Is “work–life balance” a myth? Drawing on Matt Higgins’ Burn the Boats and real-world routines (3:30–4:00 a.m. starts, daily content production), Jonathan argues that high performers seesaw between periods of extreme effort and intentional recovery—and that’s normal. You’ll learn a simple audit to decide where to push, where to rest, and how to design your weeks for outcomes, not wishes.

You’ll learn:

• Why “balance” ≠ 50/50; think seasons & sprints
• The Effort–Outcome Equation for business, fitness, and family
• A 20-minute weekly Capacity Planner to schedule deep work and recovery
• How to prevent burnout while still doing what most people won’t

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hello there, my friend Jonathan Doyle with you.

Welcome to the Daily Podcast.

I do hope you're doing okay.

We've all got our challenges, right?

There's there'll be some of you listening when life right now feels like a broad

sunlit path of magnificent potential.

And there's some of you listening going, Jonathan please

just get me through this day.

I got you all I've got something for everybody today I wanna share with you

a really great quote from a book that I'm reading called Burn the Boats.

And it's a book written by a guy called Matt Higgins.

His story is that he grew up in great poverty, left school at

15 and just went on to really build the most remarkable career.

And I heard him speaking recently and I've just been powering through his book.

And there's a particular line that jumped out at me, a little paragraph

actually, and I wanna share it with you and see what you think.

He's talking about this idea of work life balance, which I think is a unicorn.

I've got a friend in business who is a few years ahead of me.

Has a phenomenal capacity for work.

And I remember 15, 20 years ago, he just straight up said, look,

work life balance is a myth.

And sometimes, when we send out an email broadcast, I get autoresponders that

people like, our business is closed.

We only respond to emails between these times.

And I get it's the response to being, pinged at sort of 2:00 AM by somebody

expecting an immediate response.

Look, work-life balance is definitely a topic that people are

interested in, but does it exist?

Is it a unicorn?

How hard should we work?

What's normal?

I guess we've gotta see our moment in history, right?

So I was saying to someone the other day that until the early 20th century,

most people pretty much went to sleep around sunset or shortly after,

because for example, we we didn't have.

Electric lights, right?

So people were still lighting by gaslight and before that, candles, if they had

'em, and they were expensive at times.

So pretty much when the sun went down, you might be sitting in a single

room with a candle or two and your circadian rhythm just tended to.

You'd go to sleep early and you wake up early.

And that's changed, as that's changed.

Shout out to all those people scrolling Instagram in their

bed before they fall asleep.

And so this work life balance thing, we're always on.

What's possible?

Let's talk about it.

So he says this direct quote, I think the search for an ideal

work life balance is a lie.

Successful people will always seesaw between times of extreme effort

interspersed with periods of recovery.

Extraordinary things can only be achieved through extraordinary effort.

One more time.

I think the search for an ideal work-life balance is a lie.

Successful people will always seesaw between times of extreme effort

interspersed with periods of recovery.

Extraordinary things can only be achieved through extraordinary effort.

Alright, let's just rip into this quickly.

I'm sure you have some thoughts about that.

I think he's right.

I think he's right, at least on the idea of extreme.

Things can only be achieved through extraordinary effort.

I think he's right there.

How do I say this?

The majority of people are going to go through life, and this is not a value

judgment on people, but they're gonna go through life, I guess operationalizing

or actualizing a relatively limited.

I guess percentage of what they could achieve in life.

For complex reasons.

Some people just don't really want to do more.

They're comfortable, or there's all sorts of reasons why people might do that.

It's not a judgment, but we do wanna focus on the fact that if

you want different, significant results in your life, it's probably

gonna require extraordinary effort.

My experience of life has led me to believe that unusual results.

I tend to come from people who are extremely driven and work extremely hard.

For many years I was really convicted of the talent thing.

I was, we all have these unique talents and some of us can use them in ways

that are, can be quite lucrative.

But the longer that I've lived and observed people and business and life,

I just think that the work component seems to be something significant.

And it's often, this idea that if we push ourselves too hard, we'll break.

I get that too.

But my observation also seems to be that people who work a lot

and hard and consistently often tend to live pretty long lives.

There's always plenty of exceptions, but they don't tend to just

suddenly, disappear in their fifties.

They tend to push on and keep contributing and keep doing stuff and have these

big, expansive, interesting lives.

I guess I wanna put a few thoughts in your head.

I'm not, I'm no one's judge.

I've said that a couple times here.

I what the future holds for you, but I do know just seems of comos.

Unusual results require unusual efforts that we have to push ourselves at

times and work extremely hard when we don't often feel like it, if we want

to get unusual results, and that may require extreme amounts of effort.

So recently I've been getting up and being in the studio around about 3:34 AM and.

I do two podcasts a day across different areas.

One in education and this one in business and personal development.

And it's a lot of work, like doing the content, getting it all, getting

it produced properly, getting it syndicated, all that sort of stuff.

And it's every day it's like we're back to it.

We're back to the mill, we're back to the grind, we're back to

the factory producing content.

Every single day.

I ain't sleeping until eight o'clock.

It's it's on, and I was watching a documentary the other day of

the Kansas City Chiefs and their head coach, same kind of thing.

He heads into the office about three 30 in the morning for the same

reasons that I head into the studio.

He says, you can get a lot of work done.

It's quiet, there's no interruptions, like all the rest of the planet's being

normal, and you're out there doing stuff that other people aren't doing.

Summary, my friend, wherever you are in your life right now, if you

want more, you will need to do more.

You will need to work harder.

You will need to produce more.

You will need to be more disciplined.

These are iron laws of the universe.

We didn't get to write them, but we have a choice of whether or not

we wanna conform ourselves to them.

So just be, what's the word, cautious.

Suspicious of the idea that you're supposed to find some perfect

work life balance and that life's supposed to be restful and easy.

'cause I just don't think it is this side of heaven.

We are not living in a perfected reality as such.

We have to do things to bend experience to some degree, to the way that we

want it to be, and that requires work.

So get after it.

Just accept that this is how it is.

I'm only sharing this with you because it's taken me many years to

work it out, and I think it's true.

Alright, that's it for me today.

Please make sure you've subscribed, hit that subscribe button.

And you can find me on the website, Jonathan Doyle dot Cov, if you wanna

book me for speaking and other things.

I'm on Instagram.

J Doyle speaks one word, j doyle speaks.

You can find me there on YouTube at Jonathan Doyle speaks.

And please subscribe, please share this with people.

Let me give you some homework.

Just take some time today, maybe get a journal and just

ask yourself the question.

Am I pursuing my potential?

Am I working hard enough?

Could I do more?

What do I want that I'm not currently experiencing?

And what would I have to do differently to achieve it?

God bless you my friend.

This has been the Dali Podcast.

My name's Jonathan Doyle, and you and I are gonna talk again tomorrow.