The Problem with Work-Life Balance & The Myth of Free Time
Whether you’re a young or seasoned professional, you’ve probably heard about “work-life balance” (WLB). Many think it’s not only good but ideal. It’s not.
Let’s first examine WLB by imagining 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, and fulfillment.
The primary issue with WLB is that it suggests work and life are distinct, as if they don’t interact. 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 more than 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.
Of course, WLB is not a literal mandate to isolate work and life. Used effectively, WLB can help us set boundaries so that neither overwhelms us. However, WLB is an imprecise metaphor that often leads to a rigid or shallow interpretation of how we should live.
For many working parents, their children are more important than their bosses. For many husbands and wives, their lover is number one, not their careers. 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 especially pressing when one is responsible for others. However, why should work and life be equally weighted? Why achieve balance for the sake of itself?
Even for people who love their work, they don’t balance it with life—they integrate it. To the passionate startup founder or 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 outtrained 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 working parent, devoted professional, or someone simply choosing not to work, there is no balance. It’s life either way.
Instead of WLB, I prefer work-life imbalance, prioritizing either life or work. Even better, 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 money and status. And when I left school, I thought the goal of employment was WLB. I had all of this when I was working in finance, but something kept gnawing at me—a subtle, incessant restlessness I couldn’t quite name. It’s the offspring of a WLB assumption: the division of “work” time versus “me” or “free” time.
Just as I want life, not WLB, I just want time. I abhor the idea that my “free” time begins when I leave the office. I despise 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.[3]
Fortunately, our current “knowledge economy” favors cognitive ability over manual labor. And unlike the soullessness of stamping widgets, some cognitive skills—like programming, writing, and design—are more dynamic and engaging. They can also be applied with minimal capital—a healthy mind, a keyboard, and an internet connection. Why follow a conventional work schedule if you love what you do?
“Free time” is a misnomer—you have purchased it with your labor. Spending your time somewhere you don’t want to be is hardly freedom. It would be more accurate to say you are renting time.
You also purchase “free time” with the opportunity cost of working more. This is easier to understand in the extremes. If you were starving, then you would work so you could eat. In this case, the cost of not working is fatally expensive. Today, many jobs easily provide life’s essentials—and then some. While the opportunity cost is not as severe, it’s still there.
Can you ever have “free time”? Yes, and it seems to me that the solutions are doing what you love and/or becoming rich, ideally both. Following passion is straightforward; you know what you love. Becoming rich is trickier but luckily, freedom only requires you to be rich enough. Many people are so rich they become enslaved by their schedules or shareholders.
Of course, this is easier for me to say—a person of privilege. Indeed, many people don’t have the flexibility and safety net to pursue passion or some forms of wealth. They live with WLB simply to survive. Nevertheless, balance isn’t ideal—it’s a necessity born of constraint. If we could safely and profitably do what we enjoyed, then we would do that to great imbalance. We invoke WLB because we aren’t free.
Consider these four truths:
For people who love what they do, work is life (recall MJ).
If wealth is your strategy for freedom, then money deserves your full attention.
If you live paycheck-to-paycheck, you don’t own your time. Employment owns you.
If you're rich enough, you might not find what you love—but you can avoid what you hate.
I want life and freedom—and certainly not balance. Maybe you do too.
Footnotes
[1] Symmetrically, work and life can also form one vicious cycle.
[2] This can also be framed as an optimization problem: find the lowest amount of work that can sustain a given amount of life.
[3] I think it is no coincidence that Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto when factories, with their brutal working conditions, dominated the economy.
