Quick Win: How to prioritise when everything feels important

Work-life balance. We’ve all heard the phrase — but how do you actually achieve it? And more importantly, is it even possible when it feels like everything’s urgent and important? 

It sounds simple: prioritise your tasks and sort them out. But the real challenge lies in knowing what truly matters. In the whirlwind of competing demands from work, family, and life, how do you decide what gets your time and attention?   

In this Quick Win episode, I revisit a powerful conversation with Ariel Garten, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and founder of Muse — to unpack her refreshingly honest approach to prioritisation in the face of constant demands. 

Ariel and I discuss: 

• How Ariel approaches prioritisation from both a big-picture (annual/quarterly) and micro (daily) perspective 

• Why value-based decisions matter when you’re torn between business, family, and personal needs 

• The relief of having some decisions made for you, and accepting the limits of your time and capacity 

• How embracing imperfection and setting boundaries can actually create more meaningful opportunities 

Listen to the full interview with Ariel here. 

 

Connect with Ariel via LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter). Learn more about brain training and mindfulness with Muse and listen to her podcast Untangle. 

Save 15% on the Muse headband when you shop here and use the code HOWIWORK at checkout. 

My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/ 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [e-mail] 

  

Credits: 

Host: Amantha Imber 

Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Work life balance. We've all heard the phrase, but how
do you actually achieve it? And more importantly, is it
even possible? I mean it sounds simple, prioritize your tasks,
both personal and work related, and sort them out easy, right.
But here's the real question, how do you know what

(00:22):
truly matters? I asked none other than Ariel Garten, the
brilliant neuroscientist, to help answer that. Ariel is a powerhouse
in brain tech and the genius behind Muse, the EEG
powered headband that helps even the most distracted minds meditate

(00:42):
and sleep like never before. And when it comes to
mastering mindfulness and balance, Ariel is living it. Welcome to
How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies
for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.

(01:09):
On today's quick Win episode, we go back to an
episode from the past and I pick out a quick
win that you can apply today. To start with, I
wanted to hear Aril's perspective on prioritization, both from a
big picture of you, like over the course of a
year or a quarter, but also looking at it from
a day to day more micro level. Can you tell

(01:34):
me about how you approach prioritization. I find that it
is such a hard thing for so many leaders, and
I'd love to know how do you think about it?
You know? I guess from like a macro view, like
you know, the year or the quarter, and then more
of a micro view in terms of today. How do
I actually distinguish between the thing that's going to shift

(01:57):
the dial and the thing that maybe I feel like
I need to do but it's going to make me
work night shift.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
That's a tough question. So as an organization, we actually
set out an annual plan and we start that process
in October. We do our annual planning, we publish what
we're going to do for the year, and then we
try to keep ourselves to that. And there's obviously going
to be a lot of shifts that happen, and part
of it is response to market demand or a response

(02:24):
to you know, buyer is the most important thing that
we have to deal with. I am actually very bad
at prioritization because I want to do everything, and so
I will often push myself to do more rather than
drop something that I think is important, which can then
lead to a lot of difficulty prioritizing family, the other

(02:45):
things in your life, and so often that prioritization goes
in two places. One is who is the pain customer?
Who is most likely to be the pain customer, and
so we need to serve them. And two is how
is this going to do the most good, the most
good for the organization, the most good for myself, the
most good for my family, the most good for the

(03:07):
customer or the person using the device. And so it
is a question of, you know, what's going to be
financially most rewarding because it's going to allow the sustenance
of the business, and what is also going to achieve
the highest good for these groups of stakeholders. And often
those groups of stakeholders are in conflict with one another.

(03:29):
You know, what's the most good for my family is
not the same as what's the most good for my company.
Obviously they both want my time, and so that's when
it has to really be a value based prioritization.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
It sounds like really tough decisions to make. How have
you found yourself making them, you know, day to day
or in the moment, because I'm imagining that this is
probably a daily reality for you in terms of making
those choices. Around who gets your time.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
So I mean, sometimes you don't even make that decision.
The decision is made for you. The kid comes in
in the middle of your zoom meeting and she really
wants to breastfeed, and like, sorry, it's just what's going
to be happening. Sorry, zoom meeting. You know, sometimes you
just can't. The nanny calls them sick and so sorry,
meetings have to cancel and family gets her time. Sometimes

(04:21):
it almost feels relieving when you don't have to make
the decision. It's made for you. Sometimes you really do
get the luxury of making your own decisions. And it's
a very good question how that decision is really made
day to day. You know, I could give you an
answer like, oh, I do it intuitively, but I think
really what that means is I try to do the

(04:42):
best I can and then stuff is just going to
fall into line and whatever gets done gets done. You know,
we're really imperfect when it comes to managing most aspects
of our humanity. Stuff just happens. Time goes on, people
make choices around you, They impact you. You react in
some way, and we try to put little bit of
guidance towards what we hope will happen along the way.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I appreciate your honesty. It is so hard, you know,
and I think, particularly as a business founder, it's so
easy to feel torn between the business and clients and
then what your family needs. I definitely experience that, you know,
many many times, and I still don't quite know how
to navigate it. I think something I do reflect on,

(05:25):
and I think it helps me procrastinate less, is that
the time that I've got, and typically my work time
is it's in front of a computer, or it's in
front of clients or with my team, and I think
about how do I really make those hours count, particularly
when if I don't make that count, There's going to
be some sort of a trade off that I'm going

(05:45):
to have to make later in the day when you know,
I'm with my daughter. I'm curious, like, if you can
relate to that, or if you've kind of got similar
mental processes or awareness of you know, particularly when your
mind is drifting or you're you know, processing emails in
a way that's not the most productive, what does that
look like for you?

Speaker 2 (06:03):
So I absolutely resonate with this, and even as you
say it, I feel this sense of pressure and I
think what you have to do is recognize that it's
okay to have limitation, and it's okay to only do
so much in a day, and it's okay to only
be able to accomplish so much in a work session,
and then to make your choices accordingly. You know, I

(06:25):
used to want to say yes to everything because everything
brought such amazing opportunity. And now I unfortunately have to
say yes to a lot less things, but I continue
to find that those bring richness an opportunity. Yeah, I'm
not good at saying no to things, and so I
think for me, it's more about what gets my attention
to say yes to it, and honestly, some of it

(06:49):
is just luck.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
I hope you enjoyed this quick win with Ariel. If
you are keen to get your hands on a muse,
Ariel has kindly given listeners of the show fifteen percent off.
Just go to Choose Muse, which is mus e, choose
mus dot com, forward slash how I work, and enter
the code how I work at check out, and those

(07:10):
details are in the show notes. Finally, if you'd like
to listen to the full interview with Aril, you can
find a link to that in the show notes. Also,
if you like today's show, make sure you hit follow
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the Warrangery people, part of the Cooler Nation