137. 3 Reasons to Seek a Balanced Life

Episode Transcript

Courtney Baker:
So, I know culturally, there’s this whole kind of I don’t know that it’s bragging, but it borderlines on bragging and it’s this whole like bravado around hustling. Almost like really great employees, people that are really great at their job, what they do is they just hustle harder than everybody else. That is the path to win. Matter of fact, I just pulled up. Let’s see, there are 1 million posts on the hashtag hustle harder. Not just hustle, but do it harder. 28.9 million on hashtag hustle. I think this is a cultural phenomenon that has happened where rather than saying like, no, there’s got to be another path. It’s like the path we’re laying out for being successful in work is there’s one path, hustle. Just do it better and harder than anybody else. Do y’all, do you see that in your feeds or kind of like the circles you run in?

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah, I think you always see somebody with a post that has an actual post or an art piece in a background that says hustle hard or hustle harder. And we’ve even talked about this before, is there might be moments or sprints of just moments where you just got to get stuff done that would be interpreted as a hustle, but there has to be some balance to the rest of your life. It can’t be 24/7 hustle. Otherwise you will just go down in flames and there will be no more of you. So just putting together the balance of what our life can look like as we are whole people, everything can’t just be about work or career there’s other things that make you up as a person, other domains. So I think it’s just all about figuring out what balance looks like or what a right rhythm looks like in our lives that kind of gets us outside of that only option being to hustle.

Blake Stratton:
I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing.

Nick Jaworski:
Going to roll the theme right there.

Verbs Boyer:
Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. So you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done and finally start loving Mondays. I’m verbs here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you both.

Courtney Baker:
I think it’s really funny that we’re talking about this topic right now. Can y’all hear the baby crying in the background?

Verbs Boyer:
Barely. Barely.

Courtney Baker:
Okay. Well that’s good, but it feels like the right day to be talking about a balanced life while I have a sick kiddo at home.

Blake Stratton:
The topic is why we should seek, or three reasons to seek a balanced life. I’m wondering, could we define what balance is for a second or is that something we’re going to get into? Is that one of the things.

Verbs Boyer:
Why don’t we get into it by defining it?

Blake Stratton:
Hey, there we go. Defining balance. Because we were talking about this before we hit record. A lot of people in our community are just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff they have to do. And Courtney, what you were saying earlier about hustling, the default answer is really just to hustle your way through it or to push harder.

Blake Stratton:
And the pushing harder is really just one third of a potential answer, isn’t it? We talk at Full Focus about execution, but we talk about it as one third of the whole part of achievement. Before execution you need vision, you need alignment. And what we’re talking about with balanced life is really that vision and alignment part of it beyond just kind of the hustling or the execution part of things. I have a lot of phone calls with people, primarily they’re leaders or executives who are interested in our coaching.

Blake Stratton:
But they won’t disagree with me that balance is a good thing, for instance. But it’s the pursuit of balance in their mind means everything is out of 10 all the time and that’s just way too much. And so I’m curious, how would you two define when we say a balanced life, what does that even mean to you?

Courtney Baker:
That’s a really great question. I mean, I think for me, probably the first thing off the top of my head is that I’m able to be present at the right times. So when I am in my role for my job, that I’m able to be fully present in that role. And then when it’s time to be present with my family in relationships, in hobbies, in things outside of my work that I’m able to be fully present in those moments too. And I think for me, in my life, when I start not being able to be present in either of those, that’s when it feels… I know that I’m not in a very good place. It becomes really hard. I start to feel like I’m failing across the board and in all aspects. And so I think for me, that’s probably the key is being present.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah, I would agree with that. Same thing what Courtney said, just being able, being able to have the freedom and the ability to tend to the other areas of life. Whereas we talk about the other domains of life. When you’re off balance I feel like there’s times where you’ve just kind of accepted off balance as being the normal, which is how we get stuck in the hustle harder mentality. And even though that you’re off balance, you’ve done it for so long. You’ve figured out how to function underneath that off balanced-ness.

Verbs Boyer:
Almost like when you have a toothache and you’ve had it for a while and the resolution is just go to the dentist, see what’s going on and remedy the situation. But you’ve learned to just chew on the other side of your mouth and not bother the aching tooth, even though that you know it’s present. So I think that we’ve kind of gotten accustomed to being off balance that it’s almost like, well, I’ve gotten this far doing this. I can maybe manage a little bit longer when that may not be the case necessarily. So finding where balance is or the right rhythm for our life becomes even more important, because again, nobody knows where the end of hustle is.

Blake Stratton:
Okay. Interesting. I was just curious what we would say to that about how are we defining balance? And I think we can unearth some more nuance there as we get into these reasons why to seek a balanced life. I think the biggest disclaimer, I think for me is that balance doesn’t mean equality distribution of time, energy or resources, 100% in a uniform timeline. Don’t try to crack the code on balance on a given day and then just live that grid 365 days. That’s not really what it means. And people, I think, sometimes get intimidated or they start goal setting. They take our post Best Year Ever. The hardest thing is to limit the number of goals because they’re like, “Oh, well I want a hobby. And I want my marriage to improve and I want to make a million more dollars. And I also…”

Blake Stratton:
All these different goals and balance is somehow doing them all at once, super well. And I love your answers because they really aren’t about what’s on your plate or even in what quantities, it’s more about your mental, emotional states and your ability to take pride in the different facets of your life in any slice of time. So anyway, not to go to SCUBA too fast, but I think that’s important before we dig into why should you seek a balanced life is like let’s first identify what that even is. So thanks for indulging.

Verbs Boyer:
All right. So number one is just recognizing that your life is multifaceted. Your life is more than work. It’s more than just your home life and your family. What makes you up as a human being is multidimensional. And then we often talk about this in the realm of the 10 primary life domains, which is intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, marital, parental, social, financial, vocational, and avocational.

Verbs Boyer:
What you’re doing at this point is realizing that all these different domains make up who you are as a person. And as we talk about what it’s… Where we often get into a non-balanced life is normally when we’re neglecting either one or a few of these areas for a period of time. But missing out on that one area also produces unhealthy outcomes in the long run, as we talked about. Nobody really knows when so ends you. You can only do it for so long before you start to break down. Not only in the one specific area that you were hustling in, but you’ll start to notice the deficit and everything else if you’re not already aware of what’s going on around you, in your relationships, in your emotional health or your physical health, it often shows up in those areas in a big way also.

Courtney Baker:
It’s really interesting. I feel like recently it might have been on the podcast that we had somebody that was sharing, I just feel so overwhelmed. I think if I could just spend a Saturday to just like frantically try to get as much done as possible, then I would be good. And it’s like, no, that’s a trap. . You do that one Saturday and then it’s like, becomes your answer to the problem. And so then you just got to keep doing that. You got to keep layering on these occasional Saturdays. That’s not an answer. So I think that’s like laying out front of looking at your life as multifaceted and figuring out okay, there has to be a different way. Because all of these areas, I think everybody listening would agree are all important.

Courtney Baker:
And certainly like Blake said, these are not all going to be like 10, I’ve arrived… Actually you’re never going to arrive period on any of these. Has Bill Gates arrived on intellectual? I don’t know. He probably would say, “No, I’m still getting there.” So I think just the awareness of these different life domains and how they really are playing into your life is just important out of the get go. Because I think so many times we just think about work and then a lot of times either our just most important relationships and everything outside of that kind of falls away for a lot of people.

Blake Stratton:
I mean, I think our first reason and second reason are really closely connected. And I want to build off of what you just said, Courtney, and introduce the second reason to seek a balanced life. Because A, or I should say number one, there’s a lot of facets to life. Sometimes you just have to wake up to that. But number two, all of life’s domains are important and they’re interconnected. We just listed through all these different life domains, but I am continually surprised in my own life just how connected these are. And I’ll give you an example. The one, if I’ve had to like hit my head against the wall to kind of know that it hurts enough is I will feel like I’m really struggling in a given area, maybe in work, maybe in finances, maybe in a key relationship in my life or something like that.

Blake Stratton:
And almost without fail, it will feel inconvenient in those time of crunch time moments to go out and just do something fun with a friend or have a coffee with one of my buddies. And even though we may not even talk about the problem happen in the other area of my life, I almost always leave in a better mood with a more clear head. I’m more in touch with what’s actually important. And the way is made clear in this other area.

Blake Stratton:
I get an idea or I just… It really illuminates how much of my life is controlled by my emotional and my mental whole state or how much clarity I have or not. And so in that way, all these life domains are so valuable. It may seem disconnected. At least for me, it never feels like it has to be a priority to hang out with friends per se. And I’m naturally an introvert. So it’s easy to sort of go through a whole week, multiple weeks. “Oh, I’ve got to take care of my kid. I’ve got to work and I got to rest, da, da, da.” But it’s wild. If I spend more time doing that, having fun, even, there is this symbiotic relationship where that really feeds these other areas. Do you guys experience this as well?

Courtney Baker:
Verbs, now we know what he’s been to texting us more, right there.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah.

Courtney Baker:
He’s finally come around.

Verbs Boyer:
Wait, did you get a text? I’m just joking. I’m joking. But along with what Blake just said, it’s like, you experience atrophy when you feel like, again, you’re deficient in one domain. But the converse is also true when you kind of focus on one domain to where you feel like you are successful in, or did you feel like you’re getting life out of it, whether it’s a key relationship, as Blake mentioned. Those begin to feed life to other domains or lights begin to go off, as far as what is also possible in domains outside of the one where you’re feeling like you’re not winning or you’re feeling weak, or you’re feeling that atrophy starting to set in. But again, it’s recognizing, okay, I just need to go ahead and do this. Spend some time, get some attention to that relationship. And taking that step actually helps you fire energy and gets those muscles going in those other domains as well. So I think that’s important to remember. It’s just taking whatever that one step is into that domain and giving that some attention.

Blake Stratton:
When I’m having conversations with leaders or business owners, they’ll usually be able to tell me their accomplishments at work, and then they go, “Oh, but I know I need to be spending more time doing X, Y, or Z or my health or my family,” or whatever. These are their life domains. And they feel like they’re not good at it, or that their work just dominates their life so much. But when I ask them, “Oh, well, what goals have you set in those other domains recently?” They look at me cross eyed. “Oh, no goal setting’s for work.” But goal setting is more than just for work. It’s a tool. And if you’ve never set a spiritual goal or a parental goal, or a social or just a hobby goal, there’s something available for you, because the goal becomes this tool to clarify a path for you to do some work in a domain that hasn’t been tended to.

Blake Stratton:
And it’s pretty cool to watch how that affects the rest of your life. So if you’ve never done that, that would be a practical thing you could do after this episode is to just think, “Hey, when’s the last time I set a goal that wasn’t work related?” How can you leverage that in our full focus plan or there’s that section where you can kind of tick off what life domain something’s a part of. Part of that is just to have the visibility of like, “Hey, man, when’s the last time I set a goal in this area?” I wonder what would happen at work, for instance, if I set this goal that was outside of work,

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. You can also, I love using our life score assessment. You can find that at fullfocus.co/lifescore. And it really, I do it every year as part of my goal setting process, but I think it’s really just helping bring awareness to some of those areas that maybe you haven’t focused on before, or sheds light on an area that needs some focus. So that’s a great place to look as well.

Courtney Baker:
So the third reason is you can get the double win. This is really… I mean, we talk about this a lot. This is really what we’re all about. The idea of winning at work and succeeding at life. I think so many times we look at people, especially in the business world that we deem culturally as successful. I think of the Elon Musk of the world, these kind of really tout-

Blake Stratton:
The Verbs Boyers of the world.

Courtney Baker:
The Verbs of the world.

Verbs Boyer:
Clearly.

Courtney Baker:
That we look and we’re like, oh, wow, that looks like success. They’re making all this money, they’re having a lot of impact. But when we look and we see how do that, they do it by sleeping four hours a day. And just all they do is work. And we kind of label that as success and may even look to emulate it. And I think we, as a company, have put a stake in the ground to say like, that’s actually not the definition of success. That is actually what we would call failure. When you have set aside all these other life domains, you’ve sacrificed the majority of what we would say makes up life to just win in one single life domain. And what we’re trying to really set you all up for is frameworks and systems that help you win at both. Both work and life.

Courtney Baker:
I mean, I think that’s why I love the planner so much is because I could certainly look at this planner and just think of it as a planner that helps me win at work, but it’s not. It really is a system to help me win at work and succeed at life. And again, we talked about this at the beginning, but it wholeheartedly rejects the hustle fallacy. Just trying to turn through your to-do list and check off all the things is not the answer. That’s not the system going to get that type of result.

Courtney Baker:
But if you’re in the camp of like I do want the double win that’s why we developed a system to help you have a framework to achieve that. So anyways, just kind of as an encouragement to be a healthy, successful person it can’t be just all about work. And I get it. Our culture has kind of set that up as the measure for success. And so it’s easy to fall in, but if you’re with us in the double win, join us in even sharing that in your company, it’s like, hey, I think there is another version of this. I think the double win is possible.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. And I think it’s also just helpful, just as we defined balance at the beginning of the episode, just understanding when you hear this term hustle fallacy, what we’re saying is there’s a belief attached to the fact that if I continue in this sort of level 10 activity all the time, then I’m going to get further or closer to the area that I want to be in. So there’s a belief attached to the activity of the hustle. Will you have times in your work or in your life where you have to put in some extra hours to get a certain project done and it feels like you’re hustling? Yeah, absolutely. But you’re not committing to the idea that you need to continue that sort of level 10 activity in your work, because you’re believing it’s going to get you closer to where you want to be in that realm of success faster. That’s the fallacy part of it.

Verbs Boyer:
Yes. In companies in life. If you were a newborn parent, you’re hustling to keep your baby fed and alive and thriving as a young person that just entered the world. But you know as a young parent that you can only go so many hours without sleeping before you just cannot function. And so I think it was just important that we put that into context, as well is there are going to be some times where you do some work, you got to tie up the bootstraps and dig in. But you also know that’s only for a period of time to get a certain specific thing done or accomplished. And that’s not the answer for you to get… It’s not a pathway or an express to success itself.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
I think the empowering thing to end this point would be to get off, you guys have talked about the hustle fallacy, sort of what culture. To basically get off this current. And you may not even be aware, oh, I’m just a part of a current. And I’ve really given up my right to define what success looks like in my life. The start of achieving the double win is by defining what that is. And recognizing that you get to create that definition. And that definition can be multifaceted and it can be multidimensional and it doesn’t just have to be success in work. And so I think that is, if you need a next step, Courtney mentioned the life score assessment. That’s a great starting point it to just illuminate, okay, let me take stock of my whole life and use that as a launching point to define, well, what will success mean to me?

Blake Stratton:
Where do I really want to be in three years or in five years or in 20 years, and then dial it back to, okay, what does that mean for what’s important in this season? Because maybe in this season if you just add a baby, guess what? Your life’s not going to look balanced. It’s not. . You’re not going to see your friends every night to go out for drinks. At least I hope not. But you’ll get balance in the long run and all the benefits that come from that when you catch a vision for what does the double win look like for me? And recognizing that it truly is possible.

Verbs Boyer:
So the good news is you don’t have to choose between success in one area of life at the expense of another. . You can decide to flip the narrative because life is multifaceted. All of your life domains are important and you can get the double win. When you do, you’ll see growth in all areas, you’ll feel more whole and begin to enjoy the gift of life in all its facets. Courtney, Blake, any final thoughts for our Focus on This listeners?

Courtney Baker:
I think we start a lot of our episodes saying happy Monday. And we talk about a lot of tools that kind of give you that sense of going into Monday as like, “Oh, I’m excited to be going into a Monday.” Because again, culturally, that’s not necessarily always the case. There’s a lot of Sunday scaries out there. A lot of like, oh gosh, what am I about to get into for the week?

Courtney Baker:
And I really think this topic specific helps lead to a happy Monday. I think when we have this winning at work and succeeding at life, the ability to win in multiple domains, that’s when we go into a Monday feeling like I’m excited about Monday, I’m happy. This is a happy Monday. And I think it’s when we fall for that hustle fallacy, that Monday is drudgery. It’s just starting all over again. And so I think that’s my final word on that is like if you’re still looking for that recipe of having a happy Monday, maybe this is the piece you’re missing.

Verbs Boyer:
Well, thank you for joining us on Focus on This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So please share it with your friends. And don’t forget to join us in our Full Focus Planner community right there on Facebook. We’ll be here next week with another great episode. But until then stay focused.

Courtney Baker:
Stay focused.

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.