Michael shares five habits that reclaimed his evenings: reframing work-life balance as life-work balance, protecting one hour nightly with his daughter Rosie between 6-7pm, defending hobbies like golfing, moving his Xbox to cut use by 90%, and enforcing a 10:30pm bedtime. Small changes that cut burnout and boosted his productivity.
Questions this video answers
Rosie.
About one hour each evening, typically between 6:00 and 7:00pm.
Around 10:30pm (he sets an alarm to go to bed at that time).
About 90%.
Every day has the same 24 hours in it. Whether it's you, me, everyone else around the globe, we've got 24 hours. The majority of the population, they spend a large portion of that working and then they spend the rest of it trying to avoid work. And that cycle was one that was my reality for years. I could never get out of that cycle. It was work, avoid work, feel exhausted, evenings, disappearing, getting that horrible feeling when I know I had work in a few hours time or I was going to bed and that was it. I wanted to be there for my family. And it wasn't until my youngest daughter, Rosie was born that I realized that I can't do this anymore. Something has to change. So I found five hacks that allow me to be able to be productive in my evenings without sacrificing my sanity. And I'm going to give them to you right now. The first hack is that you need to forget about work life balance. And it's a life work balance. The same people that I make money with are the same people that I spend social time with. So what that does is it means it glues the two together. I build businesses, I scale companies, I invest. And I do have the feeling that I've never worked today in my life since becoming an entrepreneur, because every day when I wake up, I love what I do. And that is something that means I can be extremely productive at all hours of every day without feeling like I'm under the cosh at work. Every evening, I do something that pushes the boundary in my life. So Tuesday, it might be that we have a family get together on a Friday, it's film night with the kids, etc. It's all intentional, it's all by design. I've designed my perfect evening every day. And what that does is focuses on things that are important but not urgent. Strategy, reflection, relationships. That's how you use your evenings to grow instead of using your evenings just to pass you by. Hack number two and one that I've personally really struggled with is scheduling family time. The people that you love the most shouldn't get the leftovers. And there is an element of that to entrepreneurship. When you're starting out and your back's against the wall and you're all in. But the hack that I found is actually to schedule family time. So for example, for at least an hour, every single evening between half, between six, six and seven, I spend dedicated time with my daughter. It's what I do. I spend that one hour is that sacred time. Then there's the school Runs, etc, But there's people with kids and then there are parents and they are two different things. And I want to consider myself a good father who looks after his children. So learning to schedule family time, planning the activity, whether it be with your children or just with your partner, if you haven't got kids, it could be a date night, it could be this, it could be that. Scheduling that time in as if it was a meeting means that it's equally as important as everything else. And what that allows you to do is ensure that your brain knows, well, no, I can't take that call then. I can't do that then because my scheduled family time is there. And you'd be very surprised with the impact that it has on your relationships internally, because it's something that took me a very long time to learn but is incredibly important and something that I do every single day of my life. Point three and extremely important on this list is defending your downtime. So your downtime when it comes to actual downtime, not scheduled family time, not work, actual downtime, you will lose your marbles if you do not have, like, tranquility at certain periods. Trust me, you will burn out. I have been there. You will burn out through hard work and then you're no good to anybody, including family members. So if you have hobbies, I like to play golf. I play golf as much as I physically possibly can. I schedule it in. I'll go on a golfing holiday. I'll make sure that it's penciled in, things happen. And whatever your downtime is, whether it's music, whether it's art, whether you're an artist and you like to paint, whatever it might be, protect that downtime with your life because otherwise it might cost you it. Hack number four. Your environment, your environment is everything, right? If you don't want to drink, what don't you put in your house? It's the exact same thing with every other temptation that you've got. If you like chocolate, don't have chocolate in your house. Too much of it anyway. For me, it's like consoles. Xbox. I love playing NBA. Like, I've moved my console out of all of my rooms. Now I have to designate, go to the room to play the Xbox. And it's cut down my usage of my Xbox by about 90% because it's not right in front of me. Not that I had much time anyway, but when I did, that's what I would do. Instead, I focus my evenings on things that are good for me, things that will be able to benefit me. It allows me. By doing that to your environment and cleaning up your space and making it so that there's nothing that could be a distraction or unhealthy or just take you off track can be bad for your mind. By removing all of those things, you make sure that the only choice that you have in the evening is to make a good choice where of where to allocate your time. Hack five Routine. You have to have a routine. You go to bed at a certain time. You wake up at a certain time. When it comes down to routine, everyone sets an alarm to wake up, but almost nobody sets an alarm to go to bed. And me personally, if it gets past 10:30pm it like starts to make me feel anxious and stuff. Like I can't go to bed later than that. That's my time to go to bed. Because then I wake up at like 7am and I know I just need a lot of sleep. To be fair, some people don't need that much. But for me, if I didn't have that alarm set to go to bed and I mistakenly watched another episode of that series and it was half eleven, my whole day would be ruined the next day. So setting a bedtime alarm, a morning alarm, having a routine is extremely important. Make these small changes to your day, to your life, and you will be unstoppable. They sound microscopic when I'm explaining them to you. Implement them and see what happens, because I guarantee you that you will see a significant boost in your mental health and your productivity. They will take a significant boost just by changing your environment and using the hacks that I've given you in the video today. My name is Michael Like. Subscribe, comment, Let me know what you've changed in your environment to make you more focused and more relaxed in the evenings.
