If you’re seeking a way to achieve better work-life balance, solution-focused scaling offers a gentle yet empowering approach to overcoming challenges like depression, anxiety, or burnout. It’s aligning your professional responsibilities with your personal needs, carving out time for rest, nurturing relationships, and investing in self-care. By setting boundaries, making adjustments, and focusing on what you’ve already achieved, solution-focused scaling helps you take small, manageable steps toward your goals.
As Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer (1993) wisely put it, “There is magic in numbers.” Scaling questions simplify complex concepts and use action-oriented language to guide you in taking small yet meaningful steps toward your goals. They promote positivity, engage your rational thinking, and provide valuable insights for making informed decisions about planning your next steps. You can apply scaling questions across many areas of your life, making them a powerful tool to explore, measure, and track your progress. Scaling questions help you measure your progress, gain clarity, and set realistic goals.

Work-life balance is more than just a concept—it’s about the specific actions you choose to create harmony between your personal and professional life, especially when you’re grappling with depression, anxiety, and burnout. These challenges can make finding balance feel overwhelming, but it’s important to remember that you have the power to define what work-life balance means for you.

Achieving work-life balance is unique for each of you. For some, it might involve setting boundaries, prioritizing activities that nourish your well-being, or delegating tasks to prevent further burnout. It may mean unplugging from work when necessary, engaging in activities that rejuvenate you, and connecting with loved ones. Work-life balance means reflecting on your needs and adjusting your habits to support your mental and physical health.

Your key actions (your unique verbs)—setting, prioritizing, delegating, managing, focusing, unplugging, engaging, connecting, reflecting, and adjusting—enable you to thrive personally and professionally. Using solution-focused scaling, you can assess where you are on a scale from 1 to 10, celebrate what you’ve already done, consider who would notice these positive changes, and take small, actionable steps toward your goals.

Solution-focused scaling is a transformative practice where you assess your progress on a scale from 1 to 10, not by the severity of your issues but by your ability to manage and thrive. A score of 10 represents mastery, while 1 indicates the opposite. This method emphasizes actions you’ve already taken that work for you and helps you plan further steps to achieve your goals. This approach ignites your sense of agency, allowing you to create a personalized, actionable plan for enhancing your work-life balance.

Scaling questions pinpoint where you are now, visualize where you want to be, and identify the small, actionable steps to help you move forward. These questions provide a way to evaluate the progress toward your goals on a scale of 1 to 10. Unlike traditional approaches that measure the severity of problems like depression or anxiety, solution-focused scaling evaluates your agency, satisfaction, confidence, and how effectively you are managing your stress. Picture it as a scale of empowerment, with 10 signifying the highest level of satisfaction and one at the opposite end.
The true beauty of scaling questions lies in their unwavering focus on your goals and what truly matters to you. Exploring what keeps your number from being lower on the scale can reveal hidden solutions you might have yet to recognize. Understanding what’s already working for you and pinpointing the actions and strengths that help you maintain your current level allows you to build upon these strengths and move closer to your desired outcomes.

Solution-focused scaling helps you shift your attention from the severity of your challenges to your ability to achieve your desired results. Instead of measuring the severity of your problems, these questions guide you to consider how well you are managing, coping, or improving. For example, instead of asking, “How severe is your anxiety from 1 to 10?” a solution-focused approach would ask, “How well have you been managing your anxiety, from 1 to 10?” This shift in language encourages you to think about what’s working and how you can build on those successes.

By reframing scaling questions to emphasize your agency and strengths, you empower yourself to take proactive steps toward achieving your hopes, aspirations, dreams, and goals. This method shifts the focus from the severity of a problem to the potential for solutions, providing a clearer path forward for managing your mental and physical health.

Let’s look at a few more examples that highlight this shift:

• Problem-Focused: “How tired do you feel from 1-10?”
• Solution-focused: “How satisfied are you with your energy for your day, from 1 to 10, where 10 is very satisfied and 1 is the opposite?”

The problem-focused question emphasizes the negative, while the solution-focused question helps you reflect on what’s going well and how you can enhance it.
Here’s another example:

• Problem-Focused: “How difficult is it to concentrate from 1-10?”
• Solution-Focused: “How well can you concentrate and focus on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means you are very satisfied and 1 is the opposite?”

Using positive language and action-oriented verbs, solution-focused scaling empowers you to recognize your strengths and take active steps toward your goals. It’s not about ignoring problems but finding ways to move forward despite them.

Solution-focused scaling goes beyond your perspective by incorporating the viewpoints of others important to you—your VIPs (very important people (plants, pets and other relationships). By imagining how your VIPs would rate your journey on a scale of 1 to 10, you gain valuable insights and empathy. This process can reveal new possibilities and help you prioritize actions that matter most to you and those around you.

Scaling questions go beyond a single inquiry; they help you rise toward your goals by focusing on your successes rather than digging deep into problems. When you ask yourself what would be a “good enough” number and what keeps that number from being lower, you acknowledge what’s realistic for you. This process highlights your strengths, uncovers hidden resources, and guides you to take small, meaningful steps forward, one at a time.

Solution-focused scaling questions help you articulate your good enough number with detailed actions that mark your solutions. The specifics of the number one are not explored; rather, they are simply acknowledged as the opposite. This mobilizes your time to hone in and reflect on your unique solutions.

Continuing to explore what else keeps the number from being lower allows you to uncover potentially unrecognized resources specific to your situation. Reflecting on when the number was at its highest can help identify potential exceptions and positive differences in your journey. It’s only after you have explored these resources that it is time to ask yourself what you will be doing when your number increases by one point. In solution-focused conversations, it is important to begin with agency and resource activation.

1. What would be a good enough number?
2. What keeps your number from being lower? What else?
3. Suppose we asked your VIPs, on a scale of 1 to 10, what number would they give you? What keeps their number from being lower?
4. What reasons account for the similarity or difference in your confidence numbers?
5. What is one thing you can do to increase your number? What else could you do?
6. How confident are you, from 1-10, that you will do your best to do one thing to raise your number by one point and keep doing what is working for you?

Working your scale involves using questions to assess your progress on a scale from 1 to 10, focusing on what you’ve already accomplished, who would notice these positive changes, and identifying small steps to climb closer to your desired outcome.

This exercise is designed to help you reflect and enhance a solution-focused mindset as you work toward a satisfying work-life balance. The questions will guide you in defining what work-life balance means to you and how to achieve it. These exercises are tailored to support your unique journey, allowing you to approach them in a way that fits your needs.

• Set Your Own Pace: Move through the exercise at a pace that feels right for you. Focus on one question or reflection at a time, giving extra attention to those that resonate most deeply.
• Personalize Your Experience: Modify the exercise to suit your situation. If a question doesn’t align with your current focus, adjust it to reflect what matters most to you. This is your personal journey, so feel free to tailor the exercises as needed.
• Reflect or Discuss: You may choose to reflect privately, jotting down thoughts in a journal, or you might prefer discussing these questions with a trusted friend, partner, or group to gain different perspectives.

Step One: Visualize Your Best Hopes

Imagine waking up on a Sunday morning feeling truly satisfied with your work-life balance. What actions did you take to achieve this? How did you make it happen? Who noticed the difference? When have you felt this way before? Where were you when it was easiest to maintain this balance?

Use these guiding words—what, how, who, when, and where—to reflect on your successes and envision the steps you need to take:

• What specific actions have you taken when you’ve achieved work-life balance? Did you set boundaries, prioritize family time, or engage in relaxing and rejuvenating hobbies?
• How have you maintained work-life balance in the past? What strategies have worked for you?
• Who would notice your good work-life balance? Who in your life would see the difference? Perhaps your spouse, children, or colleagues would recognize that you’re more present, less stressed, and more focused.
• When have you felt most satisfied with your work-life balance? Reflect on when you last thrived both at work and home. When were you less stressed and more motivated?
• Where have you found it easiest to maintain work-life balance? Was it during a vacation, while working remotely, or in a structured environment with clear boundaries? How can you replicate these conditions now?

Measuring Your Progress: Working the Scale

• Suppose ten is you are satisfied with your work-life balance, and 1 is the opposite. Where are you now?
• What would be a good enough number on this scale?
• What keeps your number from being lower? What else?
• Suppose we asked your VIPs, on a scale of 1 to 10, what number would they give you? What keeps their number from being lower?
• What reasons explain the similarity or difference in your confidence numbers?
• What is one thing you can do to increase your number? What else could you do?
• Suppose ten is you are confident that you will do your best to improve your work-life balance, and 1 is the opposite. What number would you give yourself? What gives you this confidence? Is it good enough for you?

As you reflect, list the specific actions—your unique verbs—that emerge, such as leaving work at work, spending quality time with loved ones, or engaging in activities that rejuvenate you. These reflections will guide you in understanding what you need to do to achieve and maintain a satisfying work-life balance.

Thriving with Solution-Focused Scaling

Solution-focused scaling offers a practical and empowering way to enhance your work-life balance. By focusing on your strengths, incorporating the perspectives of your VIPs, and setting clear, actionable goals, you can navigate life’s challenges with greater ease and resilience. This method is not just about managing stress—it’s about thriving and achieving a fulfilling, balanced life.

Berg, Insoo Kim, and Steve De Shazer. “Making numbers talk: Language in therapy.” The new language of change: Constructive collaboration in psychotherapy (1993): 5-24.