Husna Bokhari

Maybe it’s because I’ve always leaned toward being a perfectionist, wanting everything in my personal life to be well planned. During my master’s year in Belgium, I came up with a planning style that I called “My Life Quadrant.” I would renew it weekly, hoping to create a more balanced lifestyle. While I was busy catching up with studies, I didn’t want to unintentionally neglect other important aspects of life.

At that time, my quadrant had four parts:

1. Spiritual
2. Physical
3. Mind
4. Academic

It wasn’t perfect — there were some flaws and redundancies — but it was the beginning of my attempt to live a more balanced life. For example, under Spiritual, I set goals like how many times I wanted to fast or how many Quran pages I should read. Physical was about exercise, Mind included writing and leisure reading, while Academic carried the heavier load of my weekly study goals.

Over time, my quadrants evolved. Now they look like this:

1. Spiritual
2. Physical
3. Intellectual
4. Social

In this version, both Mind and Academic are grouped under Intellectual, while Social reminds me to actively nurture connections and engage with others — something every human needs. These quadrants aren’t fixed; they shift with different seasons of life. At one point, I even added Financial as one of them.

For me, the Life Quadrant is a flexible framework — a way to keep track of what matters most and to remind myself that balance is not about perfection, but about being intentional.