Michael Hyatt
speaker
169 appearances
6 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2022
last heard Feb 2025
Michael Hyatt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And I was very confused because I felt like I was faced with this impossible choice. Either I could win at work and just kiss my family goodbye basically, hope they survive, or I could throttle back my ambition professionally and go all in on the family. And either one of those just didn't seem right. I thought there's gotta be a third alternative.
And that basically sent me on a journey to see if I couldn't figure out a way to win at work and succeed at life. And that's since become my life mission to figure that out.
You know, it's really popular today to bash balance for people to say, oh, I don't believe in life balance. I believe in life integration and all that. And it's partly because they have a misapprehension about what it is. Balance does not mean that you're applying equal time, energy, capital, focus to every area of your life. You're not. And there's a dynamic tension.
It's much like if you were a gymnast on a tightrope And you're just trying to balance yourself. There's always this tension. You're always shifting your weight to try to accommodate. And I think life is like that too. It is dynamic in that way in that it constantly requires us to reposition ourselves, to reassess, to allocate our resources and all the rest. But I think it's actually possible.
And it's not only possible, it's essential. So in my worldview, I think life is made up of multiple domains. So there's body, mind, and spirit. You know, there's family, there's friendships, there's finance, there's our hobbies, there's our health. And all those things are interrelated, right?
So if something goes south, if you have a health crisis, it's going to bleed into or cascade into all those other areas of life. You know, if you have a health crisis, it's going to impact your marriage, it's going to impact your work. If you have marital problems, it's going to impact your work. If you've got stress at work, you're going to bring it home. So all these things are interrelated.
So if they're not considered carefully and if they're not pursued intentionally, then you're basically going to drift through life and end up in a crisis. And so I make a real big distinction between designing your life and drifting through life. Those are two different things, but the default mode is to drift. And I would say that that's where most people, that's their approach to life.
When I turned that division around, the CEO said, congratulations, we're going to give you more responsibility. So now you're going to become a divisional manager. over several publishing units. And then ultimately I became the COO and then the CEO. And at the time, Thomas Nelson was a publicly traded company in the New York Stock Exchange. So all that goes with
running and operating within a public company. But that year in 2002, I thought, you know, I'm kind of out of tricks. I turned this division around, but I'm scared because I don't know what I can do to continue to grow that division plus the new ones I was leading. And so I actually went to John Maxwell and I said, I think I need a coach, but I don't know any coaches.
And John said to me, I've got the perfect coach for you. He introduced me to Daniel Harkavy, who runs a company called Building Champions in Portland. And so Daniel and I began a coaching relationship and he and I are really good buddies to this day. We've written a book together and we go fishing in the fall together, fly fishing. And so that was a good relationship.
But one of the first things Daniel said to me as he listened to my story and was doing that intake in our first coaching session, he said, you know, if I can be frank, He said, it seems to me like you don't have any boundaries around work. Well, that was a brand new concept to me. I'm like, what are you talking about? Boundaries?
He said, tell me if I'm wrong, but my guess is that you get to the office early, you work all day, and you finally get out of there at about six o'clock, you go home, you have a quick dinner with the family, and then you're right back on your laptop. And I said, man, guilty as charged. That's exactly what my day looks like.
And they said, my guess is you probably work a fair amount on the weekends too. And I said, yep, because I learned that early in my career. All the executives at Word Publishing, where I was at initially, their cars were always there on Saturday morning and oftentimes on Sunday afternoon and evening. So I just thought that was the table stakes.
Yeah, what you have to do to play at that level. And so I said, yes. And he said, and my guess is that on your vacations, you get up early, you crank through a lot of email, but you're kind of late to the party and the family goes to the beach or they do whatever they're going to do and you join them later. I said, man, it's like you're reading my mind. That's exactly what it looks like.
And he said, would you be willing? And he said, it's going to be counterintuitive, but would you be willing to put hard boundaries around your workday, around your weekends and around your time off? And I said, what does that mean? And he said, it means you're not going to do any work. It means you're not gonna think about work, you're not gonna read about work, you're not gonna talk about work.
You're gonna be all in on the other elements of life. And I'm literally secretly thinking to myself, There are other elements of life. I knew there was my family, but there's stuff beyond that. That's how deprived I was. I was so just focused on work. It was crazy. And so I said, yes, I'm willing to do that because I knew something had to change.
And he said, well, first of all, you're going to become more productive and more focused because instead of goofing off in the afternoon and getting distracted, you realize you have a hard stop at six o'clock and that's it till the next morning. And so it was like that day before you go on a vacation where you're like uber productive. Yeah, exactly. I just was a machine.
But I said, yeah, I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to observe those hard boundaries. And I swallowed hard and tried to count the cost. And he said, well, then I'm sure you won't mind if periodically I check in with Gail to see how you're doing. And he called her several times. That's scary. I wasn't part of those conversations. But that created the kind of accountability that forced the change.
And everything began to turn around. Now, I'd be lying to you if I told you that that was the last time it was a one and done thing and it got fixed. And I'm just like anybody else. I deceive myself into thinking that whatever big project I'm in is temporary. And, you know, I tell myself, well, just as soon as I get this product launch or as soon as we get this company launched or whatever.
But unfortunately, those temporary periods can become a season, which can become a way of life if you're not careful. So you've got to really look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. And that was the beginning of sobriety for me.
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