how they see, their current set of circumstances.

This is one of the first exercises I ask my clients to try because it helps us establish a rapport; connect and learn more about each other through discussing important milestones and reference points.

How we narrate our life journey is just as informative, as describing the facts of the events, themselves.

I’ve personally used this approach since I was first introduced to it during my MBA in 1997. It’s been an important annual, self-assessment tool, that’s helped me shape my personal development, career trajectory and goals.

This is my Frame of Reference (August 1988 to August 2023).

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The Methodology: Your Frame and some Self-reflection

Part 1 Defining your Frame

This methodology is not rocket science. It’s a simple subjective way that helps you make sense of what you’ve been through, and to help you understand what makes you tick; what you like and don’t like. The ‘why’ comes later.

[I’m still searching for the original reference source for the author of the exercise]

Here are the steps to do yours.

(1) Take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line with a scale of -5 to +5

(2) At the 0 mark on the vertical line, draw a horizontal line which will represent Time

(3) Now, think of an impactful event, change or moment in your life and give it a score For example -4 at 1991 on my Timeline was when I failed my A levels exams. It was the first point I marked. It was easier to plot the scores related to my education and work first and then think about my personal life. You’re using you’re current lens and mindset of today to subjectively score each event. Don’t try to think how you perceived it at the time. It’s a retrospective analysis, from the standpoint of today.

(4) Think of another event or change that impacted you, and give it a score relative to the last one you plotted in step 3. It could be several years later or just a few months. Focus on naming the event and its score, and then plot it on your timeline.

(5) Continue listing, and plotting other events. You may need to re-score previous events and recalibrate old events relative to new ones. Now, you can connect the dots.

You’ll start to see your journey of positive and negative events, the peaks and troughs over time. Challenge yourself to see if the scores make sense relative to each other.

Part 2 Self Reflection

The first time I did this Timeline Exercise, I did it all hardcopy; pen and paper scribbling away.

These days, I have an Excel spreadsheet that I update annually or if something ‘big’ happens.

Now that you have your Frame of events. Step back and look at the ups and downs. Are there big swings from positive to negative or vice versa? Is there a broad trend line? Are the scores really as they should be?

Make some general comments on what you’re noticing now that you can see the big-picture progression.

This table shows the different ways I’ve reflected on each event.

For each event, I noted the date it happened and labelled it with a short description. E.g. Failed A levels. I gave it a life score of -4, and the work score was 0, as I wasn’t working at that time. The Integrated score for that time point was -4. There were no positives, but there were a lot of negatives. It was one of the toughest times in my life and a very quiet summer!

At the time of the event itself, and within the turmoil of emotions I wasn’t in a frame of mind to assess what was happening. I was deep within the woods, a little lost and couldn’t imagine things would get better.

6 years later, when I was introduced to this ‘Timeline’ exercise. I was in a stronger position to assess my strengths and weaknesses and I could reflect on what I’d learnt before, during and after the ‘Failed A levels event’.

The exercise enabled me to see the bigger picture and established a Frame of Reference that grounded me. It is my personal Rosetta stone. I could put specific events into this perspective and it made sense to me. I could compare a new event to previous events in my life. I see the tree, the big woods, and the land it lies in.

If you’ve done your Frame, take a look across the top, at the high-scoring parts of your Frame.

Are there any commonalities in terms of what made those events, positive?

Looking across the bottom of the Frame, are there any commonalities or themes which made the lowest-scoring events, negative?

It’s not easy to unpack every event, so be kind to yourself. Can you dig into the most pronounced pivots or changes in your journey? If you gave it the highest score - why? What made it so positive? Similarly, what was happening that made the most negative event the worst point?

Take a break, step away from the Framework. Get a drink, walk outside. When you return you may see something new.

With fresh eyes and mind try to come up with a few ideas or lists. For example:

1. Create a list of personal strengths you’re most proud of, based on positive and negative events. What strengths have people told you, that you had at the time of the most positive event? Sometimes, your strengths are most obvious in the most challenging negative events, what stood out to you?

2. Create a list of personal weaknesses you may want to address. Being aware of something doesn’t mean you have to suddenly improve everything, life is a journey. If you’ve identified something as a personal weakness you did it for a reason. Awareness and acceptance is important. Be kind to yourself. This is not a self-bashing critique of what ‘should’ve, could’ve, would’ve’. Try to state facts. Choose something that you want to improve as a priority, and think of possible small ways to start.

You can see that the Framework can lead to more questions and more reflections, beyond strengths and weaknesses.

If this exercise inspired more questions I recommend ‘The Squiggly Career: Ditch the ladder, Discover opportunity, Design your career’, by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis.

They have a similar exercise in Chapter 3, and also suggest other exercises which support personal-development.

I hope this can equip you with new tools to support you.

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