Sugarman’s activity asks you to map out (draw) your lifeline so that you can identify the
peaks (highs) and troughs (lows) that you have experienced over your life. This visual
representation helps you to take note of the significant moments in your life. Do not include
graph in your paper. It is only for you to reflect on the following prompts:
• What is its general shape? Does it continue to rise throughout life?
• Does it depict peaks and troughs around some arbitrary mean? Alternatively, is there a
plateau and subsequent fall in the level of the curve? Is it punctuated with major or
only relatively minor peaks and troughs?
• The horizontal axis represents time; but how about the vertical axis—what Life-span
development dimension does that reflect?
• What (or who) triggered the peaks and troughs in the graph? Why did they occur at
the time that they did?
• What might have been done (or was done) to make the peaks higher and the troughs
shallower?
• How might the incidence and height of the peaks be increased in the future? And the
incidence and depth of the troughs decreased?
• What positive results emerged from the troughs and what were the negative
consequences of the peaks?