5 Principles for Achieving Sustainable Work-Life Balance | Michael & Megan Hyatt

We work longer and sleep shorter. We fix problems at the office while creating new ones at home. We attend more meetings and skip nights out with family or with friends. We have these bigger lives at work than we sometimes do at home.

People need to realize that the entirety, the whole of their life is interconnected.

Is achieving a work-life balance even realistic?

We can give every area of our life the attention that it needs to be in a place of thriving.

And how do we do it?

Because it's not just about getting things done, it's about getting the right things done.

The 4-day work week, is this something that you've looked into?

If you've got less time, you just get focused faster and get it done.

What advice would you have for someone maybe who feels like they, they're winning in one area, but they're failing at life?

What it comes down to is energy management, not time management.

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I'm your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. When presented with this unattractive Attractive picture of overworking culture. It's interesting, right? Some people put the, the brakes on ambition completely, but this choice has its own shadow side. We end up with unused potential, reduced income, maybe some unfulfilled professional dreams, which may end up being just as soul-crushing as the constant hustle. Our guests today are Michael and Megan Hyatt, a father-daughter team who are more than familiar with this dilemma and have found a way around this. They are the author of numerous books, including the one we're gonna focus on today, which is Win at Work and Succeed at Life. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us.

This is so great. I really enjoy being on your podcast, and we'll, we'll put a link in the show notes as we always do at jimkwik.com/notes to, uh, your podcast. And I wanna first start out by thanking both of you for the work you do. Our, our team, uh, they're so excited 'cause they're fans, you know, our, as part of our culture, we read. a lot. And, and your books are, are very popular with our team. So they were super stoked that we get to have this conversation. And they, they actually submitted some questions and so did our community. Maybe we could start with, you talk about this double win of succeeding both at work and in life. Was, was there an aha moment that made you realize that there's a need for this I don't know if you call it balance or harmony. Where was that? Was there an impetus there?

Yeah, I think both of us have our own stories in that regard. But for me, it goes back about 20 years ago when I was working in the corporate world and I'd been head down, really focused on turning one of the divisions of the large corporation that I was working for. I was tasked with turning that around. And so, I was able to do it with my team and we did it about half the time we thought it would take. But we were working way too much, working evenings, weekends, through vacations, and all of that. It just felt like the pressure was on. Well, the good news was I got the biggest bonus check I'd ever received in my career. And I took that home expecting my wife to be excited about it. And she said, honey, we need to talk. So, we went into the den, we sat down, and she said, look, I appreciate everything you've done. But the truth is, you're never home. And even when you are, your head's somewhere else. It's not in the game. And your 5 daughters, of which Megan is the oldest, need you now more than ever. And she said, you know, if I'm honest— and she began to choke up and cry at this point— she said, if I'm honest, I feel like a single mom. And at that moment, I felt very conflicted. I wanted to defend myself, but at the same time, I knew deep inside that she was right. But I didn't know how to get out of this dilemma. I felt like it was the impossible choice. Either I could, you know, choose to really succeed at home or win at work, but I couldn't do both. And so that sent me on a quest to see if there was a third way where you could actually have both. And that's the double win.

I love that. Megan, did you— was there a kind of an inciting moment for you that get you on purpose for this?

Yeah, there was. So my dad and I began working together in 2012. The year before, my husband Joel and I had adopted 2 boys from Uganda together. At the time, they were 3 and 14 months when we adopted them. And we now have 5 kids together, ages 23 to 5. So, you know, send prayers and wine and whatever else you've got. But back then when we had just adopted, we were very naive going into that. And what we didn't realize is that any child that's available for adoption probably has a significant history of trauma. Just the fact that you need to be adopted all by itself is traumatic. Which meant that we were suddenly as parents in the deep end of the pool and we were overwhelmed by the needs that our children had. There's a lot of neurological challenges, psychological challenges, behavioral issues. And so at the time, my dad and I were working together and he came to me and said, I think it's time for you to be the COO. This is around maybe 2013-ish, something like that, 2014. And I said, that's great, but my kids really need me. If they're going to heal, like, I have to be totally present for them. I cannot do the typical things that an executive would do, you know, travel a lot, work on nights and weekends, take clients out for dinner regularly, things like that. And he said, well, that's fine as long as you can deliver the results. You know, that's what I care about. I don't really care how long you work or what the structure of your day is. And so I began working about a 6-hour day from, you know, 9 to 3 at that point. And I've done that more or less ever since. And the reason for that was really not a grand vision of work-life balance. It was really necessity of meeting the needs of my family in a way that there was no way I could outsource or come up with another solution for. My husband at the time was working in a corporate job. And so I began my own quest of how do I win at work and succeed at life and give my kids in particular what they needed to heal and thrive and grow. And all these years later, I'm happy to say, Those 2 little kids are now 16 and 14, and they're doing great, and they've made tremendous progress. And I think that that story would've turned out differently had I not been able to, to be present with them.

I love that because I, I feel like, you know, things, we're, we're always learning right now. Our, our audience, they, they love to learn, you know, and, and that learning informs, you know, hopefully some different decisions moving forward. And we have a lot of high performers that listen, a lot of entrepreneurs. And there's this trend or almost addiction that when we talk about busyness, right? That's where it's almost a badge of honor. And in today's fast-paced world, how do you advise these high performers or entrepreneurs to stop glorifying busyness and instead focus on meaningful productivity without the burnout?

I think there's a couple things there, Jim. I think that first of all, people need to realize that the entirety, the whole of their life is interconnected. You know, you don't just work in isolation from the other— we call them domains, domains of life. But if things aren't going well at work and you've got a lot of stress, it's going to impact your health. It's probably going to impact your most significant relationships. If you're going through some kind of relational challenge, that's probably going to impact your work. You're not going to be fully present at work to do your best work. If you're unhealthy or you have a health crisis, that's going to cascade into these other areas of life as well. So, I think, you know, the first thing is awareness. The second thing, when I went through that situation with my wife in the den where she confronted me, I didn't have any resources. I didn't know how to solve the problem. So, I hired an executive coach who promptly got me to establish boundaries around my work because my work was like a swamp. It was leaking into everything.

Hmm.

It was not like a river that had clear boundaries. And so, I committed to him that I would be at home at 6 o'clock every night and I wouldn't touch the computer till the next morning. I wouldn't work on the weekends and I wouldn't work on vacations. And so, when I made those commitments to him, he said, fantastic, that's a great place to start. And he said, I'm sure you won't mind if I periodically call your wife to check in with you and see how you're doing. Well, that was the accountability that I needed because everything began to change. It didn't all change at once. But it began to change with those hard boundaries because now all of a sudden I was more focused, more effective, and even more efficient at work because I had this constraint. I just couldn't, you know, let the, let the work bleed into the evening or the weekends. And it's amazing how much time we waste when we don't have boundaries. But when you have a hard boundary, just like when you're leaving on vacation, that Friday before you leave on a 1-week vacation, you're enormously productive. Because you got a deadline.

Yeah.

And so having a hard boundary kind of puts a deadline, packages your day in such a way that you have to prioritize and work on the most important things.

Now, I notice having a constraint, it really enhances commitment, creativity, you know, a level of maybe even consistency or concentration. And in your book, you mentioned a few interesting things when it comes to this cult of overworking. Something like whether it's entrepreneurs or CEOs seem to suffer considerably with higher divorce rates than others. That is related to, you know, overworking and stress. For the average maybe employee, the overwork also damages their own personal job dissatisfaction, could compromise their productivity. Somewhere in the neighborhood, I believe it was What, like 20% of employees report to be in high engagement and high also burnout? And so I'm curious, when you're looking at this, it's no wonder why people are looking for a different way to, to live, to work. However, how do you reconcile that? I was, I was wondering, this is a kind of a long way to get to, maybe we could define what is, what does balance mean to the two of you?

Yeah. You know, when I think about balance, I don't think it means literal balance, like you're giving an equal slice of the pie to every part of your life. You know, for example, we sleep a lot more hours than we eat, you know, so I'm not going to dedicate the same number of hours to eating as I am to sleeping because those, to be successful in those 2 areas require different amounts of time. So I think that's important. We're not being literal about slicing the pie in exactly equal pieces. What we are saying is we're able and free because we have enough margin in our life, meaning time, money, et cetera, that's not dedicated to something else already, not eaten up, for example, by work, that we can give every area of our life the attention that it needs to be in a place of thriving. So when you think about your children, for example, What does it mean to be present with your children? For me, what I've decided that means, and I think this is highly individualized, so it's really coming up with what does your own double win mean? But for me, it means being home with my kids when they get back from school. And so that's one of the ways that I define my personal double win. Another way is that I want to sit down with my family and have dinner most nights of the week now that I have Teenagers and adult children, that looks a little different than it did when they were younger. But still, that's really important to me. And so being clear on what does it actually look like to win and succeed in all these areas? Because I think the problem is most of us have become clear on that at some level, to the extent that we're clear on anything in our professional lives. But we, in many cases, haven't thought about that very much in the other domains of life. Maybe we've thought about it in regard to our health or maybe in our marriage or, um, something else, but it's really easy to just kind of drift along and not to design a life that ultimately ends in thriving in all areas of our life. And so what I, what I want to feel when I know that I have the double win, I feel at peace. I feel like I am in a good place in the most important relationships in my life. My children feel like they have the attention they need. My husband, feels loved and attended to. I'm taking care of my body. I'm resting appropriately. I'm having fun. You know, those are some of the ways that I know when I've gotten the double win. And so then I kind of back up from there, like, what are the habits or rituals that are necessary to get me to that place?

And you could reverse engineer that. Yeah. I have this idea that burnout is just, it's not sometimes because we're doing too much. Sometimes it's because we're doing too little of those things you mentioned. The things that nourish us, the things that make us come alive. And sometimes we're hypnotized, you know, by expectations or media or marketing or some kind of work culture. We're seeing more and more information, and I'm curious if you have a perspective on this, on the 4-day work week. Is this something that you've looked into, or does it have merit, or is it individual, or what are your thoughts on that?

I think it does have merit. And we've studied that, uh, for a long time and still to this day, to some extent, we have a 30-hour work week. So during COVID we did that and we found that it didn't impact productivity at all. You know, that people were just able to get the same amount of work done. You know, it's kind of like the reverse of Parkinson's Law, you know, which says that work expands to the time allotted for it. Well, kind of the really the reverse of that, I call it Hyatt's Corollary. Is that work contracts to the time allowed for it. So if you've got less time, you just get focused faster and get it done. Now, obviously there's a law of diminishing returns, but there've been a lot of studies done, particularly in Europe on this, where there's been, uh, the same productivity at the 4-hour or the 4-day work week as the 5-day work week. Megan, can you remember the name of that book that we read also?

Yeah, Shorter. I don't remember the author's name, but yes, that's a great book on this topic. And in fact, I can't remember the specific studies, but what I do remember, I think they were coming out of the UK, that there were increased profits in the businesses and they replicated this. I think there were 2 or 3 different studies. There were increased profits in the businesses that worked a 4-day workweek. Pretty interesting. I mean, I think one of the things, Jim, when you were talking that I was thinking about, this is not just a strategy to avoid burnout, although absolutely. I mean, that's like, we know burnout is bad. It's bad for your health, your relationships, and definitely your work. But this is really a performance strategy, that work-life balance isn't something we do just when things get crazy. It's something we do proactively So that we can go the distance and we can perform at the highest level and continue to grow over time for the long haul. Because we can do all kinds of stuff for the short term. But the question is, how do we go the distance and truly succeed, not just for 3 to 5 or 10 years, but for decades? So if you're somebody who really cares about the contribution you're making, if you feel like You know, you're not here by accident. You have a purpose. You have something meaningful to contribute to the world. And you know that there is a challenge to be able to do that over the long haul, then winning at work and succeeding in life is a way that you can optimize your circumstances to do that at the highest level. So I think, you think about somebody like Tom Brady and how he would sleep 14 hours a night. You know, well, that wasn't just because he loved to sleep. I mean, I imagine it was actually challenging to sleep for 14 hours a night. I've not managed to do that successfully. Probably since I was a baby, you know, but he did that because he knew his body needed that kind of recovery if he was going to be 45 years old, still throwing the football and winning Super Bowls. So I think that's a good lesson for all of us.

And when you talk about long-term performance, you know, there is a difference between something that's attainable and sustainable over time. And with that 4-day work week, going back to the power of having constraints, you know, and work filling, you know, that that amount of time that's given. In the book, the subtitle you have is 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork. And there's probably not enough time to go through in depth these 5 principles. So that's why I recommend everybody gets their copy of your book. But maybe we can just mention what those 5 principles are and what questions can people start asking themselves to start the process?

The 5 principles are, first, design your life. For the double win. So, this takes intention. You're not going to just drift into a life you love or a life that's meaningful. You're going to have to design it. So, it takes initiative. And unfortunately, and you probably have this in your life planning work, but most people spend more time planning a 1-week vacation than they do planning their life.

Yeah.

And with not surprising outcomes. The second principle is stop cheating your future self. So you got to avoid the shortcuts and the habits that only serve you in the short term, but will actually decimate or undermine the future for you. The third principle is work with your constraints. We've talked about that pretty much, whether it's time, energy, money, or any other resource, work with your constraints. Don't resent them, but embrace them. They're there to help you. And then fourth, accelerate your results with systems. And, you know, systems— I've written a book, a major book on goal setting, but systems are better than goals. You know, goals kind of set the direction, but if you can set up a system, like even if it's a series of habits, that's even better. And then finally, just embrace the power of constraints.

The second one's interesting when you're thinking about your future self. You know, I don't— for right or wrong, I've always had— for years I've had this whenever I'm facing a dilemma or a decision or some kind of difficulty. asking myself a simple question like, what would my future self want me to do? And it just kind of keeps my eye in terms of, you know, I tell people that there's a version of yourself that's patiently waiting. And the goal is, you know, we show up for ourselves intelligently with this level of balance until we're introduced. And so I feel like this is such an important topic and conversation that we're having with everybody.

Yes.

When I was On your show, we talked a little bit about mindset. And when I'm thinking about mindset and evolution, you know, in your journey to win at both work and life, you have that double win. Has your mindset evolved? Maybe have there been, lack of a better word, limiting beliefs that needed to shift that maybe you had to let go of to make that shift and get to the next place in your journey? journey, like, when it comes to your mindset. Are you tired of constantly feeling overwhelmed by your never-ending to-do list? Do you struggle to find enough hours in the day to accomplish everything you need? But what if I told you there's a solution that can help you take back control of your time, your focus, your productivity? I'd like to introduce you to Kwik Productivity. This 10-day course is designed to provide you with the proven strategies you need to get more done in less time without burning out. So if you're ready to learn to get the most out of your time, your tasks, and your life, then don't wait any longer. Click the link below to learn more and secure your spot and your access right now.

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I'm currently teaching a webinar. This will be the— today will be the 3rd time I've done the same webinar live, but it's called 5 Dangerous Beliefs About Success That Threaten Your Future.

Wow.

And so, these are just sort of those subconscious beliefs that have been installed in all of us, maybe through our parents or just through the culture in general, or in particular, living in the West. But things like, you know, success requires constant sacrifice. And one of the things I learned from the world of sports is that tension is the enemy of performance. And so if you could be relaxed, you know, that when you're working and not under so much stress, you could actually perform at a much higher level. That's why if you've ever golfed and if you've ever had a golf teacher, they tell you to relax your grip.

Mm-hmm.

Because too tight of a grip on anything chokes it and you don't have your best performance. Because again, Tension is the enemy of performance. So there are many of those beliefs like that. Like, you know, you said earlier about exhaustion is so often a badge of honor, or busyness is a badge of honor. And I think that, that what it comes down to is energy management, not time management. And so some of those kinds of fundamental beliefs have had to shift over time where we would embrace these things and say, oh, when I'm giving attention, To my family. When I'm involved in some kind of health routine, making sure that I stay fit or that I eat well, those are actually things that are going to help me at work. In the past, I saw them as a distraction from work. Like, I don't have time to eat. You know, I'm not going to break for dinner. I'm not going to break for lunch. I'm just going to keep powering through it. But all the science shows that that's not an effective strategy. In fact, over about 55 hours of work, and we have It's all documented in the book. The law of diminishing returns kicks in and you're not any more productive after 55 hours than you would be after 40. So, you know, when people are working 70 hours a week, yeah, you can sustain that for a while, but, uh, also after a while, you know, you start having some very bad outcomes and including health outcomes.

Yeah. There's that, that phrase that, uh, you know, a healthy person has a thousand dreams and goals, but an unhealthy or sick person has one dream, right? And they only have one goal.

Yes.

In my work, we have this like limitless model that we kind of, it's like a lens of mindset, motivation, and methods, you know, where we could have more agency because we have choice in these areas. For motive, we cover mindset and motivation, the starting point for is purpose. And I'm curious in the research that you've done, what role does purpose play in achieving that that double win? And maybe a secondary question, how can someone tap into it, that a deeper why to fuel their, whether it's career success or personal fulfillment?

Yeah, I think purpose is so important and really it is the thing that motivates you to want to do things like optimize your ability to perform because what you're doing matters so much. That you don't want to not be able to serve the people that you feel called to serve at the level you need to. So I think it's a really important component. This is something that we teach in our Life Focus course, which helps people to identify a 10-year plan for their life as well as their personal values. You know, we think a lot about values in the companies we work for. Maybe if you're a business owner, you have your own. values, core values as a company, but as an individual, we also have values. They're just either kind of running in the background implicitly or we state them explicitly. And so we go through a process to help people get clear on that as well as their purpose in the world. And so I think the reason that that is necessary and helpful when you're thinking about the double win is because this is not a magic process where we're somehow going to tell you How to get 60 hours of work done in 40 or 30 or something like that. I mean, we all have the same number of hours in a day and in a week, and we have constraints. And really the only way to free up the margin that you need so that you can attend to all these areas outside of work is to get the same or better results by doing fewer things or in less time. Like, we've got to figure out somehow how can we achieve what we want to achieve, but do it more efficiently and effectively so that we have the time for other things in our life. And you can do that by productivity hacks and strategies and basically just try to figure out how do you go faster. But we think that that is kind of working at cross purposes because it's not just about getting things done, it's about getting the right things done. So when you know your purpose, you have a kind of a leg up on knowing where do I focus?

Yeah.

What are going to be the higher And highest leverage activities that I can invest in? We have a concept called the Freedom Compass that helps you to categorize your work based on how much of your passion and your proficiency or your ability to impact results that work creates in your life, because you really want those 2 components to intersect. If you're just good at it and it drives results, but it doesn't light you on fire and move you in your heart, It's probably not going to be very sustainable. But if you love it, but it has no market value, then that's also a problem. So if you're going to have the double win, you got to be able to do both. And so when you can identify what are the things that I am both passionate about and proficient in, and then on the opposite side, what are the things for which I have very little passion and very little proficiency? Now you can start to focus your time on the things that are truly the highest leverage that are directly aligned with your purpose, and you can start getting rid of or delegating or automating the things that are, that you have less passion and proficiency in. And so I think that ultimately is how we move someone using their purpose to free up the time and have the margin so they can get the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life.

And as opposed to just working harder and being more efficient, You know, we're talking about, I just wanna underscore this for listeners. You're talking about doing the right things, maybe even with the right people at the right time, but also for the right reasons. And, um, I guess my final question would be, what advice do you have as someone who's listened to this episode now? Obviously, I highly recommend they get a copy of your book, but what advice would you have for someone maybe who feels like they, they're winning in one area? Let's say they feel like they're succeeding at work. but they're failing at life. How do they start maybe realigning and reconciling that or realigning with their priorities today?

You know, we have a free tool, Jim, that maybe you could link to in the show notes, but it's called the Life Score Assessment. But it affords you the opportunity to self-evaluate in each of the 9 major domains of life. So there's probably some domains where you're killing it, you're doing fine, and there's other domains that need attention. And this gives you ultimately a report which gives you a set of priorities, the things you need to focus on first to try to restore life balance integration, but also gives you some recommendations on what you can do to get that. So I would, I would start there.

Perfect. And we'll link that in the show notes, always at jimkwik.com/notes, as well as your courses, your books, your podcasts. And as we wrap up this conversation, I hope the listener, because I could talk to you both for hours. And because I'm personally curious, that's one of the reasons why a lot of us have podcasts is so we could, you know, do our own research and learn so much. So I hope everyone has gained some powerful insights and inspiration into the complex dynamics of this work-life balance that we hear a lot about. And just a reminder that achieving balance isn't about perfect equilibrium. Like what was said here, you're not sleeping the same amount of time as you're working out or, or doing other things, because that's what balances people. It's like equal weights, right? That, that's not necessarily the goal, but rather you're making intentional choices that align with what you value most, right? Your values, your priorities. And so as everyone listening, as you go about your week, I encourage you to reflect on the 5 principles. that were discussed and consider how you might apply them for your own life. And ask yourself, you know, if you're going on the presupposition that questions could be the answers, what would a truly fulfilling and balanced life look like for you? Right? Because it's individual, you know. And I want to thank you both so much for being on our show. We can't wait for people to engage with it, to watch it, to share it. And, um, look forward to having you back on the show also as well.

Thanks for having us.

As always, you can find out more ways to fuel your brain's potential on our YouTube channel. Uh, you could join 1.7 million subscribers there where we post also the extended versions of these episodes. So any audio platform, Spotify, iTunes, we, we limit it to 20 minutes. We make it quick. We put the extended version on YouTube. So this one definitely qualifies. So make sure you get all, I guess you miss it. I feel like you miss a lot. And so make sure you hit the subscribe button, leave a comment, go to the show notes, get the links. Where can people get Win at Work, Succeed at Life?

Wherever better books are sold. Amazon, Barnes& Noble. You know, I'd probably check Amazon first. They have all of our books.

Fantastic. And again, we'll link to that in the show notes. And please, everybody, take a screenshot wherever you're consuming this and tag us all on social media so we get to see it. And share your thoughts. Because remember, when you share it, I feel like it's a way of paying it forward for your friends and your family, your followers. They get to be educated and empowered also. So leave a comment under this episode. Let us know what you thought. And this is your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Until next time, be limitless.