Episode 348 · Mar 5, 2021

Work Hard, Play Hard: How to Maximize Every Area of Your Life

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George Wright III opens this episode of The Daily Mastermind with a challenge to every entrepreneur and high-achiever listening: stop chasing balance and start maximizing. The conventional idea of balance implies an even split between competing priorities, but that framing often leads to frustration. George's approach is more energizing, and more honest about how a driven life actually works.

Using insights from his own experience traveling for work and then returning home to focus on family, George walks through why recovery is not a luxury, how to use your calendar as a tool for the whole life you want to build, and why playing hard is every bit as important as working hard.

Why Balance Is the Wrong Goal

Balance sounds good in theory, but it can become a trap. If you are always trying to achieve a perfectly even distribution of time and energy across every area of your life, you will constantly feel like you are falling short. George reframes the goal entirely: instead of balance, pursue maximization.

"Balance is not something that I ever try to achieve right now because there's a season for everything. And sometimes it's time to just grind and work. And sometimes you've got to buckle down and focus on your family and relationships."

Every area of life matters. The goal is not to split everything equally but to give each area what it needs, when it needs it. There are seasons for deep work and seasons for deep presence with the people you love. Recognizing which season you are in and committing to it fully is where maximization begins.

The CPR Framework: A Blueprint for Your Time

George shares a time-planning method from his partner Robert built around the acronym CPR: Concentration, Preparation, and Recovery. Each letter represents a category of time you need to protect in your schedule.

Concentration covers focused, strategic thinking and deep work.
Preparation covers action, activity, and execution.
Recovery covers rest, renewal, and attention to the areas of life outside work.

When all three are present in your weekly rhythm, you operate at a higher level across every domain. When recovery disappears, everything eventually suffers.

Why Recovery Is Non-Negotiable

Entrepreneurs tend to wear constant output as a badge of honor. George pushes back on that with a straightforward comparison: professional athletes perform at peak intensity only during game time. The rest of their schedule is built around preparation and recovery, including therapy, naps, and intentional rest.

"We are constantly at our A-game. And so if you don't take time to recover and rest and work on other areas of your life, you're going to get burned out."

LeBron James, for example, structures his schedule to include naps and downtime specifically so he can deliver 100 percent in the moments that require it. If one of the most elite athletes in history prioritizes recovery, the argument for skipping it as a business owner or entrepreneur is hard to make. Rest is not weakness; it is strategy.

How to Play Hard (And Actually Mean It)

Working hard is a skill most high-achievers have dialed in. Playing hard takes more deliberate effort. George is candid that even after traveling the world and having extraordinary experiences, he has often failed to fully enjoy them because his mind kept running through his to-do list.

The shift he recommends is presence, anchored in emotion. When you are spending time outside of work, commit to being there fully. One practical method: treat the moment as a memory you are actively creating. When you tie an experience to a genuine emotional response, you lock it in. Those anchored memories are the ones that last and the ones that provide the kind of fulfillment that no revenue milestone can replicate.

"When you anchor the moment in with your emotions, that's why most of us can remember things that are in our past. Because if we anchored some type of emotion, both positive or negative, they're the strongest memories that we have."

Strategies for Building the Life You Want

George offers two concrete tools for making this real rather than aspirational.

First, use your calendar for everything that matters, not just business. If you are successful enough to run a full schedule for work, you can block time for fitness, family dinners, date nights, and personal rituals. Treating those commitments with the same respect you give a client meeting changes how seriously you take them.

Second, plan 90 days at a time and work backwards from holidays and special occasions. Print out a 90-day calendar. Mark the holidays, the birthdays, the major events. Then schedule two to four meaningful moments per month before filling in the day-to-day work. That sequence keeps the important things from getting squeezed out by whatever is urgent on any given week.

Action Steps

Shift your goal from balance to maximization: ask yourself what each area of your life needs right now, and give it that.
Add Concentration, Preparation, and Recovery blocks to your weekly calendar as non-negotiable categories.
Print a 90-day calendar and book personal and family commitments before filling in your work schedule.
When you are outside of work mode, practice anchoring the moment: name what you feel, engage fully, and treat it as a memory worth keeping.
Schedule at least two to four intentional moments each month for the relationships and experiences that fuel your energy and fulfillment.

Your work is important, and so is everything else. The real reward for building a disciplined, intentional life is not just revenue; it is peace of mind, fulfillment, and memories that go with you. As George puts it, if you are trying to create your best life, you have to consciously work on creating moments, not just results. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. For those of you just joining us for the first time, I'm glad you're here. I hope there's something we can do today just to give you some ideas to spark your creativity and your success. So today I want to talk to you about balance. I don't know if that's something you ever think about as entrepreneurs or people with busy lives. I think we think about that a lot. But let's start with the quote of the day from the Daily Mastermind mobile app. The quote of the day is by Frank Capra. And it is, a hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. And I think as your confidence and your motivation go up in the marketplace right now, you'll start to listen to your hunches a little bit more and realize that it really is ideas that you know you have inside you that you can create some things with. And most of us have everything we need to be able to create our best life. We just need to listen to it a little bit more often, that inner voice. So let's talk a little bit about balance. Now, balance is kind of a bad term. I'm not really excited about the idea of balance, but I think a better way to look at it is that you need to maximize every area of your life. And so, you know, balance is not something that I ever try to achieve right now because there's a season for everything. And sometimes it's time to just grind and work. And sometimes you've got to buckle down and focus on your family and relationships. All of them are important and all of them are ones you should be working on. But don't get caught up in balance. Get caught up in trying to maximize the areas of your life. So I've been out in LA, out in California for several weeks now. And a lot of things have been going on, but I'm back home. And so what I'm planning on doing for the next few days is nothing but creating memories, relaxing, focusing on, I shouldn't say relaxing because I have so many things to do with my kids and family and friends. But I'm going to shift my focus. And my focus is going to be on those relationships, on creating memories, on doing things that will bring value because time is not necessarily the solution for these other areas of your life. It's quality. You've got to find quality. But you've got to find the time and you've got to create quality inside that. So there's a couple of thoughts I wanted to talk to you about The first is this concept that my partner Robert always talks about And he talks about his time planning method as CPR which I think is a great acronym for your life and for when you put your time into certain things And CPR is an acronym the letter C, the letter P, and the letter R for concentration, preparation, and recovery. And I'm not going to get into a lot of the details on that, but just know this, every part of your life, and especially in your schedule, you need to have times for concentration and strategy, times for preparation, action, activity, as well as recovery. And so those are the things that I really want you to think about. I want you to think about when you plan, and we'll talk about this on another podcast, but when you plan time for recovery, when you plan time for preparation, and when you plan time for concentration or focusing on the tasks at hand. And I talk a lot about the idea and need for recovery because even professional athletes, if you think about as a corporate or business or entrepreneur, you spend so much time in the moment delivering content, delivering services to the marketplace. And even professional athletes need recovery. If you think about the amount of time that a professional athlete is out there performing his main task or her main task, it's during game time. But game time is not 24-7. And here we are as entrepreneurs and corporate or business or individuals, and we are constantly at our A-game. We're constantly at our A-game. And so if you don't take time to recover and rest and work on other areas of your life, you're going to get burned out. We certainly wouldn't expect professional athletes to focus like they do in games 24-7 and not have time to recover, rest, get therapy, and things like that. I was listening to a, on the Calm Meditation app that I talk to you about that I use often, there's a section done by LeBron James and he talks about his schedule incorporates naps. It incorporates taking some downtime to rest and recover so that he can focus 100% in the moments when he needs to focus 100%. And I think that's very important. I think that's something that we need to remember is that you need to also, in addition to grinding and working and focusing on creating a life, you've got to find time to recover. You have to find time to give your body your mind your spirit your relationships everything the time that it needs as well And so that brings me kind of to the topic today And that is that I definitely like to work hard but I try my best to play hard as well. And that's not an easy thing for me. I've definitely, I mean, I've traveled the world. I've had some of the best experiences out there. And many, many times I don't take the time to enjoy those experiences. It's a really difficult thing when you have your mind going a million miles an hour and you have a lot of stuff on your plate, you don't want to necessarily focus. But the key is this, you have to create that recovery time and you have to give just as much as you do in your business and your professional life to your personal life and to your physical life and to your relationships. And one of the key, because listen, the reward of doing that is going to be peace of mind. It's different than when you're focused in business on a reward that's a monetary reward. The rewards that you get in your mind, body, spirit, relationships, and family and things like that are going to be peace of mind. They're going to be fulfillment. They're going to be happiness. And so I would encourage you to play just as hard. And to do that, you've got to stay present in the moment. When you are doing something that's outside your business, don't be thinking about your business. When you're doing something outside that's with your family, focus on your family. And a way to do that is to try to create memories. When you're present in the moment and you ground that moment in emotion and in the experience that you're experiencing, what works for me is creating a memory, creating a moment. And that's a way to really engage your emotions and anchor. Because when you anchor the moment in with your emotions, that's why most of us can remember things that are in our past. Because if we anchored some type of emotion, both positive or negative, they're the strongest memories that we have. So try to do your best to anchor in the moment what you're doing, how you're playing, what kind of fun you're having. And I feel like there's a couple strategies I use in order to create more depth in other areas of my life because I'm so focused on business success and relationships in the business sense. For family, which I prioritize greatly, and for relationships like that, I use my calendar. because there's nothing wrong with scheduling and planning out the time you spend with people that are important to you, the time you spend for your fitness, the time you spend for your daily rituals, for your personal growth You got to use your calendar and plan that out And so that a great tool because if you are a successful entrepreneur you going to have a calendar and you going to plan your time So why not block out that time for you, block out that time for others, block out that time for having some fun. Like for example, I have twins that their birthday is yesterday and I'm back from LA. And so we're going to block out some time. We'll have pizza, we'll have dinner. I'll probably schedule, being in California, there's no movie theaters or restaurants or anything that you can eat at. So we'll probably block out a theater. They allow you to do private screenings out here in Utah, where you can block out a whole theater for just up to 20 people and go enjoy a good new release movie. And so that's probably something we'll do that'll create a moment, a memory. It'll be fun. We'll have a little environment to be able to hang out, everybody together. And that's something we'll do there. Other things you can do is plan a night of the week that you're going to have either whether it's for you, whether it's for your family, whether it's for dating, whether it's for, and when I say dating, I mean dating your partner, your spouse, or even if you're single. So find time. And another suggestion I have is you can go from holidays and work backwards. Plan, I recommend 90 days at a time. I always print out a calendar in addition to my planner of 90 days so that I can book the holidays, book the times with family, book the times for major meetings and then backfill my day-to-day schedule. So if you start with holidays, start with special occasions, create two or three or four really cool moments each month and then back into your day, that'll help you a lot. So these are just ideas that I have. These are ideas that I have in my life I want to share with you as well is that you got to work really hard but you've got to play hard. You've got to maximize the other areas of your life and I mean for you personally, for your business but also for your family, your relationships and creating a life because if a life is if you're trying to create your best life, you've got to consciously work on creating memories and moments and things that you can draw back on and not just the learning lessons of your business, but the anchoring moments of your emotions and memories that you'll be able to take with you for the rest of your life. So that's my suggestions for you. Don't forget, obviously you can work hard, you can create a lot of success, but you've got to maximize the other areas of your life and you have to play just as hard. And so I encourage you to do that. I encourage you to create some awesome moments. Tell me what you do for fun. Tell me what you do to create those moments in your life. And I look forward to hearing from you. Once again, this is George Wright III. This has been The Daily Mastermind. I look forward to talking with you more on Monday.