Dan Roam is the author of the international bestseller The Back of the Napkin, the most popular visual-thinking business book of all time. Dan helps business people think and solve problems visually. His newest book, Draw to Win distills ten years of working with business professionals from Microsoft, IBM, The White House, Google, Lucas Films....and a bunch of others.

Build in MicroRest into your day. Begin choosing to pause, for a moment, a second or a few minutes. Stop, come to an idle and catch your breath.

Practical MicroRest habits

Work: Schedule five to fifteen minute meeting blocks on your calendar. Title the meeting “Planning” or “Strategy”. Be proactive by building in moments in your work day that enable you to rest, pause and catch your breath.

Power naps: Take ten to thirty minutes to rest. Turn off your cell phone. Turn on a timer. Put in your headphones and listen to something tranquil. Quiet your mind or fall asleep. Do what’s good for you.

Pause on your block: After work, before walking in the door to your family, pull over on your street and pause. Remind yourself of your love and gratitude for your family. Honor the realities of your day, but transition away from your work day and into your family life.

Stop Multitasking and starting doing one thing at a time. In this episode, I outline how multitasking deters us from experiencing balance. Instead, focusing our energy and attention on one task, conversation, meeting, email, or project at a time increases our productivity.

Why Multitasking doesn't work

Money
Why you should start Singletasking. Multitasking makes us 40% less productive.
Read More

Fast Company
Multitasking rewires our brain and stunts our emotional intelligence.
Read More.

Forbes
Multitasking doesn't work. The truth is we are wasting time. Our brains aren't equipped to Multitask.
Read more

I've found that closing the gap between where I am today and Where I want to be usually isn't accomplished with one magic lever switch or dial adjustment. Instead, it is a series of small adjustments made regularly over time that slowly reconditions our choices and habits to alter our future.

Restoring Balance in our Work, Life, Play, Health and Relationships isn't easy. We individually maintain our own definition of what balance means to us. Start where you are and begin making adjustments to recovering balance. Start by doing one thing at a time-Stop Multitasking.

In this podcast series on Restoring Balance, I deconstructs the art of making adjustments in your approach, your thinking, your beliefs and habits. I share practical easy-to-start tools to restoring balance to your Work, Life, Play, Health and Relationships. Part 1-Changing Your Atmosphere starts with changing how we approach our circumstances by changing our internals.

Andrew Skurka is an accomplished adventure athlete, speaker, guide, and writer. The 34-year-old is most well known for his solo long-distance backpacking trips, notably the 4,700-mile 6-month Alaska-Yukon Expedition, the 6,875-mile 7-month Great Western Loop, and the 7,775-mile 11-month Sea-to-Sea Route.

Andrew spends most of his adventures off trail picking his way through the high mountains. I really enjoyed my time meeting Andrew. I found him to be very kind, humble, relatable and focused.

What's Andrew's #1 piece of advice?

"GO"

Andrew's Media Highlights & Accolades

National Geographic, March 2011. Circling Alaska in 176 Days.

Outside, April 2011. Adventurers of the Year.

National Geographic Adventure, December 2007. Adventurer of the Year.

Backpacker, August 2005. Person of the Year.

Men’s Journal, December 2005. Adventurer Hall of Fame.

Five years ago I started writing a couple articles on a wordpress site to profile my ideas as part of a career change.

Accidentally….Now two-hundred and forty field reports (blog posts) and 86 podcast episodes later on Work Life Play….I can confidently say I’m onto something. This podcast is a milestone marker to this five year journey and the lesson's I've learned.

Thanks for your friendship, your love, your encouragement, your comments, your shares and rooting me forward.

Here’s my summary as best I can articulate it today.

Learn how to restore balance in your life.
Create a life that matters to you.
The narrative we tell ourselves frames our life.
Work can’t be about survival.
Life can’t be entirely about work.
Rethink work.
Live differently.
Capitalize on the small margins of your life, they add up.
Stay curious.
Live adventurously.
Learn to play.
Love the people that you’re with.

Create a life that matters to you.
The narrative we tell ourselves frames our life.
Work can’t be about survival.
Rethink work.
Live differently.
Capitalize on the small margins of your life, they add up.
Stay curious.
Live adventurously.
Learn to play.
Love the people that you’re with.

Five years later, I know I’m onto something.

Quantifiable Proof

Meet Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, co-authors of the Stanford course turned book providing a methodology to Designing Your Life: How to build a well-lived, joyful life. Our conversation provided me a meaningful crescendo to my two hundred and forty field reports here on Work Life Play. This book is new quantifiable proof to my work.

• Everbody gets stuck, start where you are
• Learn how problem solving used in product design can be applied to designing your life
• The idea of Work-Life balance is totally wrong and approaches the problem with a win-lose outcome
• Understand why your life needs a dashboard in five categories: Work, Life, Play, and Health & Love
• Dysfunctional beliefs require Reframed Thinking in order to Design Your Life 
• You're never too late to Design Your Life