It's important to say 7dogs is not a new idea. It's just a fun, easy way to talk about a complex spiritual or psychological idea that already works well for a lot of people. It's a combination of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, The International Coaching Federation's Wheel of life, Inner-Hinduism's Chakras or Buddhism's Bhavacakra. You might find that one of these more popular, long-lasting lenses works better for you.
You feed this dog by paying rent, sorting bills, working for money and eating food for fuel.
Feed them by exercising, eating healthy food and hygiene like showering or cleaning your teeth.
This one needs you to have quiet time, listen to your feelings and find space/time to be calm.
Feed this one by doing things you feel proud of like careers, hobbies and creative activities.
Spend quality time with friends or family. Social media doesn't have the nutrition they need.
It doesn't matter who your love just as long as you feed it with some kind of love, sex or romance.
Feed this dog with the other things that make you feel good like play, treats and naps.
They're all nice and all important but many people find that they have a favourite dog that gets more attention than the others. There's also one dog that gets less time than they need. For you to feel happy/balanced you need to make sure that every dog is well fed.
If you want to track how your investing your time and energy, there's a 7dogs app to help you. It's a super simple Google Form that you fill in once an hour for as long as you want to track. Try to track for at least a week to get a fair recording, otherwise one bad/good day could send you off in the wrong direction. It should take less than 90 seconds to fill it out. Here's how ...
1. Tell it when you're looking
2. And what hour you're recording
3. Tick off which dogs you fed
4. You're done.
You can leave the page open, ready for your next submission. Or, you can also add it to your home-screen to make it easy to find. There's instructions for that below.
Keeping an eye on your pack
After each submission you can see previous responses. This will show you a dashboard of charts, most importantly which dogs you feed when and which you don't.
Android. Tap the three dots then choose Add to Home screen
IOS. Tap the upward arrow icon and scroll down
IOS. Choose Add to Home Screen from the options.
An example of your dashboard or previous response page.
The tracker is completely free. It's made in Google Forms which is also free. It also means you can link it with Google Sheets and other tools if you really ant to dig into the data. All you need to do is click the button below to make your own private copy.
You might want to set up a reminder. An alarm can be a bit intrusive, but your phone or computer calendar can be great. It'll nudge you without alarming anyone. I've created a downloadable calendar with ongoing reminders to make it easy to set up.
If you'd like a different time zone, download GMT. Then visit iCal Event Maker where you can upload it and choose your time zone.