Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork by Michael Hyatt

Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork Reviews

• 
  Nicholas Kotar

  Honestly? There is very little new stuff here. I've been listening to the podcast for ages and reading everything the Hyatts come up with. I'm a full focus planner evangelist. But this? This is a tidy, tiny summary, but I was hoping for something new. And after reading far more interesting and challenging books on this topic, like Cal Newport's amazing "A World Without Email," this sort of happy clappy self help is starting to sour a bit.
• 
  Megan

  Reading this book once isn’t enough. While it was written for the corporate “knowledge worker,” it equally applies to those of us in education. We so often give in to the guilt of “best for the kids” and take on far more than can be done in a day. The Hyatts’ sage guidance makes me step back and think about what is “best” versus what is “nice” or “better,” along with reminding me that I need to do what is best for my own children too.
  
  I strongly recommend this book to teachers coming out of the hardest school year in education ever as it provides concrete ideas for establishing boundaries, reasonable expectations, and the overall “self-care” preached to teachers this year (while piling on more work 😅). I needed this book at this point in my life ♥️
• 
  Darryl Burling

  Very helpful guide to balancing life and prioritising effectively
  
  If you’ve been struggling with the overwhelming demands of work and family or you’ve never had a role model for how to structure your work life and seperate it from your home life, I recommend this book. It not only helps with home and work balance but also helps prioritise all the other little necessary things we often neglect (like exercise, friendships, hobbies, etc). There is a lot to absorb and implement but I’m looking forward to implementing it for me and anyone who works for me.
• 
  Rachelle Cobb

  I enjoy Michael Hyatt’s blog and his other books I’ve read, and I listen to most of his and Megan’s podcast episodes, but this book was more principle than practical for me.
• 
  Dave Reads

  It always strikes me as odd when people brag about how overworked and busy they are at work and at home. It is almost like their accomplishments don't count as much as being able to talk about their stress level. The same applies to those who complain about how many hours they work and how little sleep they get. They don't want to fix it. Instead, they brag about it.
  
  "Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork" is just the opposite. It is a manual that prescribes a work-life balance. Leadership author and consultant Michael Hyatt and his daughter, Megan Hyatt Miller, who runs her father's company share personal stories and advice that show how you don't have to choose between professional successes and being present for your family to enjoy a personal life.
  
  They call their ideal work-life balance the "double win." Both Hyatts share personal stories where they faced challenges maintaining the double win. Michael admits that early in his career, professional success came at a cost to his relationship with his wife and children. Megan shares the challenges of being a parent of five children while working as CEO of a successful company.
  
  The book details these fundamental principles:
  
  - Work is only one of many ways to orient your life.
  - Constraints foster productivity, creativity, and freedom.
  - Work-life balance is truly possible.
  - There's incredible power in nonachievement
  - Rest is the foundation of meaningful, productive work.
  
  "Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork" is full of practical advice for those who struggle with this balance and a good reminder for the rest of us.
  
• 
  Sam Wilkinson

  I'm a regular Lead to Win podcast listener and have read a couple of Michael's other books... this, to me, didn't add anything extra, it wasn't bad, just not for me
• 
  Chris Wejr

  motivating!
  
  I can’t say there were a ton of ideas I had not read or heard before (including from Hyatt’s podcast)… BUT they were framed in this book in such a way that it made me realize I CAN make changes to my life so life-balance moves from a myth to a reality. A very manageable read with some important ideas that can change our lives. I really appreciated reading the personal stories because if the authors can do this with their intense high profile roles, i can too. Looking forward to making my personal life and health more of a priority!
• 
  Bruce Crown

  1.7
  
  Unfortunately, this book is nothing new and makes some peculiar leaps in logic.
  
  One argument is that our personal relationships suffer because "work is addictive" and we are slaves to "hustle culture." This in turn leads us to fall into the "hustle fallacy:" that working harder means being more successful. While "hustle culture" is nonsensical in it of itself, born out of a greedy neoliberal culture where the only valuable status is money. Yet this books never talks about the root of this problem: capitalism and greed. It talks about long hours worked, and "burnout" and creativity, but never scratches the surface of the reasons behind those things. Burnout for example, isn't because people love to work hard and love the structure provided to them by their bosses rather than the complex and convoluted relationships in their personal lives (an actual argument made), burnout is because most companies and workplaces abide by a neoconservative and neoliberal logic where productivity and growth must be infinite, so you are not only trying to outdo everyone else at the office — a toxic competitive spirit fostered in these systems — but also trying to outdo yourself last week, yesterday, last year, etc. The book does not mention any of this.
  
  It talks about how a good work-life balance is needed for fulfillment and how getting a good amount of sleep means you can be more productive, but again, it refuses to discuss the reasons behind those statistics. Some people cannot sleep because of the stresses of those infinite growth models, or because they are simply forced to work long hours as slaves in a capitalist cog. It is very obvious that the writers are upper-middle class and have jobs in middle-management where they get by while doing the minimum amount of work, regardless of their nonsensical argument for a "work-life balance" for everyone. It's like telling a homeless man to "get a job." They tout a good night's sleep and a work-life balance as if it never occurred to any of these mindless drones working for these companies. The writers break their spines bending over backwards to make sure they never badmouth a company's toxic work environment or culture.
  
  All in all, no new information is contained within these pages. Very obvious information that is born out of privilege and is quite tone-deaf to the global neoliberal order — and especially the way the American workplace is set up. It's set up for burnout because the labour force is perpetually expendable.
  
  I'd skip this one unless you enjoy being frustrated, or you're a middle management bureaucrat who has the freedom to say "lol I won't answer emails after 4:30PM, deal with it, I have a date!"
  
  Other books I will recommend on this topic where you will actually learn something:
  •
  The Burnout Society
  • 
  Liberalism: A Counter-History
  •
  Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
  •
  Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
• 
  Theodene

  Are you someone who’s trying to climb that corporate ladder? Is starting work before anyone else and going home after everyone else leaves sound like success or winning at work? Are you spending more time focused on work than with your loved ones? When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep? These questions and many more are answered in Win at Work and Succeed at Life by Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller.
  
  This brief summary of how people destroy their own lives because they are more focused on that promotion at work than their own child’s ball game or dance recital. Find yourself engrossed in the stories because they are so very relevant to your own life! Is it really worth the trouble? Are we really winning in the end or are we finding ourselves troubled everywhere else?
  
  I love that readers find themselves agreeing that having boundaries in life is important. Schedule time with your family and don’t allow work to interfere with that precious family time! Make sure your coworkers, staff, and clients are aware that you only do work during certain hours. Anything outside of that time is for your family. Your physical presence at your sons baseball game while taking phone calls and answering work emails does not equal watching him play without interruption. Your child sees this!
  
  One analogy I enjoyed was about water. When it has boundaries of a glass or tumbler to hold the water, it is confined to that space. But when it’s open like the ocean or river without boundaries, you could get rushed down river in a flood or even drown! It’s a symbolism that means so much to me because I’ve been there. I’ve been at that corporate job trying to be the best, spending all my time at work, and literally having no social life whatsoever. It was miserable and I don’t wish that on anyone.
  
  Thankful to read Win at Work and Succeed at Life by Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller via NetGalley and Baker Books. I give this book 5 out of 5 tiaras because it was a learning and growing experience throughout the book! I recommend it to anyone who is trying to get ahead at work and in life!
• 
  Andrew Choflet

  We all want to achieve more by doing less, but say you do find a way to "work smarter." Does it lead you to a place you hoped to be?
  
  Or are you like me and just get rewarded with more work instead? The achievement treadmill is fun for a workout, but not a lifestyle.
  
  Michael Hyatt & Megan Hyatt Miller propose a way off, without sacrificing our ambition or family. It just requires us to reexamine our destination, and they give the tools to make this happen.
  
  I never considered myself a workaholic, but this book gave me a new frame for how I actually engage in my work. The biggest thing for me, is the exploration of "why I'm do driven" in the first place.
  
  I consider myself "always on," and do love my work, but never considered the cost of how a "full-time hobby" can hurt other people.
  
  Definitely would recommend if you:
  ✅ Don't believe in work/ life balance
  ✅ Would like to believe it's possible for you, but don't want to sacrifice your values or results along the way
  ✅ Often influence other people's schedules
  ✅ Find yourself spending the majority of your week in a single domain of life
  
  
  📚 I left
  a more detailed review on my blog as I processed the content for myself.
  If you're a high-achieving leader seeing stacked fulfillment, you'll definitely enjoy it as well.
• 
  Josh Kingcade

  Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller have become some of my most trusted leadership and productivity resources in the past two years. Their latest book, Win at Work and Succeed at Life, is perhaps their best yet. The book lays out several broad principles for achieving what they call the “double win,” which is winning at work and home.
  
  Rejecting the false dichotomy of the hustle fallacy (work 100 hours a week and neglect your family to get ahead) and the ambition brake (put your career and goals on hold in order to best serve your family), Michael and Megan remind us of important principles like setting constraints on your work time instead of allowing to consume our evenings and weekends, getting adequate sleep, and giving equal attention to all domains of our life, even if we are not giving equal time. I really enjoyed reading about the Stanford study that found working overtime didn’t really help people’s careers. Once you hit about 40 hours, the payoff for additional hours really decreases.
  
  This book is great for people who are working full-time and trying to balance family life or people who wish to advance their career without sacrificing their family. I’m grateful for authors who realize the importance of these two important areas.
• 
  Kathleen Engel

  For far too many years, I bought into the doctrine that the more I hustled, the harder I worked, the more I focused on my career, the more success I would achieve and the happier I would be. Always the first one in the office and the last one to leave, I pushed myself to attain that feeling inside that "I'd done it!" In the process, all too often, I chose work over family and self. I sacrificed sleep to keep all the balls in the air -- house, career, family, further education. And it worked -- until it didn't.
  
  As I rejoin the corporate world after stepping away for a few years, Win at Work and Succeed at Life couldn't have hit the shelves with better timing. Within its pages, the Father-Daughter team, Hyatt and Miller, provide a workable and achievable alternative to approaching work and life. They call this the "Double Win." The key takeaway from this book is that while you can never do everything, you can do everything that matters if you make it a priority. Each of the 5 principles explained within the book is followed up with actionable takeaways you can implement right away to gain margin in your day for what matters most to you.
• 
  Joshua

  Starting with stark personal stories of the negative impact of overwork, Michael and Megan then outline the positive benefits of pursuing achievement and success in all areas of life, not just work, and finally show how to achieve this "double win".
  
  I appreciated the way the authors make it clear that "work/life balance" doesn't mean "work" or "life". By reframing that entire idea they show how it's not "either/or", one or the other - they show that if anything, to be truly at the top of your game at work, you must also be winning outside of work (and vice-versa). That concept has already changed how I speak with the team members I manage - making it clear to them that I don't just want to talk about "work/life balance", I want to understand what they need to truly feel like they are winning at work while also succeeding at life.
  
  As a business owner, I can already see how helping our entire team achieve this double win will not only make our employees lives better, it will also help us have a more engaged, productive workforce.
• 
  Holly

  Michael Hyatt has been preaching the message that you can be successful at work without sacrificing a personal life. If you've read his other books or listened to his podcast you've heard the message.
  
  In his newest book he pulls together many of his long held principles in this powerful book about the Double Win.
  I've listened to Hyatt for years, I've been carrying the Full Focus Planner since it's first release, so a lot of what I read in this book wasn't new.
  
  What was new and impactful was to hear from Megan Hyatt Miller who recently took over the reigns as CEO of Michael Hyatt Company. She brings to light many of the challenges women in the C-level face today and addresses the challenges head on.
  
  I appreciated her insights and her voice throughout the book. Whether a man or woman dealing with the challenges of senior leadership you will be encouraged and receive great ideas on how to beat the hustle fallacy.
  
  This is a quick read and definitely worth taking the time to read it and look for ways to apply the ideas and advice offered in this book.
• 
  Sharon

  4.75 stars
  This is one book that is definitely needed in the current climate and as someone who has had more than one job during various periods of my life, I wish I had read it earlier. It makes the case for not having to sacrifice one part of your life over another. It is a workable manual for learning how to achieve a work/life balance that will have you feeling accomplished as opposed to drained and overwhelmed. Michael Hyatt and his daughter Megan Hyatt Miller offer five principles that demonstrate, through a variety of personal illustrations and those of others, how to have the “double win” of succeeding at work and life. The principles are practical and serve as a reminder for those who struggle in this area. If you are having challenges finding that balance between work and life, then this is the book for you as it will give you the necessary tools to make those changes towards a more fulfilling, well rounded life.
  
• 
  Michael Essenburg

  Through heartfelt stories and key insights, Michael and Megan share how you can actually win at work and succeed at life. You can get things done at work while maintaining good health, solid relationships, and positive well being—right now. How? By recognizing that constraints actually foster productivity (so leave the office on time), by realizing the power of letting your mind wander (that's often when I get my best ideas), and by getting enough sleep (I do better when I'm well rested).
  
  The Hyatts note, "When work becomes the primary orientation for life, the rest of life gets left behind." I really relate with this. I'm moving from meaningful working being my orientation for life toward having a meaningful life with multiple orientations—work, family, exercise, church, hobbies, and more. Really helpful stuff.
• 
  Olivia Simmonds

  5 simple principles to help over workers cut back their working hours and prioritise what's important. This book is aimed at overachievers who place all their worth on how much success they are having at work. Although I am not a CEO or an executive team member I still feel the principles could apply to any corporate worker. I think the principles chosen were effective as they all focused on personal change. You have to make changes to build a work/life balance, creating your boundaries is so important in work. Letting other people think you are available for work 24/7 isn't healthy for anyone. I liked that this book mentioned hustle culture and how it can be counterproductive in both your work and personal life. The limitations of this book were 1) some religious material was used nearer the end and 2) the content was highly geared toward the American audience.
• 
  Andrew Binkley

  Win at Work & Succeed at Life shares the power of the "Double Win." A concept that strives to win in every area of life, primarily by saying goodbye to the "cult of overwork." It is full of information I have personally heard before and subconsciously filed away for future application. Michael and Megan did something others could not: They inspired me to make concrete changes to my work/life balance.
  
  The concept of "the cult of overwork" was a vivid and accurate image of the imbalance we all battle on a daily basis. This book will inspire you to re-evaluate your priorities and reject overworking for a healthier balance including rest and relationships. In the end, you will find yourself more productive, efficient, and HAPPY than ever before.