Decision Intelligence Zone

We’re chatting with Lora Creston to discuss her book "Work Is Not Your Life" and how to shift from a burnout-driven overwork culture to work-life integration across five “gears”: work, relationships, growth, emotional fitness, and health. Lora argues work-life balance “doesn’t exist” and recommends building control through a calendar audit, questioning “I have to” assumptions, clarifying meeting purpose and roles, and using decision rules and boundaries to manage fear, guilt, and risk appraisal. We cover prioritizing by thinking longitudinally (now/next/later), scheduling decisions on the calendar, protecting peak-energy time, and creating communication rules. Lora emphasizes reflection/preflection practices, team norms (e.g., shared health time), flexibility, and the three Ps—progress, perspective, pivots—to adapt plans and challenge capacity assumptions.

Topics:
00:00 - Introduction and Rethinking the Role of Work in Our Lives
02:59 - Work-Life Balance, Integration and Taking Stock of Your Calendar
07:55 - Challenging Assumptions and Making Better Decisions About Time
11:39 - Stepping Back to Prioritize What Actually Matters
17:30 - Letting Go of Mental Load and Setting Boundaries at Work
21:12 - Recognizing Stress, Building Better Habits and Creating Systems
25:21 - Reflection, Team Habits and Planning Around Real Capacity
33:57 - Challenging Workplace Norms and Making Room for Change
38:28 - Final Advice and Takeaways

We're chatting with Chris Taylor about how emotions drive decision biases, including appropriate confidence, risk appraisal, decision rules, and resisting framing. Chris reflects on early anger, pride, and overconfidence leading to unnecessary risk (including spending nearly $3M on scrapped software when revenue was about $400K), and shares improved practices: making small experimental bets, using a trusted brain trust of advisors / investors / lenders for alternative perspectives, deciding which decisions to delegate, reducing decision fatigue through preloading routines, joining high-level peer groups, and sustaining purpose through setbacks.

Topics:
00:00 Welcome
01:19 Introducing Chris Taylor
04:24 Emotions and Biases Model
09:48 Small Bets for Data
12:04 Brain Trust Feedback Loops
15:20 Delegating the Decisions
20:02 Routine Sets You Free
21:55 Actionable Finds Its Niche
23:23 Launching Catalyst as Experiment
26:46 Why Keep the 17 Year Old Business?
33:01 Advice to Younger Self

Decision Intelligence Zone is a podcast that unpacks how real decisions get made—exploring the emotions, strategies, blind spots, and patterns we don’t often talk about, so you can sharpen your thinking and make better choices in leadership and life. 

Hosted by Dr. Magda Du Preez, a decision intelligence researcher at the intersection of business and psychology, and Christi Mertens, a leadership team coach specializing in team decision-making and collaboration, the show blends science with real-world insight. 

Through honest conversations with leaders who’ve built, broken, and reimagined things, we explore the decisions that shaped them—and the lessons that matter most when it’s time to choose.