40. Michael Hyatt on Winning at Work and Succeeding in Life

SPEAKERS

Greg McKeown, Michael Hyatt

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Greg McKeown    

Okay, I’m gonna give you some backstory here. I just had a conversation with a friend of mine, in which I posed a challenge to him of a real challenge of someone I have just spoken to, at a live event. And his response to this situation just like actually sort of shocked me. So I’m not going to share what he said or anything, but I’m going to give you the same challenge because here we are, in the midst of the pandemic, still. There is an unequal effect of the pandemic on people, depending on their life situation. Some people that read I think most people the data I’ve read recently 85% of people feel they’ve had a reduction in well-being since the pandemic began. Because that could be a variety of different forms of well-being. Some people, of course, this 15% there that are like, no, it’s been the same or could have even gone up for them. It’s not equal. But for some people, it’s hitting really hard indeed, depending on how isolated they’ve been, or the challenges they’re faced with. And I just did a live event with several 100 people. And I’d asked the question, well, what’s something that’s essential that you’re under investing in? And I was reading the responses from people and one of them said, like, I just have no time for myself. And that was curious for me. And so I had to come on the screen. And we sort of had a little coaching session together. And her context was this, that she runs a business. She’s at home, she’s isolated now. She has six children. And she said, I literally don’t have even five minutes to myself. Like, there’s literally not five minutes when it’s just me on my own with my thoughts. In this most recent book that you’ve being written, Win at Work and Succeed in Life, the value proposition is that you can do both, but you can succeed in both scenarios. I mean, it’s right there in the title. How would you guide somebody like this that I’m talking to who feels they want to succeed in both scenarios, but it’s really, really tough right now?  

Michael Hyatt     

It is, can I start with a story?

Greg McKeown    

Love it.

Michael Hyatt    

Okay. So about 20 years ago, I was given responsibility for one division of Thomas Nelson publishers, at the time, it had 14 divisions. And the division I was given responsibility for as the general manager was dead last in every significant metric, financial metric. It was not only not growing, it was shrinking. It was not only not making money, it was losing money. And the employee morale was terrible. So the CEO said, How long do you think it’s going to take you to turn this division around, and he’s kind of an impatient man, but I thought for a while I want to give myself some runway. So I said three years. And he said, Good. He said, that’s about what I was thinking. So you’ve got it. So went back, shared a vision with the team rolled up my sleeves, we got to work. We were working 70 to 80 hours a week, I was often working, you know, nights and weekends and through vacations. But we did it. So in 18 months, we took that division and turned it around went from number 14 to number one, in terms of fastest growing in terms of most profitable, best employee morale. I got Greg, the biggest bonus check I’d ever received in my life, more than my annual salary. I was so pumped that I said Gail is going to be thrilled when she sees this. I can’t wait to get home and share it with her. So I bounced into the den. And I showed her the check. I just knew that she was going to be thrilled. And she was just a little bit less than her usual enthusiastic self because she’s always been super supportive. My biggest cheerleader, but I could just tell there was a hitch in her giddy up. And she said, babe, we need to do. And I thought, Oh, my heart sank. So we sat down, and she said, look, I gotta be honest with you. She said, You know, I love you. I appreciate all that you do for this family. But I gotta be honest. She said, you’re never at home and your five daughters need you. Well, that was like a gut kick. I knew she was right. And I felt a little defensive. But I just kept listening. And she said, and even when you are home, you’re not really here. You know, your head’s in your device, you’re somewhere else. And then she started to cry a little bit. And she said, honestly, I feel like a single mom. Well, that was a total that that was a total gut kick. I thought I had reached the pinnacle of success. But it was a false summit. And I felt like at that moment, much like the lady you described, that I was facing the impossible choice. You know, you can you can win at work or you can succeed at life, but you can’t do both. And, and I think for most people and what our culture kind of says increasingly, especially with a lot of celebrity entrepreneurs promoting this idea that you need to hustle harder, you know, you need to work harder, buckle down, get to the place where you can finally you know, relax a little bit and have time for yourself and have time for the people that you love.

Greg McKeown     

I love everything you’re sharing, I love the dilemma that you’re presenting, that you personally experienced. I love that both, you know that you’ve, you’ve been in perhaps a not dissimilar position you trying to do both of these important areas of life. And so, you know, the quest makes sense to me. And, you know, sort of on behalf of this woman with six kids and for myself and for, for all of the listeners well, what did you find? I mean, what’s the answer to the, you know, to this $64 million question?

Michael Hyatt     

Well, there’s a lot of answers to it, we give five principles in the book, one of them is to realize that life is multi-dimensional. And I’m gonna get to the constraint thing here in a minute, which I think will address your friends concern directly. But I think all of us have to realize that if we’re going to have sustained success in life, you know, this is a marathon, not a sprint, that is going to address each of the dimensions of our life, because life is multi-dimensional and it’s interrelated. So much so that if you have a health crisis that backs up into your career, and can affect your career. On the other hand, if you have stress at work, that’s going to have an impact on your marriage and an impact on your parenting. And so there’s no clear delineation between each of these different dimensions of life that kind of bleed into one another. So that if we’re not, you know, moving forward with the view to all of them, trying to define success in all these different areas and pursue success in all these areas, then we risk not succeeding in anything.

Greg McKeown      

Yeah, so what you’re saying is that, that, as you think about achievement, don’t think about it in terms of just one piece of the puzzle of your life. That’s because if you do it piecemeal, you could optimize for that you could even be awarded for that you could be rewarded and called out as successful in exactly the way you described, the publisher. But you could be totally failing in the totality of your life.

Michael Hyatt 

Exactly.

Greg McKeown     

So you’re saying the only definition of success has to be holistic.

Michael Hyatt   

So so that kind of brings us to the power of constraints. So let me just go back to my story for a minute. The first thing I did was I knew I was in trouble with Gail, and we’ve been married now for 42 years. And, you know.

Greg McKeown 

So you made it?

Michael Hyatt     

Great marriage, but it was a little bit Rocky, right then because I realized I sort of woke up to the fact that if I didn’t change the trajectory of my life and my work, I might very well end up without a marriage, or without my kids speaking to me. So I hired an executive coach. It was, at the time it was Daniel Harkavy, with whom I wrote the book leading, living forward. It’s all about life planning, but he said to me, he said, look, he said, your freedom is in your constraints. And he said, I perceive you as somebody who has no constraints, because what’s happening to you is in the afternoon, when you get busy, and you look down at your to do list, and you realize you’re not going to finish, you say to yourself, and he said, Tell me if I’m right or wrong, you say to yourself, no problem. I’ll go home, have a quick dinner with the family pop up in my laptop and keep working. And I said, that’s exactly me. And he said, when you get to the end of the week on Friday, you don’t finish all the things you wanted to finish. And so you say no problem. I’ll work on Saturday morning, or I’ll work on Sunday evening. He said, my guess is you probably drag work into your vacation so that your vacations aren’t even really vacations. And I said, you nailed it. I mean, that’s exactly. He said, Okay, so here’s what we’re gonna start. He said, what time of day, are you willing to quit? And I mean, shut the laptop. No more work until next morning. So I thought about it. This was a stretch. I’ll tell you what I’m doing now. But back then I said at 6pm. He said, Okay, great. What about the weekends? I said, I’m willing to not work on the weekends, and vacations also. So he said, Okay, great. He said, Do you mind some accountability? And I said, No, I’m, I’m all about the accountability, thinking he’s going to say, I’m going to check in with you from time to time to see how it’s going. No, that’s not what he said. He said, Yeah, okay, great. He said, I want you to give me permission to call Gail periodically, and check within with her how you’re doing, because he said, that’ll be the true test. Now what you tell me, you know what she tells me? So all of a sudden, it got real. And I thought, okay, I’m really, I’m ready to do it. So that was, that was huge for me, because now all of a sudden, I had those evenings, with, I couldn’t work. I had to focus on my family, I had to focus on my health, my life started to get more back into balance. And, and it’s these constraints. It’s like, you know, you think well, but I’m not going to be productive. No, actually, all the research shows you will be more productive, more focused, and more, more creative. If you have constraints around your work, and you allow time, for rejuvenation, for relationships, for the other things in life, that really matter. And so that was kind of the genesis of the project, I would say I say to people today and say to this lady, that we’re talking about, you know, you’ve got to put some constraints around work that forces you to prioritize and choose. Now as the author of essentialism, you’ll appreciate this. So every day, I wake up, and only have three things that I need to do. So what are the three items that are going to create the most leverage that are going to advance me toward my goals that are going to really kind of boil it down to the essential things that I need to do today. So when I wake up in the morning, I identify those big three, those big three, when I get finished with those, at the end of the day, I declare victory, I don’t wake up feeling overwhelmed, I don’t go to bed feeling defeated, because I’ve got a manageable to do list. And it keeps me out of the busy work and the fake work, that doesn’t really advance anything, it just keeps me busy.

Greg McKeown     

So I’m familiar with your big three, and in fact, have used the focus planner, in fact, awesome, bought a copy for everyone in my family. So even my 14 teenagers had a focus planner as well. And so we’ve used it over the last 90 days. And it first of all, I have really enjoyed having it. I  of course believe in the prioritization model, you’re not surprised, but I find myself still struggling to figure out some days. And I would say today is one of them. Which of these competing interesting opportunities are actually the big three. You know how would you guide me and my own struggles in in living this?

Michael Hyatt     

Well, for me, it all starts with a vision, you know, creating a vision for my life. And for my business, I’ve written two books on that living forward about a life plan, and then the vision driven leader about creating a vision for your organization. And so I think everything’s becomes clearer when we know what the destination is. If you don’t have a clear vision for your life, and I’m not saying you, I’m just saying, people in general, if you don’t have a clear vision, and I’m talking about something written a clear written vision, then all of a sudden, it’s easy to get sidetracked and distracted by a million different things. Because you don’t know what really leads to the accomplishment of that, that vision. Once you get clear on that you can distill that vision, which by the way, the vision, from my perspective is anywhere from a three to five, three to 10-year plan. And then to distill that down to one-year goals, you know, what are the goals that I have for this year? Then all of a sudden, when I’m looking at those, I’m reviewing those every day in my full focus planner, and I’m saying to myself, what are the one or two things that I could do today, that would move me in the direction of achieving one of those goals, because I’ve already prioritized that these goals, these three goals for this quarter, are the single most important thing I can do this quarter.

Greg McKeown   

What is your current 5 to 10-year vision?  

Michael Hyatt     

Well we actually have a complete written we call it a vision script. And it’s in the in the vision driven leader. But it’s, it’s ends up being about a three to four-page document. And I encourage people to divide it into four parts. First of all, what’s their, you know, 3 to 10 year vision and like we recommend for most clients three years beyond that it gets a little bit fuzzy because of the rate of change, but a three year vision First of all your team, because the team is the foundation that drives everything else, take care of your team, they’ll take care of your customers, your customers will take care of you. So the team comes first. Number two, what’s my vision for the products or services that our company produces? So we get very explicit about the things that deliverables that we want to have in three years there. And then also sales and marketing, you know, in terms of how we do that, how we do client acquisition, what’s our vision for that three years hence? And then finally, the outcomes are the results, you know, what are the financial results that we want to achieve within the next three years? You know, what are any other metrics that that would be relevant to your business could be different for every business?

Greg McKeown     

Do you have a vision statement for your life vision document for you?

Michael Hyatt     

That would be my life plan. So in the in the life plan, I do a couple of things. So I take each one of those major areas of life. So some people call it you know, talk about the wheel of life, we talk about 10 dimensions, but I don’t have a vision for each one of those. So for example, here’s my vision paragraph for my health. And what I say is, I’m lean and strong

Greg McKeown     

Is this number one of your of your 10? Was this your highest priority area?

Michael Hyatt     

No, actually, God would be my highest.

Greg McKeown  

Can you share that with us? Would you be willing to share that with us?

Michael Hyatt     

So here’s what I said. My love for God grows daily. It transcends all earthly affections and desires. He is my consuming passion. I’m aware of his presence and enjoy just being with him. He speaks to me frequently. And I’ve learned to recognize his voice. I joyfully obey him and all things. As a result, I’m not merely his servant, I am privileged to be his friend.

Greg McKeown     

It’s beautiful. And how often do you read that statement for example?

Michael Hyatt    

About once a week.

Greg McKeown    

So literally in the last 12 months, 50 times?

Michael Hyatt    

Yeah.

Greg McKeown    

In what way does reviewing that, take me through that process. You read that once a week, is that a Sunday activity is that you have a set time for doing it?

Michael Hyatt     

Yeah, I do it on Sunday evening as part of my weekly preview, which is also on the full focus planner. But yeah, I’ll just I’ll review that. And the reason I do that, Greg is to reorient me myself on the destination, because, look, we live in a world that is absolutely utterly full of distractions.  I’ve got to refocus on the destination. Where is this all going? You know, and what that does is that when that’s present to me, and you know, I’ve got, you know, I’ve got my second priority for myself and my health, and then for my marriage, and for my kids and all this stuff. But what it does is it helps me to make decisions in the warp and woof of life, when things can be very unsettled. When there’s a lot of ambiguity, when there’s a lot of competing demands, you know, I can say, Wait a second. But what do I want? What is what is the vision of what it is I’m trying to create?

Greg McKeown   

Okay, you’ve got your vision statements, really your description of your, you know, what, what, what you want to be in these different areas, you’re doing your review, you’re setting your big three for the week, I assume if you’re holding the focus planner, do you struggle to get it to three? Or is it very simple for you to get to read you find yourself I mean, you’re highly intentional person, you’re driven. I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but you know, like, my brother Justin calls it the hit squad, hardworking, intelligent, talented, that the hit squad has a set of challenges that are not typical of the whole, you know, of everybody else. And you, you you’re in this category, you might be this on fire, right? You’re constantly highly intense, highly, you’re driven to achieve things and so on. I mean, I find it a little hard to imagine that you are easily satisfied, even though I’m not I mean, it’s no criticism in that, but I I’m just sort of painting this picture of you. And then I’m imagining you actually sitting there doing this each week. And I’m just wondering whether I’m alone in struggling to get to three. I mean, I should it feels bad saying this Right, you know your array essentialism, it should, you should be great at this ICS. But to me, there’s always so many things I want to contribute, and I want to achieve across these different areas. So how do you deal with this?

Michael Hyatt     

So I’m 65 and one of the things that I’ve realized is that life is a marathon, that I’ve got a gazillion things that I want to accomplish. But they don’t have to all be accomplished this quarter, they don’t have to be accomplished this year. And I think it’s easy if we’re not careful to get kind of in a scarcity mindset, even with our time and think, Oh, my God, if I if I don’t do everything now I’m going to miss the opportunity.

And I think for all of us that are committed to long term, comprehensive success, we got to pace ourselves, you know, and the issue is not what’s important, but what’s important now. Right? David Allen said, I love this quote, he said, You can do anything you want, you just can’t do everything you want.

Greg McKeown     

I like that. So. Okay, so you have your three things for this week written down?

Michael Hyatt 

Yes

Greg McKeown     

I’m holding I’m like holding your feet to the fire right now. But I want to know what your three things now for the week?

Michael Hyatt     

Okay, so my big three for the week. So the first item was to do the six podcast interviews, for win at work and succeed in life, which is on my calendar for this week, because we’re kind of in this pre promotion recording phase. The other one was attend a marketing meeting for our business accelerator coaching program. And the third one was to get out a press release for graduate school, where I’m on the board, and I’m in charge of getting this press release out. That’s really important.

Greg McKeown     

All of those were business?

Michael Hyatt   

They are and sometimes they’re not sometimes they are. I would say I would say the one regarding the school is more of an avocation not a vocational thing.

Greg McKeown     

Yes. Yes. That That makes sense. The distinction that you did you make in your in the 10 areas that you know, this holistic approach?  What do you do with the other important relationships and areas, I mean, of course, that doesn’t mean that you’re doing zero, but you just say, I’m not setting a task to go on a date with my wife, I’m not going to set a task to reach out to my children, you’re building systems. So there’s good habits in place for those things, but how do you distinguish between these are the three that you selected for this week, how did you come to those?

Michael Hyatt     

Well, again, I reviewed my goals, you know, and one of my goals was in the launching of this new book to try to get it on the bestseller list. And so that one tied specifically into that the other ones were just important projects. You know, our coaching program is very important to our company, and the one with regard to the graduate school to actually a seminary that’s very important you know, as well for my life I don’t have a specific goal this year and there’s a lot of things in my life where I’ve had in the past habit goals like you mentioned, you know, date with my wife so that’s such a part of my weekly routine now, that I don’t even think about it and in fact, I’ve created a system. So I’ve delegated that to my assistant. I said your job is to make sure that we are scheduled every Thursday night for date night. So you figured out you know, we’re where gonna go eat, what are the additional activities gonna do. So I’ve outsourced that to make sure that that that happens every single time. And so there’s a lot of things, you know, my, you know what I do in the morning, my morning ritual and you know, the full focus planner has all this in there as well. But my morning ritual, make sure that I accomplished some of those really important priorities without having to have them part of my daily big three or my weekly big three. So I’m, you know, reading the Bible every morning, I’m praying, I’m journaling, I’m working out, you know, taking care of, you know, body, mind and spirit. Reading, you know, that early time too. So those are more ritualized if I could use that word, they’ve been more converted to habits, so they don’t have to be part the big three.

Greg McKeown     

Yes, that’s, that’s an important distinction, things I’m going to do anyway, don’t make on there. But things that if I don’t write them down here, they’re not going to happen as part of my typical daily and weekly routines, rituals.

Michael Hyatt    

Right. What are your daily Big Three?

Greg McKeown     

I cannot give you an answer to my daily Big Three for today. I had a I wish I did. I wish I felt the calmness of the three weekly things you identified because those three feels so achievable to me, man, I don’t know all the specifics in them. But I sort of feel like my confidence level in the goals that you described. Like, you know, that’s upwards of 95%. Like you’re going to do those things this week. Yeah, it would be surprising to me, if next week, when you’re reviewing the week, like wow, I did just didn’t get those things done. And then the final question?

Michael Hyatt     

Yeah. And let me just say, not every day, do I do a big three, there are days that I miss days that I backslide, so to speak. So if that happens to you, or to anybody listening to this, don’t beat yourself up. Just get back on the wagon. You know, just do it tomorrow, no big deal. You know, you got it. That’s a great thing about life. Everyday gives us a new opportunity to start over and do it again.

Greg McKeown     

I want to just double click on that, because I think most systems most productivity systems, and I feel like I’ve used my, you know, like, fair, I’ve tried a few, let’s say, I think most of them are described in such terms that you have to do this every day is the sort of the presumption and the building of it. And I think that’s fine. As long as there’s that is that big Asterix of like Yeah, but it isn’t really going to be like that. That’s not really how life works. And   that doesn’t make the tool not useful. That’s actually makes it in my opinion, more useful to just be like, yeah, you you’ve got to use it, not it using you. Life has its natural rhythms. And when we don’t allow for those rhythms, I think that we burn ourselves out a lot faster. And then hold ourselves to a standard that’s so high. We just feel frustrated, perhaps.  

Michael Hyatt     

Yeah to misstate a famous ancient quote, you know, the planner was made for man, not man for the planner.

Greg McKeown     

Yeah that’s it. Exactly. You know, I like I like where it comes from. Okay. And then the and then so the final question?

Michael Hyatt     

Anything blocking your progress

Greg McKeown     

Is that now that specifically for the three things you’ve identified for them?

Michael Hyatt     

It is, but it could also be anticipatory in the sense that maybe you’re thinking about this next week. And you think, Oh, I just realized that I don’t have the talking points yet for marketing for that video that they want me to shoot. So Jim, that’s kind of I think that’s gonna block my progress if we don’t address that now.

Greg McKeown     

Yeah I mean, all of this presumes, as you’ve said explicitly, enough clarity of intent vision, yes, weekly goals daily victory, because otherwise, it’s all so broad, what stands in my way will hundreds of things. If I don’t know what I’m really trying to achieve, then everything stands in my way, so to speak. So you know that that all makes sense to me. Okay, so come full circle with me from the process that you’ve been describing. And you don’t have to be limited to this. But come back to this woman I’ve been. I mean, I know it’s an extreme example, I know that not everybody listening here is, is working in a running a business and has six children at home and is in the pandemic and doing homeschool and all that, like most people aren’t in exactly that situation. But in her story is something so real right now, something that I think is, if not universally, applicable, close to it, where people do feel strained more than before, or whatever their level of exhaustion or stress before it is likely to be one standard deviation more challenging that they and as we as we hit sort of a year of this experience, I think that too is relevant, no doubt what people are experiencing. Because for some people, they have been using up deep reserves in order to get through this. And so here they are, well, maybe they’ve you know, they’ve survived, they’ve kept everybody, you know, going in their home, maybe they’ve kept everybody alive, hopefully through this, obviously, some people haven’t been so fortunate. But they’ve made it through, but they’ve done it at a price that’s largely invisible right now. But at a year market starts to become more obvious. And the cracks start showing so to that person, maybe it’s what you’ve just described, but like, what do they do?

Michael Hyatt     

Well, here’s what the natural inclination is, in those situations. It’s just to roll up your sleeves, and work harder. And I’m telling you, that is not the answer, you got to go the other direction, you need to work less, not more. And but it’s got to be focused on the big things that actually make a difference, because not all work is created equal. There’s some things that actually move the needle, advance you in the direction of your goals, help you achieve your most important priorities. There are other things that we just persist in doing, just because maybe we’ve always done them that way. Maybe because, you know, we don’t have the guts to say no to somebody else, you know, say no, is I know, you wrote about this in Essentialism, you know, is critically important to be able to say no, and to really reduce life to what are those? What are those essential things that I must do?

So Ill give you an example of this worked out for our company, I’ll give you an example. Back after the pandemic began, we were probably two weeks into it. We started noticing that our young employees and we’ve we’ve got about 50 we’re a little bit like, like super frazzled, because they had no daycare, they had no childcare, the kids are underfoot, they’re trying to, you know, do some semblance of homeschooling, and work and all that stuff. And we said, okay, here’s what we’re gonna do as an experiment. So I always like to set up these kind of things as an experiment. So I said, as an experiment, we’re going to work a six hour work day, not an eight hour work day. Now we’ve been we were very good up to that point. And saying, We don’t want you to work in the evenings. We don’t want you to work on the weekends or on vacations. But now we’re going to reduce your hours to 30 hours a week, but we’re not going to reduce anybody’s pay. Everybody’s gonna get paid exactly what they’re getting paid before. But now we’re going to a 30 Hour Workweek as an experiment. So after two weeks, I got together with my executive team and said, okay, how’s the productivity? Everybody said we can’t tell the difference. Really? Yeah. Can’t tell. Can’t tell a lick of difference. Okay, let’s extend the experiment. So then we went out a month. Then we said let’s go through the summer. Then we got to strategic planning. And that was in September and the executive team got together and we said, okay, how is this experimented? This is like a pandemic thing? Or is this going to be permanent? Well, first of all, all the executives loved it. All of our team loved it, you know, they’re going like, Oh, my gosh, when I can quit work at three, and have the rest of the afternoon in the evening, all kinds of things become possible. And so we said, okay, but that’s great. You know, it’s good for the employees. They love it. We love it. But what about productivity? We said, Well, you know, we’re on track to have our best year ever. And we’re, we’re on track to beat our budget, which was already aggressive. So in 2020, we finished the year we kept we made that that policy, permanent 30 hour work week, we made that policy permanent, we finished the year 15%, ahead of our revenue from the prior year, we finished on the bottom line 101%, ahead of the prior year, and we are already enormously, enormously profitable. But I really credited with that constraint, it got everybody just laser focused on what mattered and less distracted by what didn’t matter.

Greg McKeown   

I had had a conversation with the CEO of a company called Uncharted who read Essentialism, got everyone to read it internally. And then they decided to start a four-day workweek experiment. And it just reminds me of what you’re describing that that constraint, it had an effect. A does a productivity, of course, is pretty much the first thing you want to establish. If you’re going to try and experiment you want to know, well, I might just by just reduced overall contribution down by, you know, for you two hours a day for them one day a week. But what was happening is that suddenly, you realize that the constraint requires you to have a conversation you didn’t have before. That’s right, you didn’t have it before, because you solve the problem by working another hour. That’s exactly solve it before, just like you did at the beginning   by solving it working into the weekend, you just you don’t have the conversation  you just keep doing more. But as soon as you have the constraint, you go, Oh, well, if I only have this much time, I’ve got to use it for the essential thing is I’ve got to use it for things that matter most.

Michael Hyatt   

Well, I think that’s true. And, you know, I would be disingenuous to say that we do this five days a week, 52 weeks a year, you know, there are seasons to when people have to go intentionally out of balance for a short period of time. And that’s okay, you know, life’s like that, you know, where it’s all hands-on deck, the ox is in the ditch, you gotta, you know, you’ve got to work more than you you’d like. The problem is, when we convince ourselves that that temporary thing is only temporary, and it bleeds into the next crisis, which becomes a way of life.

Greg McKeown     

Well, and that I think is a good sort of wrap to this conversation because I think that this is the this is really the problem that most needs to be addressed. Life has rhythms, life has times of, you’re going to push your push a little harder. There’s a particular deadline, there’s a responsibility, there’s something that comes up, that could be a crisis you’re dealing with it could be, of course, life has its times for this. But what seems to have happened to a lot of people in that hit squad is that it’s become the way it’s the lifestyle. Yep. always pushing. And it’s been celebrated as a as a no trade off zone. But somehow, if you just hustle 24-7 there’s no cost to that. And what, what total nonsense that is. Every choice you’re making is a tradeoff within this broader ecosystem that you’re describing.  Could you give us your last word on your answer to the quest question you pursued; how do you beyond what you’ve already shared, be successful, to win at work and succeed at life?

Michael Hyatt     

Well, again, we talked about these five principles, I did cover two of them, just to quickly give you the other ones. The third one is work life balance is truly possible. You know, as began, it’s become very fashionable for people to attack, work life balance, as though it’s a myth. Right. And it’s, and it becomes an excuse for working all the time. But the problem is that the metaphor they use is out of whack. You know, balance does not mean that you give equal time and attention to every area of your life, what it means is you give the appropriate amount of time and attention to every area of your life, right? So I don’t, you know, I don’t spend as much time as the gym as I do at work, but I spent the appropriate amount of time at the gym. So that’s the key differentiator. Four, there’s incredible power in non-achievement. Now, this is hard for somebody like me, who is you know, my number one strength on the Strength Finders is achiever. Right, on the enneagram, for anybody’s familiar with that, I’m a three, I’m an achiever. So, so to see the value in non-achievement, you know, whether it’s spend, you know, taking a walk with my wife, or going fishing with my grandson, you know, there’s incredible value in that, but we have to learn to value that. And I’ve really had to learn to value that. And then number five, rest is the foundation of meaningful, productive work. You know, the average adult needs eight to nine hours every night. And that sets you up for success too. Because when you’re rested, you’re showing up as the best version of yourself. You’re the most focused, the most creative, the most attentive, when you’re rested, when you’re not that much. So those are the five principles.

Greg McKeown     

Mr. Michael Hyatt, you are a scholar and a gentleman. It’s always so nice to chat with you. And to catch up on this latest addition to the great Hyatt library. And now to have Megan officially on the team, both the CEO and his co-author  on this wonderful new book. It’s been a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you, Michael.

Michael Hyatt     

Thank you so much, Greg, good to chat with you.