Work-Life Balance Hack

How are you? Well, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy Friday. Come on in here. Have you ever struggled with balancing your life, personal life, and your work life?

Endless conversation, right? The only thing you talk about more is peptides, but work-life balance. Let's talk about that. It is the Daily Boost from MotivationToMove.com.

How you doing? It's me, Scott Smith. Work-life balance. We'll talk about that today. I don't believe in work-life balance at all. I don't think there is such a thing as balance in that area, and we'll talk more about that as time goes on here today.

But good to have you. You know what I did just a few minutes ago? I just got done planning my week for next week. It's Thursday. I'm recording the show on a Thursday, and I took a little bit of time right after lunch to do the show.

But I also planned my week next week, and I did what I tell you to do. I plan on a Thursday. One of the greatest ideas I've ever had, and I've had a lot of good ones, just to say it out loud because it's true, but this one is a really good one.

And that was the concept of planning on a Thursday. In other words, planning my appointments, planning whatever I wanted to do next week, workout times, all kinds of stuff. It didn't matter. My entire calendar from Thursday night all the way through the next week all figured out already.

Greatest thing I did. You know why? Because I noticed something. I noticed that if I planned on a Thursday, then Friday felt like a weekend. And then all weekend long, I didn't worry about what was coming up on Monday.

And Sunday night at 7 o'clock, I didn't even think about it. All I did was get out of bed Monday and look at my thing and say, well, that's what I said I would do. And go do it. Already pre-figured out.

But this is the first time this ever happened. I actually ran out of my Perfect Week Planner. I usually have some printed sitting around. Then I couldn't find it, which is pretty normal for me.

Like, where did I put that thing? So I did what I always do. I went to my website, motivation2move.com, all spelled out. And I downloaded my Perfect Week Planner.

I could have gone to perfectweekplanner.com and gotten it. It would have been easier, I guess. I downloaded the PDF and I planned my week. I said, hmm, you should do the same thing.

Anyway, good to have you here today. Conversation with a client the other day about work-life balance. And it was a very different one. Never had quite this way of doing it before.

But let me just start by saying that I just don't think there's any such thing as balance. If anything, balance is dynamic. It ebbs and flows. Just as you think you have it, it does something else.

So that's how I see work-life balance. But I'm on the call with my client, and we kind of got into probably a 40-minute conversation. It was way too long, way too much overcoaching. I probably told 10 metaphors and stories trying to get her to see things differently, and I finally got her there.

But what was going on was this. She has a business and it's a lifestyle type of business, meaning that she can work on her laptop wherever she needs to. She works in her office at home. She has a free schedule.

If you like that lifestyle, that's a lifestyle I live where I can just kind of do what I want to do when I want to do it. Yes, I have a schedule I work with, but she has that balance and she likes to go play with her friends. And I said, well, don't you just sit down and get your work done and then go out and do the fun stuff? She goes, no, Scott, it's one and the same.

And I went, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. It is not one of the same work and life. It's not one of the, yes, life goes with work for sure, but I'm talking personal living, right?

It is not one of the same. And she said this and it made total sense. She said, well, what it is is I like these people. These are my friends. I'm involved in the community.

I like to do lots of things in the community. They're my friends, and I enjoy being around them. I'm having a good time, but also because of the business I'm in, sometimes they need me and meet the service I provide, and they become my customers as well. So it's one and the same.

I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. Did you ever hear somebody say, it's just business? That's true. It is. I mean, listen, we can talk about that one for five hours.

But the truth is, it is business. Business is about making money. You don't believe in that? I can't even have another conversation with you. That's the only thing business is meant for.

It's meant to make money. And then you can do stuff with the money, good stuff, hopefully, right? But she was so confused. And she said, well, no, it's how I do it.

And I said, well, here's what I do. My podcast here today, believe it or not, is my job. A lot of people who do what I do and have a podcast as big as mine and have done it as long as I've done it, a pure professional podcast with advertisers and agencies and all the stuff that goes with it, a professional operation with a coaching operation right behind it as well. We do a lot of coaching on the side, a lot of consulting, a lot of interesting things that all go together.

Make no mistake. This is a job. It's my business, but it's a job. This is my work. As much as I love to do it, I'm one of 1% of podcasters who actually makes a really good living having a podcast.

The rest is kind of hoppy and kind of fun and doing everything, but not me. This is my job. Have I made my point? Now, I come in here. I love doing this.

I don't know that I could do anything else. This is what I've done for 20 years. I have a good time. I'll be out taking a walk, writing notes on a podcast.

I'll be talking to people in my car. Like, ah, this is cool. Going to do this tomorrow. It's a lot of fun. Make no mistake. It's a job. So a long time ago, I figured out something.

I said, I'm going to treat my job as a shift. How do you do that? Well, just like I did when I worked for somebody else many, many years ago. And I compared it to when I worked in radio.

In radio, I would do a shift, a morning shift usually, sometimes an afternoon shift. I would come in, I'd get there like an hour early, I'd do my show, maybe stay another hour, and then I left. Did my shift, done. The business of the station, that was somebody else's job.

I did my job, went home. I treat it the same way here. So that's why I look at my week and I say, business is business. My job is my job. I told her this as well.

I said, I have certain working areas that I work. And that's when I work. I walk in the door. I put that work hat on. I get it done. And at the time when I say I'm done, I walk out.

And then I go just do whatever I want to do. Wait a second. That's kind of confusing, isn't it? But what if I go out and I talk about stuff? Or I talk about business while I'm at the gym?

Or I'm walking on the treadmill and having a good conversation about making money? What if I do that? Is that wrong? No, it's not wrong at all. But it's not my job.

So I kind of define it like this. When I have to sit down and actually do work and work to me is when I'm doing something for others. I'm doing this podcast. I'm serving a client.

I'm doing something like that. That's work. And that's my shift. And that's what I do. But what about all the other stuff? So just a few minutes ago, on top of this whole thing, this is just a great example of it, of what I did.

I came in and I didn't really have anything scheduled. I didn't have a work shift schedule, but I walked in my office and, oh, let me play around a little bit.

So I sit down at my computer, just kind of thinking I'm going to play, maybe organize a couple of files. You know how we do it, right? And I had this idea for an app. I've had this idea for probably 10 years now.

It's a presentation app. It's something I can use to present to people. I can do it fast and quick. It's completely me. It looks like me. I'm not going to tell you what it is because it's an awesome idea.

And nobody's ever made it. So I jumped into Claude and I said, hey, Claude, I've got this idea about this thing I can make. Can we make this? And Claude said, sure, let's go make it.

And in 35 minutes, I created a working prototype. Actually works right now. It's on my machine right now. I actually used it coming into this podcast today.

And it works. Done. Now, is it a real app? Not yet. It will be. But we'll get there. But here's the thing. I wasn't working today. This was playtime for me.

And yet, look, I was having a fun time. Was I working? It could, yeah, it could be seen that way. So that's how I define things. There is your personal life or it's your life and your personal interaction with other people.

Let's define those two things. And if you don't get anything from this podcast, listen to this part right now. There's you, the self-care, taking care of yourself. There's you, the person who is just you in the whole wide world all by yourself.

You've got to do this stuff. You've got to go to the gym. You've got to eat. That's just you. And then there's you that interacts with all the other people in the world.

I define the difference. In my personal life, I look at the difference. It's like there's me that I've got to take care of me, but then there's other times, kind of my working personal time, when I've got other people to deal with.

That's different, isn't it? So I do that because I know I have to take care of myself first. In your work life, it's the same thing. The work that I do for others is the work I'm sitting down doing a shift.

And then there's the work I do for myself, like making the app. Are a lot of you guys right now learning AI because you got to learn AI? Oh, I got hammered the other day. So I got so mad at me for embracing AI.

I'm not embracing AI. I'm just getting out of its way. It's coming. I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. And it's a good thing. But a lot of people are waking up to that rattle and saying, you know what?

I'm going to sit down and I'm going to learn a little bit about this so I can take care of myself in the future. If you see that as work, I think you're looking at it as the wrong thing.

It's personal growth. It's personal development. That's when I sat down to the app. I was like, this is fun. I just enjoy the process. I split the two.

I know exactly what I'm doing all the time. So what's the point here? The point is, there is absolutely no balance between work and life. It just ebbs and flows all the time.

You never know where it's going to be. But there's a very defined difference. Your personal life is yours, where you take care of yourself. So important.

It's ridiculously important. I can tell you, some people get so out of balance that they let themselves go. They get sick. By the time they're 50 years old, they can't stand on one leg.

And they have no grip strength, right? You've read the articles. So there's you and there's you with others. And in work, there's the work you do when you show up and do your shift and the work you do to improve yourself.

Some people, it's a really job to sit down and do their finances, to maybe do some investing and get into the world financial markets and figure out what to do. Some people see that as a real job.

I think it's a good idea to see it as a real job. I see it as a combination. I see it as, hmm, I'm going to sit down during my personal time, do a little bit of personal work and figure out how to invest and make more money. How am I going to do that?

A little abstract conversation today, but something you can think about where we start to kind of split this out a little bit. I'm just reminding you to be you and reminding you that when you meet somebody else, you're not totally you. And when you're working, you're either working or you're kind of playing and working. What is it?

But make no mistake. There's a delineation between all of these areas. You need to know where they are, pay attention to it. And if I'm you, I'm getting some structure in place to make sure I do it that way all the time.

All right. You have a great weekend.