Parts Work Chart: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Parts Work Chart, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
About 2 minutes
Try it here: list the parts you'd put on your chart
List the inner parts you notice, one per line, as the first rows of a simple chart you can add to later.
Which parts would go on your chart?
Practices that may help
- IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT. - Draw or sketch the inner system visually
Put parts and their relationships on paper — who is close to whom, who holds whom at arm’s length.
IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical - Personal Kanban, Made Practical
Personal Kanban (Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMaria Barry) adapts the industrial lean-production Kanban board for individual and small-team use. Its two rules are: visualize your work and limit work in progress (WIP). The Kanban method in manufacturing has strong evidence; the personal adaptation is a practitioner system with mechanistic grounding in cognitive load and attention research but limited formal trials in personal productivity contexts. - Track the relationships between parts
Notice how parts trigger, protect, and sometimes war with each other — the system’s dynamics are as important as its members.
IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical - Set up a simple To Do / Doing / Done board
Three columns and sticky notes (physical or digital) are all you need to make your work visible at a glance.
Personal Kanban, Made Practical - Use the Done column to learn about your work patterns
Periodically examine completed cards for patterns in what gets done, what gets stuck, and how long things actually take.
Personal Kanban, Made Practical - Use proven MECE frameworks as starting structures
Standard frameworks (profit tree, 4Ps, Porter’s Five Forces) are pre-built MECE structures — use them rather than rebuilding from scratch.
Issue Tree Analysis - Update the map as parts shift
Revisit and revise the map after significant inner work — the system changes, and the map should too.
IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical - Chunk and schedule time for key results
Block specific chunks of time for the actions in your MAP and protect them as non-negotiable.
Tony Robbins’ Rapid Planning Method (RPM), Made Practical - Protect Q2 time with scheduled blocks
Schedule your most important non-urgent work in your calendar before the week begins — treat it as an appointment.
The Eisenhower Matrix and Delegation
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I can sense my parts one at a time but I can never hold the whole thing in my head at once
- I keep working on my inner critic and nothing shifts, and I’m realizing it’s because the second the critic eases off, the part that procrastinates takes over
- All my tasks live as a swirling cloud in my head, so I can never actually see the whole pile at once
- I keep wildly underestimating how long things will take and overcommitting, week after week, because I have no honest record of how my work actually goes
- I’m trying to build the whole breakdown of this problem from a blank page, reinventing the structure from scratch, and it’s slow and I keep missing obvious pieces
Related concerns
- Parts Work Worksheet
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
- Parts Work Cheat Sheet
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
- Parts Work Graphic
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
- Parts Work Guide
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
- Parts Work Guidebook
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
- Parts Work Infographic
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.