The Lie of Work-Life Balance

We have been lying to ourselves for a long time now. We have been lying to children as they go to school, and to young adults as they enter the workforce. We have fooled ourselves of the necessity of a “work-life balance” (WLB), that such a state is healthy.

If you don’t know what WLB is, imagine a scale. On one side, there is “work” which represents your professional obligations. On the other side, there is “life”: everything personal. The idea is to balance the scale, whether that means being content with your allocation to time, money, fulfillment, etc.

The primary issue with WLB is that it suggests that work and life are distinct and separate, as if there is no interaction between the two. However, work and life cannot be disentangled. A father with a robust home life is a better employee, and an employee with a fulfilling work environment is a better father. The relationship resembles a circle, not a scale. Instead of WLB, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos uses a “work-life harmony” framework. Although work and life have notable differences, they form one virtuous cycle and benefit from positive feedback loops.[1]

The secondary—and subliminal—issue with WLB is that it’s misleading. The supposition of balance is dangerous because, generally, we view imbalance as a bad thing. If a person is imbalanced, he falls. If a building is imbalanced, it topples. WLB implies that a tipped scale is a bad scale.

For many working parents, their children will always be more important than their bosses. For many husbands and wives, their lover is number one, not their career. For most people, work is useful to the extent it doesn’t harm life.[2] That is not to say that work is unimportant and unnecessary. Indeed, financial obligations are crucial concerns, acutely more so when one is responsible for others. The claim is that work and life are virtually never equally weighted. Thus, there is no balance, and trying to achieve equilibrium for the sake of itself is ludicrous.

Even for people who love their work, life still takes precedence. To the passionate startup founder or the obsessed athlete, work is life. The basketball star Michael Jordan is often credited for his heroic work ethic. And while it is true that he out-trained many of his competitors, this “extra” practice did not feel like work to him; it remained play. That doesn’t mean the time spent perfecting his jump shot was easy. Rather, it means that work and life were one. Hence, whether you're a parent dedicated to your children or a professional devoted to your craft, there is no balance. It’s life either way.

Instead of WLB, I seek work-life imbalance. Or ideally, I eliminate the notion of a scale. I have nothing to balance. I only have life.

The Myth of ‘Free Time’

When I was in school, I thought the goal of education was to secure myself money and status. And when I left school, I thought the goal of employment was WLB. I now have a relatively great WLB: good money, respectable status, and weekends off. Yet, I feel as if I’m slowly withering away at my coldly lit desk, chained by golden handcuffs that grow heavier and more lucrative every second. Over the past three years of employment, something has been subtly and incessantly gnawing at me, a restlessness that I have had trouble articulating. It’s the offspring of a WLB assumption: the division of “work” time versus “me” or “free” time.

Similar to how I just want life, not WLB, I just want time. I abhor the idea that my “free” time begins when I leave the office. I despise the idea that weekends are only meant for recreation and weekdays for creation. I shudder at the thought of “Sunday Scaries”, as if I should live in fear for one-seventh of my life, and in suffering for five-sevenths of it.

The traditional work schedule of 8 hours a day and five days a week is a relic of the industrial age. In the tedium of a factory line, concepts such as an “8-hour work shift” and the “weekend” have real functions: to preserve or enhance productivity, maintain safety, and prevent insanity. It is no coincidence that Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto when industrial factories with brutal working conditions ruled the economy.

Fortunately, our current “knowledge economy” favors cognitive ability over manual labor. And unlike the soullessness and drudgery of stamping widgets, cognitive skills are dynamic and fulfilling. Pivotally, skills such as programming, writing, or designing can be applied with minimal equipment: a healthy mind, pen and paper, and computer and electricity. Thus, to the extent you have a passion for and can exercise such a skill, there is little to no need to abide by a conventional work schedule.

“Free time” is a misnomer. It is not free; you have purchased it, usually with the opportunity cost of working more. This is easier to understand in the extremes. If you were starving, then you would likely work so that you could pay for food. In this case, the cost of not working is fatally expensive.

In modernity, many full-time jobs easily provide life’s essentials—and some. The opportunity cost is not as severe, but it’s still there. Crucially, if you keep living paycheck-to-paycheck, what economists call living “hand-to-mouth”, and you do not enjoy your job, then it would be more accurate to say you are renting time. Employment owns you.

So how can you own yourself? It seems to me that the solutions are passion and/or money, ideally both. Following passion is simple; you know what you love. Becoming rich is trickier but luckily, freedom only requires you to be rich enough. Thus, the simplified answer is doing what you love and/or becoming sufficiently rich.

Now consider the following:

1.      For people who love what they do, work is life (recall MJ).

2.      If your strategy for freedom is to become rich enough, then wealth should be a primary focus.

3.      The funny yet sad truth is that most people who invoke WLB don’t actually like their jobs. If they could safely and profitably do what they enjoyed, they would do that to a great imbalance. They choose balance only because they are not completely free.

I want freedom, not balance. WLB is a lie (to me).

Footnotes

[1] Symmetrically, work and life can also form one vicious cycle and degrade from positive feedback loops.

[2] You can also think about this like an optimization problem: find the lowest amount of work that can sustain a given amount of life.