Live, Love, Work, Prosper draws upon Michael Tobin’s personal and professional experience to challenge traditional thinking with regards to work-life balance.  Tobin is an entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist and an acknowledged authority on leadership.  This book is a really easy read, which is good as I’ve been reading it whilst the children have swimming and gymnastics lessons and it can get very noisy at the Leisure Centre.  It’s divided into 4 sections Live, Love, Work and Prosper, each section has 3 chapters, this layout makes it really easy to pick up, put down and come back to later. Each chapter ends with a bullet point breakdown of keypoints and a QR code to download bonus video clips. It reminded me of how my book Crafting a Successful Small Business ends with craft activities. It’s nice to have something to break up the content and conclude each section. There are also some great quotes dotted throughout.

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognising and appreciating what we do have.” Friedrich Koenig

Tobin makes some excellent and valid points with regards to how technology has changed the way in which we balance our work and life.  I write a lot of content about working from home, juggling a family and a business especially in the holidays so it was refreshing to read from a man’s perspective.

“Work/life is not a divide. It should be a multiple.” (Tobin, 2018, pp.131)

The term work-life balance suggests that these are two separate and unconnected activities. Which realistically they aren’t.  Tobin highlights how this term was coined for an era that no longer exists. Mobile devices have provided us with the technology to make our working hours our own. The 9-5 is a thing of the past. I spend many a day during the school holidays either at soft play or down by the river with my notebook and pen, mobile phone and to do list, I am quite edapt at balancing the children and a business.  Tobin looks at work/life balance more as a form of integration. Work/life work together complementing each other rather than against each other as separate identities.

Here are some of my favourite points :

According to Tobin there are 3 million home based businesses in the UK contributing £300 billion to the UK economy. Wow! Now how staggering a figure does that seem!

Tobin uses the same example/metaphor a couple of times throughout the book, of not being able to be outstanding in two areas at the same time, he suggests you can’t be a world-class marathon runner and a world-class weightlifter. You simply cannot excel at both these disciplines you would either need to chose one or have a different focus ie. world-class decathlete. It makes so much sense especially when working from home.

“Business depends, utterly and completely, on relationships.” (Tobin, 2018, pp.86) This is one of my key points when it comes to networking because it’s never what you know but WHO you know. Make connections, develop relationships then these people will either do business with you or refer you to other. And with that you get “strong business relationships end up being personal friendships” (Tobin, 2018, pp.174)

I really enjoyed this book it’s not crammed full of jargon, Tobin gets straight to and clearly illustrates all his points.  Laid out in easily defined sections making it easy to pick up at any time.  Thought provoking and a pleasure to read.

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