Why Work-Life Balance Feels Impossible and What to Do Instead

What is happening? Come on in here. Good to have you here today. We were talking about one of the phrases. I'm not actually going to say this phrase. I don't think in this podcast, but I'll say it to get started.

We're talking about work-life balance. Yeah, I don't like that. It's silly. Could be stupid depending on the day. I find a lot of things stupid. I just do.

You know why? A lot of things are. Work-life balance. We're not going to do that. We're going to kind of bring in the skill set of balance and give you the one word, the one thing most people, if you do the one thing I teach today, you'll be balanced, okay?

It's just automatic. Boom. Just like that. I should charge you $1 billion for this. I'm not going to do it. It's a free podcast. A free podcast? How long can that keep going on?

20 years, maybe. Yeah. How are you? It is a daily boost from motivation to move.com. The positive boost you need every single day. I want to help you grow your life and grow your business.

And yeah, coming up on 20 years, we'll complete our 20th season at the end of 2026. And you hear me rambling on about change is coming. I don't know what it's going to be yet. We'll see.

We'll see what it is. I love doing this, but I feel like I've got to change a few things. I mean, the algorithm has changed and how you listen has changed and, How you engage has changed.

Everything's different about how the consumer engages a podcast. We're still doing fantastically well, but I'm just like, yeah, we have to fight really hard to make it work. I'm kind of tired of the fight. We'd rather do something more fun.

So we'll see what happens. I'll let you know. If you have any ideas of what you'd like to see me morph the Daily Boost into, just send me a note. Send it to support at motivation2move.com so I have it all kind of in one place.

And I will certainly take your ideas into consideration. Okay, let's go. What? Yeah, I'm kind of frisky this week. Hang on for the ride. Okay, balance.

Balance, balance, balance. This is kind of like an old school. If I had to put up like a top 10 hacks in personal growth, how do I balance my life? Happens a lot.

Well, listen, I don't do too many hacks anymore. I did them for a long time. I hacked before people were hacking. I hacked before Reddit was hacking. And now we have ChatGPT.

Trust me, if you want to learn anything about balance or habits or anything, just go over there. It steals all our stuff anyway and gives it back to you for nothing. Okay, just go ahead and do it.

But in my case, this is something I really took on many, many years ago to just kind of control my life better. And as you see, as we go through this podcast today, there's going to be something toward the end of this that will make you go, hmm, and you think you're Arsenio Hall all at one time.

So about 65% of workers believe something that I think is just institutionally socialized into them, that they must sacrifice to get ahead. If you're my age or around it, you just don't believe it. You probably lived it for 30 years that you had to sacrifice. Now, I stopped earlier than most.

I stopped when I was 40 years old. I said, nope, not going to do it anymore. Before I go on, let me say this. I think there are a lot of things that you do need to sacrifice for.

But if you go back on what I chatted about on Monday about having a happy obsession. If you're happily obsessed by what you're doing, is it really a sacrifice? Or is it just putting out, getting something else out of the way to do what you need to do right now? So I believe sacrifice has to happen in efforts to get what you want.

No doubt about that. But is it your life? Do you sacrifice your balance? Do you work 12 hours a day and then wonder who your kids are? Wonder why they don't like you?

A lot of people believe in that. And most people feel like one day I'll get retired and I can take control. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it yet.

It's coming though. I did the same thing. The same thing. I used to do that all the time, try to control every little thing. I began to move to a different way of thinking a few years back, and I even evolved it in the past couple of weeks even better and better and better.

I'll share with you that here soon. But, you know, Einstein, way back in 1930, he told a story about a bicycle. Remember this one? Life is like riding a bicycle.

To keep your balance, you must keep moving. Balance is something you do, not something you reach. So balance itself is very dynamic, and I think a lot of people miss that. It's as if you could strike a sense of balance.

You ever get on a teeter-totter? A seesaw? Do they still make those? I was a kid. You get on a seesaw, and the biggest thing was to get somebody on the other side of it and then jump off so they'd hit the ground.

That's what we did. Life was good. We used to have real playgrounds. But if you ever had a seesaw, a teeter-totter, whatever it's called these days, you know there was a moment in time when you'd hit perfect balance.

It was great. And then it would end and you would fall. Ever stand on a BOSU ball at the gym? It's great. It's great for your core, right? Balance, balance, balance.

Have you noticed how much your little foot's wiggling to maintain that balance? Life is kind of like that, right? So most people think they can just, I'll sacrifice my balance to get ahead.

No, it's still very dynamic, still moving around. So we just take advantage of that, right? So the scale lies, a level scale never really happens when you're trying to balance. Jeff Bezos said one time, it's actually a circle, not a balance.

Think about that for a second, okay? So what do people really want? How do we achieve the balance? Well, I'll tell you this, having just got lucky and figured out to do this earlier in life, and now I see people around me who are just getting the chance where they can actually get balance in their life because they're retired.

Most people, about two thirds of folks in the UK, about half in the US, if they're 50 plus, and at 50 plus, you're kind of like, you've learned enough now, right? Even in your 40s, you get 20, 25, 30 years out of college, you got to figure some stuff out. And either you just continue to do the stuff that you don't like, or you decide to make a change.

But most people that are older these days expect to work past 70. I don't ever expect to stop working because I don't consider what I do working. I consider what I do what I do. Any of the working stuff, I like to get other people or AI to do it so I can just do what I do.

So it's fun to me. A lot of people retire and they go, hey, I need to find a purpose. Maybe I'll volunteer, work for free. Maybe I'll do crossword puzzles.

I said, no, no, no. Just do what you've always done. Just do it your way. The truth is, today is the same day it's always been before. Speaking of these retirees, if you're 30 and you hear the word retirees, and we make you mad, I'm not retired.

Although lately I've been saying I'm retired. You know why? I'll tell you why. Because I would say, I am going in business. Oh, what do you do? Or I'd say, I'm semi-retired because I work 20, 25 hours a week, right?

And I would say that, but nobody got it. So I changed my wording to help everybody understand me. What do you do, Scott? I'm retired. Oh, what do you do with your time?

Well, I stay pretty busy, man. I have a little business I manage. It's not that little. And I do some investments. Oh, yeah, that's what I want to do, man.

If I could find something like that, just kind of manage, like consulting, things like that. I've been doing that 30 years. I just changed it. So if you ask me today, I say I'm retired.

I just kind of work on my business a couple hours a week. It's funny how that works, isn't it? It's all about control, guys. We talked about time. We talk about time all the time.

Ask anybody and any survey that's out there will tell you this, that control is a top factor in happiness for people that retire. And it's actually the thing most people who are not retired want. That's what you work toward. Think about it, right?

If you're saving money, stocking of that 401k, you've got your index funds going and everything else, you know that you're doing it because someday you'll get control of your life and get the balance you actually want, right?

So I flipped some stuff. We're not going to talk about this this week, but I built upon the happy obsession I talked about on Monday. And I began to look at my time. You know that I have my perfect week planner.

I have not even mentioned it for weeks. And the reason is because I'm I wanted to update it. PerfectWeekPlanner.com. Go get it. It's the foundation of everything I do, okay?

I've had it for a couple years now. I live it. That's what I do. But I recognize something. I recognize it had me in a little bit of a trap, and I need to kind of change my way of thinking.

So I put a lot of thought into it and started acting differently, and it was based on a happy obsession. Started trying it with my clients, started teaching it, and I began to, this is what I call it.

This name will change, but I began to call it Intentional Fluid Scheduling. So I lock in a few non-negotiables. Let the rest flow. I have some rules. I don't have ratios.

It doesn't matter what I do when I do it. I understand that for the most part, I have a few things I have to do. That's intentional. Everything else is fluid.

And it has been spectacular. It has made life so fun. And anybody that I've taught how to do this is kind of freaking out. And so far, it's just in my school group, faceyourpassion.com.

You can join that. That's where I'm teaching it there in my inner circle. I'll mention it here. I'll give it to you eventually, but I need to work out the bugs first.

The folks that are in the group are actually living it with me right now, which is kind of cool. You know, you earned the right to choose. That bike that you pedal, that you're trying to keep balance, you feel like you're going and going and going and going. That's actually what it's supposed to be.

So what we want to be doing here is just understand that what you're really looking for in work-life balance is control. So how do we fix this? And how do you begin to take control of this? Well, first off, it's just hearing that and understanding that.

And you might be saying, I can't do this, Scott, man. I got the kids. I got the job. I got everything else. I get it, man. And you're the first person in the world ever to have a bunch of kids and a bunch of stress.

And you're the first one ever. It's like my daughter had her second child. She was freaking out when she got that second baby in the house. And she'd call me and talk to me.

Her mom passed away. So she talked to me. And one day I said to her, I said, you know, Carlin, I get it, man. You're the first person in the world to ever have two kids at the same time.

And one's like two years old, the other is just born. And she just cracked up. She said, you're right. Yeah. Let's take a little control of it, man. But that's what we're working toward anyway.

Ultimately, think about it. Think about when you're 65 years old. That's kind of what the goal is to have control. So I suggest to you, you kind of do what I do and have done for many, many years now.

Do what it takes to get control now. Balance will take care of itself because that's what it does. All right. I think I shall go. I shall return tomorrow because that's what I do evidently.

Every day, 20 years. Keep coming back, doing the daily boost, running my mouth. People seem to like it. I'll come back and do it again. Why not?