How to make work-life balance work | Nigel Marsh

April 1, 2025 admin Productivity & Organization 50

How to make work-life balance work | Nigel Marsh

http://www.ted.com Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. At TEDxSydney, Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity — and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

50 Comments

  2. The most important thing I’ve learned from this:

    ALL companies, even the best ones, are designed to get as much out of us as they can get away with. It’s in their DNA. So it is up to us individuals to know our limits. To know what type of lives we want to have and to protect that from the companies.

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  3. I’m not kidding when I say this but I’m much more productive when unemployed then when I’m working full time that sense of freedom and not having to do specific tasks on someone else’s time so therapeutic that’s the time when I want to contribute and help society the most in a meaningful way not when I’m forced to do certain hours a day at a fixed scope of tasks just to afford a roof over my head

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  7. What’s the whole point of this if including commutes and lunch break I still spend 10 hours away from my house/kid. By the time we get home it’s 5:30 after dinner it’s 6 and then it’s an hour fifteen minutes before we have to start getting ready for bed. So yea really happy to get that one hour a day with my kid. The way the system is I live at work. What kind of a life is that?

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  8. What a speech !!! Simply goes to show how important a family is in a person’s life. Having a job doesn’t mean you abandon your family. It means you become more responsible towards your family in every possible way

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  9. Love this, odd feeling that ive seen him before though. Edit: turns out we’re closely related and ive met him several times i probaly should have known that.

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  13. It’s a great inspiring video.it’s help us for life hacks. Thanks for the video. I’m waiting for your next voice sir.

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  14. It took 11 years and a global pandemic to change society’s definition of success and give birth to the Great Resignation.

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  15. I thought that this was a very informative video. A company will use you in the most ways that they can, but you have to be able to know how to set your limits and care for yourself.

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  17. I decided that l would try and turn my life around in particular l decided l would try to address the thorny issues

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  21. This is absolute perfection. I recently read a similar book, and it was absolute perfection. "Dominating Your Clock: Strategies for Professional and Personal Success" by Anthony Rivers

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  22. This Video never seizes to fade out. He states facts and fundamental problems, especially the moronic notion that "a person with more money wins" that is prevalent in the society.

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  25. Great topic which is getting more and more of importance in todays and future economy. It’s good to realize that we need a better work-life balance, more important is to know how get more time freedom which results in an improved work-life balance. The world is continuously changing.

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  27. Well that talk left me with something useful to consider and implement. I have an idea of where to start . . .

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  28. I got to pretty serious argument with someone recently. I was an CEO talking about work commitments and successes, and climbing the corporate ladder….. after finishing the speech I said ,well I guess it’s easy to follow that advice when you in uour 40 is,not having kids or family!? This kind of Bosses need perspective on what does it mean yo have wife or husband,and kids and than try to be successful at work,while you try to be successful at being husband,wife ,dad,friend,son in law ,uncle…..

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  31. One thing I do not get about old mate in his first book, he takes a year out to train for Bondi-Bronte swim to have more work/life balance, then at the end of book, he doesn’t do swim due to work commitments. Totally defeats purpose of book.

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  33. There is no work life balance if you are married with kids. You are too busy compromising and refereeing fighting kids and acting as chauffer. I am single, have balance because my life is my own.

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  34. He’s right. Gary Vaynerchuk seems to be a rising motivational guru on this new hustle culture 24/7. Now I respect this guy but his advice is to work like a dog. He spent about 14 years from 20 on working fourteen to sixteen hours a day and now is a mega millionaire. My question is this : is that really worth it? This week I am advising something to my subscribers which I call "controlled laziness." Because if you want to increase your assets you can learn to invest well and it isn’t that hard to manage once you have your strategy. But I’m not a fan of the eighty hour work week. For example, I am a contract physical therapist who can make 100K a year. But if I opened a clinic I could probably double that. And have an extra 30 hours a week running a business. They can have that. And that is my point. You can become successful and still become wealthy with smart investing and not sacrifice your life like Gary V does. You have one spin on earth as far as we know. You want to achieve greatness in all your planes–not just on the time clock. Hope this helps someone out there—Charles.

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  35. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗗𝗼 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲?

    The still, vegetative and animate levels of nature are the only ones in a state of balance, because they have no free choice. They make no decisions as to whether they should behave one way or another, but they behave according to their inborn nature.

    We people, however, act according to our decisions that are higher than our inborn nature. We thus use these levels of nature—still, vegetative and animate, which are below our human level—egoistically, bending them however we wish for personal benefit.

    We thus destroy and empty the planet, plant life, animals, and eventually also people, due to the egoistic way we relate to each other and nature.

    The system we live in was set up so that we reach a state of mutual consideration, encouragement and support. That is the key to entering into a state of balance with nature.

    By acting contrarily, with calculations of self-benefit overriding those of benefiting each other and nature, we then knock ourselves out of balance with nature.

    Then, we experience this imbalance as suffering on personal, social and economic scales, and also as ecological blows, whether it be earthquakes, floods, wildfires, pandemics and several other phenomena that we call “natural disasters.”

    The more we head into the future without transforming our attitudes to each other and nature—from egoistic to altruistic—then the more we will experience our tightening interdependence negatively.

    However, if we start relating in a considerate, supportive and encouraging way to each other, then we will see how nature also relates positively to us. Accordingly, we will unlock a new balanced, harmonious and peaceful existence.

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  37. I feel like I have a lot of personal goals — working out, improving various skills outside my work, meditation, and so on. Normally the best way to do this is have a daily routine that I go through everyday, but this is often derailed when my friends invite me to different plans and events etc.

    I find that I’m both very afraid of not achieving success as well as achieving too much success and regretting not enjoying my youth socially. Anyone have any advice or other resources to check out? Ty ppl 🙂

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  38. I’m halfway through your "Fifty" book and thought I’d come and see if you were on youtube, and I enjoyed this talk very much. (Joanne from Sydney)

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  39. Four (4) Observations:
    1. If society’s to make any progress in this issue, we need an honest debate.
    2. We need to face the truth that governments and corporations aren’t going to solve this issue for us.
    3. We have to be careful with the time frame that we choose upon which to judge our balance.
    4. We need to approach balance in a balanced way.

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  41. I have already radically transformed the quality of my relationships away from moronically people due to their sarcastic and criticism

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  43. Less action (towards a more balanced life) might not just be enough, but sometimes even more – tiny things can have a great impact.

    + we don’t need 100% balance in life. Accept and keep a balance between balance and imbalance 😉

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  46. Impressive material! For enthusiasts of this topic, this book is essential. "A Life Unplugged: Reclaiming Reality in a Digital Age" by Theodore Blaze

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  47. i run a cafe for 16 hours a day i feel like i should close it on Monday i am a human i get tired too what do you say…

    Reply

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