Ever feel stuck trying to achieve the elusive "work-life balance?" In this episode, we show you why it’s not only impossible to achieve, but also why's it's not something you should be striving for anyway. We explain the solution (which is intentional imbalance), and in this episode we show you how to achieve this by working on the areas of your life that need it the most and provide the greatest return on your time, attention, energy, and focus investment. Thanh agrees to become Mike's guinea pig and volunteers to go through the Wheel of Life exercise live on the podcast, showing you step-by-step how to implement this exercise on your own using the included PDF. Listen in if you’re keeping too many plates spinning in your life, and to find out how you can not only define your ideal future but make achieving it inevitable.

Cheat Sheet

The history of work-life balance and why it became a buzzword 2:13

The problems with work-life balance and why the concept doesn’t apply in a modern society 3:39

Why extremely successful people actually don’t have work-life balance and what they do instead 8:10

Why pursuing intentional imbalance actually leads to MORE balance 11:56

The importance of thinking high-level about your life 15:31

The problem with living out of emergency scan modality, or “living like a firefighter” 19:18

The solution to living like a firefighter (and why it's so effective) 20:26

How to apply Wheel of Life exercise so that you can make conscious decisions on what you should be focusing on 23:21

Why it is so important to write your life vision down on paper 25:15

How to accurately measure how close you are to your ideal future so you can decide what you need to focus on 29:43

Thanh goes under the microscope by doing the Wheel of Life exercise live in the podcast 33:55

What to do after you complete the Wheel of Life exercise 42:16

Links

Wheel of Life PDF

The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months

How to Take Massive Action on Your Goals by Implementing the 12 Week Year Effectively (TPS138)

Eisenhower matrix

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