We have to be careful with the time frame that we choose upon which to judge our balance. We need to be realistic. You can't do it all in one day. We need to elongate the time frame upon which we judge the balance in our life, but we need to elongate it without falling into the trap of the 'I'll have a life when I retire, when my kids have left home, when my wife has divorced me, my health is failing, I've got no mates or interests left. ‘A day is too short; 'after I retire' is too long. There's got to be a middle way. A fourth observation: we need to approach balance in a balanced way. A friend came to see me last year — and she doesn't mind me telling this story — a friend came to see me last year and said, 'Nigel, I've read your book. And I realize that my life is completely out of balance. It's totally dominated by work. I work ten hours a day; I commute two hours a day. All of my relationships have failed. There's nothing in my life apart from my work. So I've decided to get a grip and sort it out. So I joined a gym.' Now I don't mean to mock, but being a fit ten-hour-a-day office rat isn't more balanced; it's more fit.