The speaker argues that work-life balance is the wrong goal. Instead, pursue excellence everywhere. He recalls obsessively collecting toy catalogs as a kid and planning the perfect Christmas, refusing to leave celebrations early, as a model for how to live.
A lot of people talk about work, life, balance. I'm not trying to have balance. I'm trying to have excellence in all areas of my life. What I try to do, and that's why I said is I've had this analogy, and I'll see if this lands for you is when I was a kid at Christmas, I wasn't trying to create balance for Christmas Day. I would work tirelessly to find every toy catalog, dog, ear the page, circle the toy I want, rip the page out, put it in front of my parents. I would also lay out exactly how I would want Christmas to go. There was no amount of I didn't need motivation for it. I didn't need coaching for it. It was exactly the way I wanted it and I didn't want it to end. I wasn't never trying to step away from Christmas Day. I never tried to step away early from a Christmas party or a birthday party at McDonald's or at the local Six Flags.
