Temporary Imbalance.

The bestselling author M.J. DeMarco - who built and sold limos.com twice - makes a great point in his most recent book about the power of imbalance.

The trend most people are following is one of balance - or at least, an attempt at balance between working and "relaxing". We - myself included - constantly use the excuse of balance as to why we're not pushing ourselves as hard as we could.

There's no doubt that balance is important - Ryan Holiday's book, Stillness is the key, is littered with examples of great people in history who wouldn't have achieved what they did without taking time for rest and leisure.

However, each and everyone one of them just as equally had periods of imbalance - short bursts where other things were put to the side temporarily so they could crush the task at hand.

We need to be more open to these periods of imbalance - and constantly questioning whether we are actually achieving balance (or just using a false sense of balance as an excuse for procrastinating).

Pick your Role Models.

More often than not, the people considered great in history are quickly torn apart by the modern audience - who view them not as products of their time, but instead judge them against the standards of our time (as if our descendants won't do the same.)

Because of this, it can be easy to believe that we can learn nothing from those that came before us. Not only is this belief deeply flawed (the fact that those who attack the figures are usually tempered with equally egregious flaws is often ignored), it also prevents us from learning from thousands of years of recorded Human History.

History is littered with great people to be your Role Models - because the principles of their actions stand out so much more clearly. The trick to treating them as role models is to choose what it is about them you want to emulate.

Take Jack London for example, author of The Call of the Wild, among other classics. London was deeply flawed - he was a philandering alcoholic at the best of times. However, London was also deeply driven and extremely disciplined (for example, when struck out with sun stroke so bad that he could neither eat or sit up, he still managed to get in the 2000 words of writing he assigned himself daily - long after he was a successful author).

Dig through history - or even our current world - and pick your models. Focus on the things you can learn from them - what to emulate and what to avoid.

Default to Alive Time.

Robert Greene has a concept made famous in recent years: Alive Time vs Dead Time.

Alive Time is when we're learning, growing, testing ourselves, and being purposeful with our actions - being active. Dead time is where we're "killing time", simply waiting for events to occur or for some passage of time to just be over - being passive.

We all have the ability to turn dead time into alive time - no matter the circumstances, we can gain something from them, even if just a chance to develop into the person we want to become (more patient, more diligent, more strategic, etc.)

The problem is, while most of us are aware of this dynamic of alive time vs dead time (even if we don't call it that), we default to Dead Time. It's the source of our regrets and the root behind why every year seems to fly by without any change.

There's a line from Jack London that fits perfectly here, "We only live once, and we'll be dead a long time; so why not get the best out of life?" - this provides a better lens, albeit more morbid, for the dynamic. We quite literally spend nearly all of eternity in "Dead Time" - we get only the most minuscule sliver of "Alive Time", so we need to make the best of it.

Keep the dynamic in mind with all of your actions - ask yourself, am I making creating Alive Time or wasting away my life in Dead Time?

(To be abundantly clear, I'm not advocating against rest and leisure - instead, against the wasting of time. Be purposeful with the only finite resource we have, and the only possession we ever truly own.)

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As always, thank you immensely for reading. Please let me know any thoughts you may have.

To end this week, here's another oddly-fitting piece from Jack London (who packed more into his forty years than most people could in ten lifetimes):

I would rather be ashes than dust.

I would rather my sparks burn out in a brilliant blaze

than it would be stifled by dry-rot.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in

magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The proper function of a man is to live - not to exist.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

- "Credo"