Focus on This

Work–life balance is a baseline—flourishing is the goal. In this episode, Marissa Hyatt and Joel Miller unpack the evolved Double Win: 6 life-giving practices that move you toward joy. You’ll learn why different generations get stuck in opposite ditches, and the simple rhythms that help you feel present, energized, and purposeful at work and at home.


Key Takeaways

  • Too Much of a Good Thing. Work and life both matter, but we tend to overindex on one at cost to the other. We need to start by bringing them into balance—but that alone isn’t enough.
  • The Call to Flourish. Living fully means moving beyond balance into purpose, contribution, and delight. It means savoring the good and intentionally making space for more of it.
  • Six Practical Practices. Here’s what to make space for: tending to yourself, connecting with others, doing work that matters, prioritizing recreation, experiencing nature, and staying open to the sacred.
  • Presence Over Perfection. Instead of treating the practices like a rigid checklist, think of them as invitations to be more present to your life, and to create opportunities for joy.
  • Build In Resets. Try out an evening ritual to decompress, and build out an Ideal Week to guide your commitments with more intention.

Resources


Watch on YouTube at:  https://youtu.be/4H8dLPUFkIs


This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

Creators and Guests

Host
Joel Miller
Originally from Sacramento, Joel is the Chief Content Officer at Full Focus. He is committed to helping people cut through distractions, focus on what matters most, and live fully present. When he's not savoring moments with his wife, Megan, and their five kids, he's probably reading or writing. He enjoys reviewing novels, listening to jazz, and musing about economics—and his latest book, The Idea Machine, is available for order now.
Host
Marissa Hyatt
Born and raised south of Nashville, Marissa is the Chief Marketing Officer at Full Focus. She is super passionate about helping people get outside their comfort zones, find their own power, and achieve their dreams. In her free time, she enjoys cooking for friends, baking sourdough bread, and hiking. She geeks out on natural wellness, skincare, personal growth, gardening, and traveling.

What is Focus on This?

Start loving Mondays! Join Marissa & Joel each week for practical strategies, weekly rhythms, and honest insights to help you slow down, show up, and live intentionally. Based on the proven Full Focus methods used in the Full Focus Planner™, each episode offers habits, mindset shifts, and real support so you can quiet the noise, follow through, and build a life that feels good to live. Ready to focus on what really matters?

[00:00:00] Marissa: So, have you ever nailed a big win at work but you felt like you were failing at home in the same week or in your personal life? Well, you're not alone, but it doesn't have to be that way.
[00:00:20] Welcome to Focus on This, the Most Protective podcast on the internet. I'm Marissa Hyatt.
[00:00:26] Joel: And I'm Joel Miller.
[00:00:27] Marissa: This is where we remind you of something you already know. It's not about getting more things done, it's about getting the right things done,
[00:00:35] Joel: both at work and in life. And today we're talking about.
[00:00:40] Getting the double win at work and at home. That might be obvious from what the double win means, winning at work and succeeding at life. But sometimes it's easy to let one or the other slip and we wanna make sure that we're focusing on both.
[00:00:52] Marissa: Yeah, I think we've talked about the double win for years at full focus and on focus on this, but we haven't really gone deep into what this means and truly.
[00:01:04] How to get it, what this actually looks like in day-to-day life in practicality. And I'm really excited, Joel, because I think we're finally gonna like bring this thing to life for people. Mm-hmm. And actually define what it means. Not just winning at work and succeeding at life, but what it fully means in actuality.
[00:01:24] Joel: Yeah. I think before we get going on that in particular, I think we need to kind of look at some of what is holding us back. To me that comes down to two myths, and I think these myths can kind of break down along generational lines. So I'll tee 'em up and then I'd like to hear your feedback on this.
[00:01:40] Speaker 3: Yeah,
[00:01:40] Joel: so the first it seems to me is you got boomers and Gen Xers.
[00:01:44] I'm a Gen Xer born in 1975, which as far as I know, is the greatest year in this country's history. And not just because I was born, there were other things happening that year that were pretty great too. But Boomers and Gen Xers tend to have a relationship to work and a relationship even more fundamentally about defining success as if it requires sacrifice at home.
[00:02:04] So to win at work means sacrificing at home, and what that looks like is overwork disguised as commitment to the job. Meanwhile, millennials and Gen Zs, they tend to have. Not quite that view at all. They tend to have something that might even be roughly opposite of that as if they're living in reaction to the bad example that the boomers and we Gen Xers set.
[00:02:27] And what I see millennials and Gen Zs go wrong sometimes is that if work doesn't fit into my life and values right now, it's not worth sticking with. And so there tends to be like an all or nothing thing happening on both sides of these. That good work should never interfere with my personal life.
[00:02:43] That's kind of how you experience that on the other side, and you can speak to that as a millennial or or not, but I'd love to hear what you're thinking on that.
[00:02:51] Marissa: Yeah. Well, I am a millennial born in 1990.
[00:02:53] Joel: Also another good year. I mean, worth saying Great year. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:57] Marissa: Great year. I think that this is a really important point that is often overlooked because.
[00:03:03] The struggles that you were dealing with or Boomers like my dad's generation are not the same things that I'm dealing with as a millennial or that I see Gen Z dealing with.
[00:03:14] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:15] Marissa: I think that social media and kind of this world of broadcasting our lives. Has opened up a lot of possibility to us, millennials in particular, of what is possible beyond just work.
[00:03:28] Mm-hmm. That life isn't only about work, that there's so much more that life in the world has to offer, and so we end up actually semi over-indexing on that side of things. Yeah. It's like I don't want my work to rule my life and so therefore. Often we end up saying, well, I want a job that is remote or has a lot of flexibility in it.
[00:03:52] Those are priorities that are important to us because we wanna be on the go. We wanna be able to travel and take time off and go on a hiking trip with a friend or for a long weekend away, or just enjoy a leisurely afternoon at home and be able to get our work done when we feel like it. But the problem is, I think with both of these, as you shared, is that neither is actually.
[00:04:13] Truly balanced. It's like mm-hmm. Your generation and the former generation of boomers is over-indexing on work. Yeah. My generation, millennials and Gen Z is probably over-indexing on the personal side of things. And it's like you said, it's an overcorrection. We saw our parents. Grinding like crazy and sacrificing every other part of their lives.
[00:04:35] Typically, that looks like relationships and health. Yeah. I would
[00:04:38] Joel: say
[00:04:38] Marissa: most importantly,
[00:04:39] Joel: yep. And
[00:04:40] Marissa: so I know that that was true for my dad's story. He was working nonstop. His health was suffering because of that. And his relationship, particularly with my mom, was really text. You know, she often. Felt like a single mom and like she was just the only one at home responsible for everything.
[00:05:01] So then it's like I looked at that and said, Nope, I definitely don't want any part of that. Right.
[00:05:06] So I
[00:05:06] wanna go over index on my personal life. But that's an overcorrection in actuality.
[00:05:12] Joel: Yeah. What ends up happening is that. The Boomers and Gen Zs are under serving their personal lives, and the millennials and Gen Zs are under serving their professional lives.
[00:05:24] Marissa: Totally. Well, and I see this a lot in my generation where we feel like work is secondary. It's there, it's a means to an end. It's not something that a lot of people care about, or if they do, it's like they want to reinvent. What it means to be working. They want a four hour work week. They want a really flexible schedule.
[00:05:45] Like I said, they wanna be remote. A lot of people I know in my generation too, are more and more wanting to work for themselves, being entrepreneurs or solopreneurs because of the ability for flexibility, which is an important aspect of creating the kind of life we want. And yet. Part of what we know is that we need to be doing work that matters, that we care about, that we're making a true decision, right?
[00:06:12] And we don't wanna just say, well, this is only a means to an end because it's not.
[00:06:16] Joel: Well, I think what ends up happening is you don't end up enjoying the work that you do, or you end up not being able to fulfill your professional purpose or aims because you're not giving it the attention that it needs.
[00:06:30] Marissa: Yeah, 100%.
[00:06:31] Joel: It is worth saying that. Neither of these views are wrong in their entirety. Mm-hmm. And in fact, there's tons to be said for like the strong work ethic of the Boomer Gen Xer cohort, and there's a lot to be said for the flexibility and the life focus that the millennials and Gen Zs have. So it's not like.
[00:06:53] Either one of them is wholly wrong. It's just that if in its almost caricatured state, which we sometimes pursue these things,
[00:07:00] Marissa: yeah.
[00:07:01] Joel: We miss the benefit of something that's more harmonious or more in balance.
[00:07:05] Marissa: Totally. Well, it's like I see the former generations, um, kind of that typical corporate. Life or career that we expect.
[00:07:13] Mm-hmm. And then
[00:07:14] the latter generations having more of that bend towards solo entrepreneurship. And I think that there's a way for us to meet in the middle, be able to flex skills on both sides,
[00:07:26] Speaker 3: right. And
[00:07:26] Marissa: learn how to do this thing well. So it's more well-rounded and. It's not really balanced necessarily that we're looking for, but it's more so a well-rounded life.
[00:07:38] Yeah. That's
[00:07:39] deeply meaningful in each area and that we feel like we're actually designing. That's not just something that we've we're doing because of a response to a former generation. Sure. Or a former way of doing things, which I think is arguably where we've landed in a lot of ways today.
[00:07:57] Joel: Well, you know, we do end up living an awful lot of our lives in reaction to other people.
[00:08:01] There's this concept called esis, which is basically, you know, we know the word mimetic or to imitate, and that idea is that we often tend to follow what one group is doing. Or reacting against what another group is doing. And so like we see this mimetic thing happening over here and we're like, we don't want anything to do with that.
[00:08:23] And so we like go hard the other way or we like what's happening over here and we go hard that way rather than recognize that we have our own individual lives with our own individual needs and we need to tend to those individual needs or our family needs or community or whatever in a way that respects.
[00:08:40] Where we are, not where the crowd is going or not going.
[00:08:43] Marissa: Right. Well, and I think kind of going back to my dad's story, he created this concept of the double win out of necessity in his life. Right. And I would say most people today, now, they would not necessarily use that phrase or the exact terms, but they would say that that's incredibly important to them, especially those millennials and Gen Zers.
[00:09:04] Uh, it'll be interesting to see what. Gen Alpha ends up doing with all of this I, right, right. I'm curious to see that, but I think that it's easy for us to think, especially at full focus, the double win, which we define as winning at work and succeeding at life, is just exactly
[00:09:26] Joel: that. Yeah.
[00:09:26] Marissa: And the truth is, I think what we've been sensing for a while is that this is evolving.
[00:09:31] This is something that is not just. We're looking for that work life balance, which is kind of how we would say it in like common terms. Yeah. But that this is evolving beyond that. We wanna feel that true sense of fulfillment, of purpose, of meaning. And I, and I would be willing to say that every single person who is listening, no matter what generation they would fall in, they would say those things are true.
[00:09:54] Yes, totally. It's less about like, we're overindexing on work, or we're overindexing on life and it's more like we wanna live a life. By design, by intention, by meaning and purpose, and. That's kind of a, an evolved double win, if you will.
[00:10:11] Joel: You know, it's easy to look at work-life balance as the paradigm and that's good.
[00:10:16] And, but it's sort of like that's the ground floor. Yeah. That's like brushing your teeth every day. Yeah. That's the basics. And so if you're not getting work-life balance, that's a problem and you need to go there. But there's more to it. There's more beyond that. Mm-hmm. And 1 0 1 versus 2 0 1 or something like that.
[00:10:31] Marissa: Right.
[00:10:31] Joel: And that's where. I think honestly, the more we focus on that next level, the easier it is to maintain work-life balance. Mm-hmm. Because you're doing the things that actually fulfill that in a way that are harder without doing those things. So maybe we should just jump in and what do we, what do we mean by that?
[00:10:50] Marissa: Yeah.
[00:10:51] Joel: This is something that Megan has championed in. Mm-hmm. Our business, and it really comes down to this idea that. Work-life balance is not enough. That flourishing is what we're called to. This idea that we can be doing more than winning at work and succeeding at life, or if that's what we're gonna say, which I think is accurate.
[00:11:11] We want to color that in. Now we want to say, what does that really look like to win at work and succeed at life? Because if it looks like merely work-life balance, that's kind of underwhelming.
[00:11:22] Marissa: Boring.
[00:11:23] Joel: Yeah,
[00:11:23] Marissa: right. Not interested. Like that's so status quo at this point. And frankly. We were talking about it for years before this kind of movement, and I frankly think that 2020, the pandemic accelerated that yes, it became not just a luxury or an option on the table.
[00:11:42] It really became a necessity for people and Totally. So I would say now, five years later. Most of us are having some level of work-life balance. Now, it may not be perfect and it may not be in balance all the time. We may over index on one area or another depending on what season we're in, but I would say most of us.
[00:12:02] Are probably not feeling like we, that's not in reach for us, right? Like we feel like there's a path towards it. We can kind of understand what that looks like in our lives, or we've experienced it at different points. And now what we're talking about is really going beyond that to this concept of flourishing, which I love and sounds frankly, so much more exciting and inspiring to me than just work-life balance.
[00:12:27] Joel: Well, so like if we take work-life balance as kind of the baseline and then we say, all right, well, what does it actually look like to fill that out? We would say that there are six practices, and these again came out of some work that Megan was doing, saying we need to define what this looks like at a, at a richer level.
[00:12:44] At a, at greater detail. And so these six practices emerged out of that investigation, call it, or that that process of discovery and the six of these tending to yourself, which looks like your own wellbeing, body, mind, spirit, honoring your limits, it looks like protecting your energy. It looks like. Living coherently, you know, with integrity.
[00:13:05] Mm-hmm. The second would be connecting with others. We are social creatures. We're made for relationships. We need to be needed and we need other people. There's a French economist whose work I've loved over the years named, uh, Frederick, uh, Baat. Baat said something I find fascinating that God made us with needs and it's in our needs and in our weakness, that we actually find what makes us great.
[00:13:31] And I think that is where relationships come in at a level that it is maybe more obvious than anywhere, anywhere else. Because when we have needs, we almost always have them met by other people. We don't have them met by ourselves, and we get to do that for other people, which is a very high calling. The, the third is the one that we probably default to more often than not, or react against more often than not, which is doing work that matters.
[00:13:57] So, you know, work takes up. 40, 50, 60 hours of the average person's week, maybe less depending on their situation, but the minute you throw in volunteer work or any other kind of work, that is a contribution to the society that we live in, it's a lot of time. And so it takes a big piece of this. Yeah. But doing work that matters whether it's paid or unpaid.
[00:14:17] Visible or invisible, we're talking about. Meaningful effort that adds something to the world around us. The fourth one is about prioritizing recreation, because that work that we do drains us. It demands something of us, and we need to refill the tank and we need to recharge, we need to rejuvenate. That's why we even chose the word recreation as opposed to other potential options.
[00:14:43] It's like pulling it all back together again so that we can go back out into the world and that looks like. You know, frankly, challenging hobbies that looks like. Pursuing our curiosity that looks like trying to find joy in pastime that are, you know, recreational in and of themselves that looks like play.
[00:15:00] Yes. Leisure. It looks like things that are, frankly we might dismiss as non-essential, but are actually so fundamentally essential that if we miss them, we really struggle as people. So we could say that they fill time, but it's more accurate to say that they fill us back up.
[00:15:16] Marissa: Yes, 100%.
[00:15:17] Joel: The fifth one kind of goes along with that, but it's experiencing nature.
[00:15:21] We're embodied creatures. We live in a physical world, a world with light and wind and weather and soil, and we need to be out in it from time to time, if not a lot of the time. That could mean like if you're in a city and you, you know, have an apartment, you know, on the fifth floor with a balcony. Spend some time out on the balcony.
[00:15:38] Feel the breeze on your cheeks. You know, if you have the ability to go to a park, spend some time at a park. If you have the ability to go for a walk out in the woods, go for a walk in the woods. This is the kind of thing that causes us to become awake to the world around us and keeps us grounded. And then finally, the sixth.
[00:15:56] You know, we talk about it like staying open to the sacred or walking with God, the idea that there is a transcendent. Reality that we fit into. And when we are trying to do this thing on our own, it's hard to find our place in the cosmos. But when we recognize that we are small and we fit into a larger story, we're gonna ask better questions.
[00:16:18] We're gonna have more wonder, we're going to have more internal resources, frankly, to deal with the complexities of life. And so flourishing really looks like those six practices. You can do them in. Yeah. Infinite numbers of ways. Humans from the beginning of humanity have done them in infinite numbers of ways, but they need to be attended to.
[00:16:39] They need to be done because if we don't, we suffer.
[00:16:41] Marissa: Yeah. And I think this is where we're taking this concept of the double win and we're really, I. Biggie sizing it.
[00:16:48] Mm-hmm.
[00:16:49] We're not just talking about work-life balance, we're talking about truly flourishing. Yep. If you think of a plant that, you know, if it's got balance, okay fine.
[00:16:58] But if we're really trying to create flourish, is that even how we would say that? I dunno. But flourish. You know, we, we want that plant to flourish. We've gotta have those elements just so, and make sure we're providing the core sense of nutrients to it. That means light, that means water, that means literal nutrients in the soil.
[00:17:20] You know, making sure that the soil isn't, uh, too nutrient dense, uncertain, or too right. Struggling on in other areas. We've gotta have all the things just right to allow that plant to flourish. And if you think about how many things have to go into that, and how often in nature plants are more often than not flourishing.
[00:17:42] It's
[00:17:42] Speaker 3: actually
[00:17:42] Marissa: encouraging. Yeah. Because to me what it says is, while it may at the surface feel like, okay, these six practices that I need to be focusing on, while that may feel initially, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming. How am I gonna fit these into my day? It's actually not that difficult. If you think of them holistically.
[00:18:02] Yeah. And so one of the things that I think is helpful, for instance, if you think about a practice like a hobby, like hiking, you can have hiking, meet almost every single one of these six practices in that single act. You're able to check off. Multiple of these. If you go with somebody, you're able to connect with others.
[00:18:23] If you, first of all, you're tending to yourself because you're likely exercising your body, putting yourself first, all those things rejuvenation. You look at the sacred, oh my gosh, like I've had. Some of my best conversations with God and biggest like deep thinking while I'm hiking. You're obviously connecting with nature in that situation.
[00:18:44] Joel: Yeah,
[00:18:45] Marissa: it's obviously recreation. If all of a sudden hiking is your work, then you're doing work that matters. So, or you could be creating, you know, ideas or whatever while you're hiking and so. I wanna make sure that everybody, as we're introducing this new concept, that it doesn't feel like Now I've got a whole new checklist of things I've gotta make sure I'm doing on a daily basis, but realizing you're probably already engaging in activities that are checking off multiple boxes.
[00:19:13] Joel: I say like. Forget about the checklist. It's not a checklist. These are practices that we're already all of us doing to one degree or another. It's really just a question of becoming aware of them and looking for ways to do them more intentionally or to bring them into our life in a more intentional way, you know?
[00:19:30] Yeah. Like. You already do tend to yourself. Mm-hmm. But are you doing it to the extent that you need to, you already do connect with others, but are you doing it in a way that is ultimately doing you service? And so just being mindful of these, what ends up happening is we, we begin to do more of them in a way that is constructive and helpful.
[00:20:01] Marissa: We've been talking with our team a lot about these six practices and encouraging each other to do more of these things, and we have a, a full focus team text thread where we're constantly, you know, outside of working hours, texting each other about different things that we're doing to engage in these practices.
[00:20:17] Julie, who is our creative director on our team, she is the beauty behind all of what, uh, full Focus does, which is amazing. She has for the last couple of years done this challenge, and you may have heard of it, called a thousand Hours Outside. And this is essentially a challenge where you, in one singular year, you try to spend a thousand hours literally outside, outdoors, and so.
[00:20:45] As far as I know, this was set up to essentially help parents engage their children and get them outside and create this experience with them.
[00:20:53] Right, and
[00:20:54] I love this because this checks so many of the boxes of the six practices, and if you think about this concept of engaging with nature, being outside, experiencing nature, we are literally created to be outside 100% of the time.
[00:21:13] Joel: Yeah,
[00:21:14] Marissa: which is a far cry from where we are now. I mean, if you think about it, our majority of our day is spent in a climate controlled, artificial light environment.
[00:21:24] Joel: Yeah. I mean, we're both standing in one right now.
[00:21:26] Marissa: We both are.
[00:21:27] Joel: Yeah. And.
[00:21:28] Marissa: When I was having lunch, I went outside for about 10 minutes after and just sat outside and felt the sun on my skin and just sat there and it feels like such a win, which is kind of sad if we think about this, but it feels like such a win to do something as simple as five or 10 minutes outside.
[00:21:48] Joel: Yeah.
[00:21:48] Marissa: But I love that now we're putting this emphasis on. Getting out, being in nature, experiencing it, and I, I am sorry, but I don't know anybody who can go outside and engage with nature on some level and not simultaneously be connected and experiencing the sacred elements of life. I mean, yeah, those two things go hand in hand, so it's hard to do separately those things.
[00:22:17] Joel: Julie's challenge, that's like two hours and 45 minutes a day. Hmm. Which. On the one hand seems like maybe a lot. For other people it means like nothing. You know, like they're probably doing that already. There are guys working out on the street in front of me right now that have definitely been outside more than two hours and 45 minutes already.
[00:22:34] Right? They've been out there all day. But for people that are, you know, knowledge workers, people that are kind of like behind this keyboard, behind the screen all day long, that could feel like a lot, two hours, but it's frankly not that much. If you actually just imagine. Getting outside at various points during the day.
[00:22:50] You spend maybe 20 or 30 minutes out in the morning. You go for a walk at lunch, you spend some time in the evening. It's not that hard to accumulate these things. And I think that's true for all six of these practices. Right? It's not a lot. Even to do a bare minimum would end up being a benefit, and that's kind of the attitude we should have, is you don't have to optimize, maximize the whole thing, you know?
[00:23:11] Right. Just nudge your way in on them and the more you nudge your way in on them. That feeling of whether you're over-indexing for work or under indexing or whatever, it kind of resolves itself because your life is now full of enough other things that it ends up addressing this work-life balance thing almost by default, and then moving you far above it.
[00:23:32] Now you're into this state of flourishing.
[00:23:34] Marissa: Well, I think it also puts things into perspective.
[00:23:37] Joel: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:37] Marissa: If we're engaging with nature, if we're connecting with others, if we're tending to ourselves all of a sudden. The part of our life, which is our work isn't the most critical part, right? It's like we now all of a sudden have, have been able to zoom out and actually see this thing holistically.
[00:23:55] Joel: Yep.
[00:23:56] Marissa: That when we put all these pieces in place, we really are able to have the energy for all those things. And we've been talking about this for months internally, and. I know that all of us have been trying to incorporate more of these practices into our daily life, and I can say there has been such relief, mm-hmm.
[00:24:17] Speaker 3: From my
[00:24:17] Marissa: side of things that I don't have to get it perfectly. I don't have to create this crazy routine. It's asking that simple question multiple times a day. Of how can I incorporate these practices right now?
[00:24:31] Joel: Right.
[00:24:32] Marissa: I think ultimately if I could like zoom out and really like capture what this looks like in one word beyond just flourishing, it would be presence.
[00:24:41] Yeah. It's like being where you are in the moment that you're in and showing up fully and really engaging with what's in front of you versus just your phone or your work or that thing that's grabbing at your attention. Those notifications that are going off. It's like when you sit down with a friend for dinner, you're fully with that friend for dinner,
[00:25:02] Joel: right?
[00:25:02] Marissa: Or if you're out on a walk or on a hike, you're totally in that. One of the things that I've been trying to do. Which is a little uncomfortable, honestly, is not Bring my headphones on walks. Yeah. It's so simple, but I find that if I am having my headphones in, I'm not as present with nature as I would hope to be.
[00:25:22] Sure. Or I'm less likely to engage if I pass a neighbor on the street. Then if my headphones are out, I can stop. Literally two days ago I was on a walk and my male lady who I've gotten to know she was getting in her car at the time that I was coming home. And we stopped and we probably chatted for 15 minutes.
[00:25:39] And had I had my headphones in, I probably just would've waved and kept on going. Right. But there was something that in this intention of flourishing that called that out in me that it was like, no, this is, this is the person in front of me in this moment, and I wanna engage with her and get to know her more.
[00:25:57] This is a person in my community. And I know that's so silly. It's my male lady.
[00:26:01] Joel: Yeah. That's awesome.
[00:26:02] Marissa: But it was something of like. Wow, this is, this is such a pastime to be on first name basis with your mail person.
[00:26:09] Joel: I think it's wonderful. I mean, like, I was reading this poem about gratitude and it specifically mentioned the fact that, uh, I think the term they used in this poem was conveyors of the mail.
[00:26:20] Like, but to be grateful for the people that bring you the mail, your packages or whatever that come to your house. Like, it's so simple, but like. It's also so overlooked, and at the same time, they are bringing life into your life. Yeah. You know, the things that you need, the things that you're hoping for, the things that you're expecting.
[00:26:37] Yes. Also bills and things like that, but, but at the same time, like they are doing a service for you. And to recognize them, to be honoring of them in that way is awesome. And that goes back to this point about having perspective and that it's not all about this one area of life. And I think. Sometimes we can think about these practices, almost like guardrails for where we go off track.
[00:27:01] You know, like if you think about tending to yourself, if that becomes like a commitment that you are going to tend to yourself, it forces you to get clear on where you're not doing it and what's causing you to not do it.
[00:27:13] Speaker 3: Right? The
[00:27:13] Joel: same thing with connecting with others. You know, like we are living in what people refer to as a loneliness epidemic and you know, I can speak as someone who.
[00:27:22] I have a lot of friends and at the same time, I don't see them remotely as much as I wish I did and. I know that one of the things that contributes to that lack of connection is work, and it's also the chaos of the calendar. You know, I, I remember reading, I think it's Judith Schitz who said that we have like time confetti with our calendars where.
[00:27:45] Nobody's calendars line up anymore. It used to be somewhat predictable, you know, everyone got off work at the same time. Everyone was more or less free. At certain evenings of the week. You could ring up your friend and just spontaneously go out, but now it doesn't feel like that any longer. Everyone has all of these commitments that are all blocking each other from finding ways to connect, and so.
[00:28:05] If you make connection a priority that ends up helping to address that problem, and at the same time again, gives you perspective so that you know, like let's say something's going off the rails in your life, but your friendships are solid, now you have a place to go, like deal with the things that are going off the rails.
[00:28:24] And so that's just essential.
[00:28:26] Marissa: Well, I think what's beautiful about this is it doesn't require figuring out. This kind of stuff in a perfect framework or a perfect challenge, or whatever you wanna call it, right? Where kind of all these things stacked together and we've gotta get it just right. There's a lot of area for kind of fluidity with this.
[00:28:47] Yeah. Where if you, if you're prioritizing connection, like you talked about, you're naturally going to want to say yes to connection. You're naturally looking for areas for more connection. It doesn't have to be rigid. It doesn't have to be like, I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z every single week, or whatever. Right.
[00:29:06] It's just you're prioritizing that part of you and that part of your life, and I absolutely love that because there's so much freedom in that today. What looks like connection. May be really different than what it looks like a week from now for you. Totally. For instance, like today, it may be when you go pick your kids up from school, you're really connecting with them and you wanna have good conversation and rather than just saying, Hey, how was your day?
[00:29:33] You ask them, how was that math test? Or who did you sit with at lunch? Or you ask really intentional questions that are better to create connection versus Right. Just a generic, oh, it was good, it was fine, whatever. Which we know kids are gonna typically say those things, you know? And next week maybe it looks like really connecting with a friend on a hike or going to a specific class.
[00:29:57] Or for me, maybe that looks like. Going out and dating or something, right? Mm-hmm. Like I'm prioritizing connection. It doesn't have to look the exact same every single day or every single week. Yeah. It can be a little bit more fluid to how our lives unfold, which to me is how we flourish. It's not by being rigid, it's by that white space around things where we realize, this is where we fit these things in.
[00:30:22] This is how. It doesn't have to be perfect,
[00:30:25] Joel: you know? It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be practical. Yeah. So let's pivot to talking about how to make this practical. Like what are some work life resets that we can have that kind of get us into a place where we've made room for these practices?
[00:30:39] Marissa: Well, one of my favorites I think is. Our evening ritual. Mm-hmm. I think that this really allows for us to prioritize a lot of these six practices. For instance, tending to yourself. I mean, anybody who's listening to this podcast for a while while I've been on it knows one of my favorite things to do in the evenings is to lay on my acupressure mat.
[00:31:02] It's a spiky kind of mat that hits different acupressure points and really relaxes the nervous system. It's. Seemingly weird and yet phenomenal in actuality, takes a little bit to get used to. I recommend doing it on a bed, not on like a hard floor, but it is so relaxing and that's a way that I tend to myself and usually while I'm doing that.
[00:31:25] I'm meditating or praying or doing something that's connecting me back to that sacred aspect. Mm-hmm. So that's such a great way to reset, no matter what that evening routine looks like, but a way to wind down, become intentional, reflective on the day that you've had, and be able to think through tomorrow, what do I wanna be able to create in my life?
[00:31:47] Yeah. And so I often will do that kind of as I'm winding down thinking about the day ahead. Like, what do I wanna do? To be able to be more intentional.
[00:31:56] Joel: The great thing about that evening ritual is so much of the next day starts the evening before. Yes. There are different worldviews where this is baked into it, you know, in the, in the sort of Jewish conception of.
[00:32:10] The day it always starts the evening before. Mm-hmm. And there's a reason for that. And some of those reasons may be exclusive to that kind of religious perspective, but they don't have to be. And in the case of just recognizing, for instance, that if you are well rested, you will have a better day. I drink decaf coffee as we mentioned before as
[00:32:30] Marissa: well,
[00:32:31] Joel: a lot.
[00:32:31] I drink a lot of it and I was on a flight back from Vermont and I was asked by the, uh, flight attendant if I would like some coffee. I said, sure. I didn't really think about the fact that I was gonna be getting caffeinated coffee. I had two cups later in the afternoon. It. Destroyed my night. I was not able to sleep except for in small little patches.
[00:32:53] And I woke up super early and I went to bed super late. It was terrible. Yeah. And the end result was, my whole day was not ruined, but not great.
[00:33:02] Marissa: Yeah.
[00:33:03] Joel: There's a version of that story for all of us. If we, if we don't get the evening shutdown that we need, we're not gonna experience the next day at the level that we could.
[00:33:12] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[00:33:12] Joel: Another one that hits me is like rules on the calendar. If we block time for the things that matter most, then we, instead of like trying to fit in the things that matter most, now we're trying to fit in the rest of it, which is just a better posture to be in.
[00:33:27] Marissa: Yeah. I love this because it's not intuitive for most of us.
[00:33:33] If we think about during our weekly preview, which if you haven't listened to last week's episode, go listen to it. 'cause we talk about this in depth on that episode. But, um, similar to the evening ritual, in fact it starts before, you know Yeah. Like the, the weekly preview we do before the week. And it really creates this level of intention about how you're gonna spend your time and your energy.
[00:33:57] And just like you're saying, for you, it may be making sure that you've got family time on the calendar. For me, it's making sure I have time to connect with my friends. Mm-hmm. And tending to myself, for instance, my workouts, relaxation, all those things on the calendar because if that's not baked in. It's just not gonna happen.
[00:34:16] Life has a way of really derailing any intention that we have if it's not baked in.
[00:34:23] Joel: Yeah, totally. The thing that's great about that is, and why you said it's counterintuitive, we tend to add to our calendars commitments that are like the things that we're saying yes to, that other people are bringing to us.
[00:34:34] Right?
[00:34:35] Speaker 3: Right. But
[00:34:35] Joel: what we forget is that we have this whole life that's all of ours. That we want to do, you know, and like people are making claims on that time all the time, but we need to be ready to defend that time by saying, no, that's already spoken for, and the way that it's spoken for are the things that I want to do.
[00:34:51] Yeah, so the things that really belong on your calendar, frankly, first of all, are the stuff that you want to do.
[00:34:56] Marissa: It's uncomfortable for a lot of people to say to somebody to turn somebody down. To say, no, I'm not able to do that. I have another commitment. Right. And it's like, well, if it's not a commitment to somebody else, somehow it doesn't matter.
[00:35:08] Right? And that couldn't be further from the truth. I would argue that the commitments that we have to ourselves are our most critical commitments.
[00:35:16] Joel: Totally. And
[00:35:16] Marissa: so when you say that to somebody of, Hey, I'm not able to do that at that time, or I'm not able to do that period because I have another commitment.
[00:35:23] Say it with confidence. Right. And if you really are. Making that clear on your calendar, what your commitments are to yourself and to your personal life first before it gets piled on with everybody else's request. How much better are you gonna be on the other side of that than if you're just in reaction mode going from one thing to the next of what other people are asking for, other people are dictating for your life.
[00:35:50] Joel: Yeah. You mentioned the weekly preview just a second ago, and I think this is another like little area where we can get real traction. Every week in the weekly preview, we talk about our wins from the prior week, and I think it's really easy to just default to work wins.
[00:36:04] Marissa: Yeah, totally. But
[00:36:05] Joel: so much of our life is not work.
[00:36:06] Yes. So we should be like capturing wins that are happening outside of work.
[00:36:10] Marissa: Yeah. So I lead these coaching calls every single week for our double win coaching clients, where I walk them through the weekly preview process and I always ask them, or often ask them. To share their weekly wins in the comments so we can celebrate together.
[00:36:26] What has been awesome in the last week, and it's like nine times outta 10, people are only sharing about their work life, and I'm always stretching them guys, we've got to talk about our personal lives too, like what happened in all of that other space on your calendar. In your your days, that went well.
[00:36:46] That felt like a win. And it can be something really small. This doesn't have to be huge, but to the point of we want to focus on those, to have that sense of abundance, of gratitude, then we've gotta make sure that's. Encompassing of both artwork and our regular life.
[00:37:05] Joel: Yeah, totally. Let's talk about one kind of tool that can help with all of this.
[00:37:11] The ideal week. Yeah, it, you know, it's like it gives you a visual map to balance, to use that slightly underwhelming word to balance these different things. Not only. Home life, work life, all of it. And then just anything else, frankly, why don't you tell us a little bit more about how the ideal week works?
[00:37:30] Marissa: Yeah. I love this, especially as we're talking about creating the double win, getting more of this sense of flourishing in our daily life, because it allows you, similar to how a budget is, where you're spending your. Money on paper first. This allows you to spend your time on paper first. Mm-hmm.
[00:37:49] So
[00:37:50] the big idea here is that you would create this about once a quarter, or you edit it and adjust it about once a quarter.
[00:37:55] And we find that that's usually enough for most people because. You know, outside of every few months or every season, our lives don't change dramatically. However, obviously if you're going through a big life transition, go for it. You know, good time, readjust your, uh, your ideal week. But typically, you know, once a quarter is all that's needed.
[00:38:15] And you can think about these big questions of how do I wanna incorporate these six practices? So for me, you know, what that looks like literally on my ideal week is I have a time blocked off on the weekend to go on a hike. Mm-hmm. It's one of my favorite practices. I usually bring a friend with me, and so that's on my ideal week.
[00:38:34] In my ideal, perfect scenario, I wanna be going on one hike a week. Assuming the weather allows, and that's such a great way to incorporate a lot of those six practices as we talked about, but you're, you're essentially putting in those priorities first and then you're reverse engineering your actual calendar to accommodate or to mirror your ideal week as much as possible.
[00:38:57] Joel: Yeah. So it's like. What we were saying a minute ago about scheduling the things that really matter to you. This is one of the ways that you can do it. And this tool is right there in your full focus planner. We'll put a link to the template in the show notes so you can access this yourself, um, if you don't have a full focus planner, but it's just a simple.
[00:39:16] Tool that enables you to like carve out the time for the things that matter to you to make sure that it's not just like a, a hole in the week that gets filled with whatever
[00:39:26] Marissa: we've heard from clients for years, how transformational this is. And my biggest tip, and if you guys have listened to previous episodes about this, you've probably heard it, but I wanna encourage you once you have that.
[00:39:38] Kind of paper version, transfer that over into your actual electronic calendar. Mm-hmm. So if you use Google Calendar, I cal, or whatever, transfer it over there. As a new calendar so you can toggle that on and off. And when people come in with requests or you're trying to plan your week, you can use that as kind of your compass as your guiding north star of where you're trying to go.
[00:40:01] And just remember, this is ideal. It's not gonna happen 10 outta 10 times that you nail it. It may not even happen five outta 10 times that you nail it, but the point isn't perfection. The point is really we're making progress towards that ideal.
[00:40:16] Joel: I'd like to go ahead and just encourage everyone listening.
[00:40:19] The double win is not theory. It's not aspirational, purely it's practice. It's something you like you can actually do. Mm-hmm. And it's not an ideal to strive for in a sense. You don't need to strive for it. You just need to start doing the small things that will get you there. And. These practices are part of that.
[00:40:38] The truth is they come with some pretty simple rhythms that you can excel at without exhausting yourself. There's no need to do that. You just kind of get going. Get started, you know, as we said on the last episode, the prior episode, GK Ches. Instead, if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Like set the bar low and just get going.
[00:40:57] Marissa: Yeah, and over time you'll be amazed by how much more progress you make towards this and how much you realize yourself flourishing. If you just ask yourself that question of how can I flourish today? Or what are these six practices can I incorporate into my day? I mean, give it a few weeks and you'll be shocked at how much progress you've actually made.
[00:41:16] Yeah.
[00:41:21] Thanks for joining us on Focus On This,
[00:41:24] Joel: the Most productive podcast on the internet. Please share it with your friends and be sure to subscribe and join us at Focus on this podcast.com so you can join the conversation
[00:41:34] Marissa: and we'll be here next week where we're gonna be talking about. The best daily practice that will ensure your sanity in any crazy season.
[00:41:45] Joel: Until then, stay focused. Stay focused.