Eric Barker on his Five-Hour Rule and deliberate work-life imbalance

**Pre-order your copy of Time Wise at amantha.com** It’s the greatest productivity debate of our time: how do we achieve work-life balance? Or maybe the real debate should be: is work-life balance even possible?  Eric Barker, the author of Barking Up the Wrong Tree and now Plays Well With Others, doesn’t think work-life balance is truly achievable. At least, not if you want the best possible results in a given field. The problem, he says, is that most of live an unbalanced life by accident.  Because of the internet and the rapidly increasing pace of everything from the news cycle to the way we socialise, we’re all doing too much of something, and not enough of something else. It’s overwhelming, and we’re constantly playing catchup.  Eric’s solution is to abandon balance, but to do it on purpose. Decide what you want to be really, really good at it, and accept that you won’t be world-class in your other pursuits.  Eric also shares why he sets a five-hour timer at the start of every work day, how he deals with contradictions in his own writing, and how he developed his sense of humour. Connect with Eric on Twitter or Linkedin Pick up a copy of Plays Well With Others *** Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin Twitter Instagram    If you’re looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au CREDITS Produced by Inventium Host: Amantha Imber Production Support from Deadset Studios Episode Producer: Liam Riordan Sound Engineer: Martin Imber