Most entrepreneurs have a packed calendar and a long list of accomplishments, but still feel like something’s missing. Unhinged Habits by Jonathan Goodman challenges you to stop adding more to your life and start questioning what’s already in it. The habits running your business and your days might not actually be working for you anymore.
Goodman’s core argument is that consistency alone isn’t enough. Plenty of disciplined people stay stuck. What separates those who break through is what he calls “unhinged intensity,” short, focused bursts of effort that actually move the needle instead of slow, incremental progress toward some vague future payoff.
The book introduces practical frameworks you can apply directly to how you run your business and your life. His 8:4 Rule flips the idea of “balance” on its head, showing you how strategic imbalance across seasons leads to better results in health, relationships, and money. It’s a counterintuitive approach that actually makes sense once you see it in action.
Unhinged Habits also pushes you to get honest about whose version of success you’re chasing. If your goals were shaped by what looked good to others rather than what actually matters to you, this book gives you a framework to realign. That kind of clarity is worth more to your business than any new productivity system.
Goodman built multi-million-dollar businesses while traveling the world with his family for over 13 years. He’s not writing theory. He’s sharing what actually worked, and more importantly, what he had to stop doing to get there. For entrepreneurs tired of optimizing a life that doesn’t feel like their own, this one hits differently.
As an entrepreneur, reading Unhinged Habits, you will learn:
- The 8:4 Rule: How to use strategic imbalance across different seasons of your life to level up your business, health, and relationships without burning out or spreading yourself too thin.
- Questioning Your Habits: How to identify the routines running your business and your days that no longer serve you, so you can cut what’s holding you back and double down on what actually works.
- Unhinged Intensity: Why slow and steady isn’t always the answer, and how focused, intermittent bursts of effort can move your business forward faster than years of grinding consistency.
- Defining Your Own Success: How to get honest about whether you’re chasing goals that are truly yours, so you can stop optimizing for someone else’s definition of success and build a business around your own.
- The Explorer’s Compass: How to break out of routine thinking and rediscover the curiosity and wonder that drives better decisions, bigger ideas, and more creative problem-solving in your business.
About Unhinged Habits Author, Jonathan Goodman
Jonathan Goodman has spent 13 winters exploring the world, first on his own, then with his wife, and now with their three children in tow.
Along the way, he built multi-million-dollar businesses and challenged just about every conventional rule around how success is supposed to look.
He’s proof that you don’t have to pick between professional growth, great relationships, and a life worth living.
His work has been featured in Men’s Health, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Robb Report, and Inc. He’s not a theorist. He’s someone who tested his ideas against real life, across 30-plus countries, with a family along for the ride.
Unhinged Habits is the book where he lays it all out. It’s the distilled thinking of someone who built a rich life by questioning the habits everyone else accepted as normal. Goodman is based in Toronto.
