Why Work Life Balance is a Deadly Illusion

Today we are going to talk about why work-life balance is a deadly illusion. But before we do, whatever channel you are coming from, don't forget to subscribe if you want to grow both personally and professionally. Predictably, PPP, triple P. All right, so let's talk about this. I would read about this in college before I was going into the workforce, and I was like, man, you know, people talk about how important this work-life balance thing is. Looking at the Japanese and looking at the Chinese, you have the Chinese people who work 996. 996 is 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, 6 days a week, which is pretty extreme. And you hear about the Japanese salaryman, which is they work really, really, really hard. They don't really get a lot of pay. And you hear a lot of stories about kind of the suicide that happens due to kind of working conditions, right? And then you have Europeans where, uh, Europeans, when I was in Spain, for example, I was in Madrid, people would, would, the retail stores would close in the afternoon and they opened back up in the evening and people would, this is during the weekdays, weeknights at 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM or so. That's when people go out to eat dinner and they're just, you know, there people are generally more laid back, right? Most European countries that I've been to, which is, which is fine too. And in America, um, people are considered generally pretty hard workers depending on where you're from. I think if we look at like, if you work in finance and Wall Street, generally they work pretty damn hard. In consulting, they work pretty hard too. I think one of the key things to look at first is what do you define work as, right? So when you look at Japanese or Chinese culture where it's like really, um, they, they work a lot of hours and, you know, sometimes people are Um, it's conditions where literally it can be fatal. That to me is not work, right? It depends on how you define work. In Germany, for example, they've learned how to make the most out of when they actually work and then kind of, you know, relax, right? Like that's, they've kind of broken out the two. You've also heard other entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos has talked about work-life harmony. What didn't make sense to me growing up was when my parents came back from work, like my dad would come home from work and comes back with a briefcase and it's like, it's, he compartmentalizes work and separates it from life, right? But work is part of life. Like, you're working to help someone hopefully make the world a better place. Why wouldn't you want to integrate the two where, um, you're happy going to work? You don't want to carry baggage when you're working somewhere else and bring it home and then let it affect your relationship. But when you kind of combine the two together where it's like, okay, you're happy doing what you do at work and you can carry it home and then talk with your significant other and your significant other appreciates what you do. there's more harmony, right? Because if you have discord in one or the other and you bring kind of baggage from home to work and you're not doing good work, and then because then you get reprimanded for not doing good work at work, and then you bring that back home and it creates this vicious cycle, that to me is not really work-life balance, right? Just compartmentalizing them is not work-life balance to me. But looking at them in both positive lights and being like, oh, okay, you know, I'm going to have fun in life and I'm going to have fun in work too, and bringing them both together, That is something that's worth chasing. You know, at the end of the day, like this comes back to selecting the right career that's for you and not saying, not being pigeonholed into, oh, I should be a doctor, I should be a lawyer, I should be an engineer because, or like even like a computer engineer because my parents told me that's what I'm supposed to do. So it all revolves around because you spend so much time at work, you gotta be happy at work. If you're not happy at work, you better do something to change it, right? If you're not happy at home, you do something to change that. Otherwise that's gonna affect work. So it's this vicious cycle. You gotta combine the two together. To make it, um, to make this work-life harmony. It makes a lot more sense, right? There's a lot of people I talk to that don't need to work anymore. These are, you know, these are the top 1% or top 1% of the 1% in the world. They don't need to work anymore. I asked one of my friends, why do you still work? Eric, I enjoy playing the game. The game is fun. And it's the same thing. I enjoy the journey. I like, I enjoy the game. By, but like by any kind of, you know, average definition, like I don't need to work anymore, but I love playing the game. I love the people that I work with. I love learning. I love continuing to get better. There's a lot of harmony in that. So every day I wake up, like, I mean, I might be intense sometimes. Sometimes I might get frustrated, but still, like, I enjoy, like, and I'm grateful for those moments. You want to make sure that you're like, your work, that's a game that is fun to you at the end of the day, right? If you look at Elon Musk, okay, let's see, PayPal, Tesla, even SolarCity, got a lot of stuff going on, right? Richard Branson is another example. They don't need to play the game anymore, but they keep playing. Why do they keep playing? Because it's fun. And also when they play the game, it affects Lots of people. It affects the planet, right? So this is just some food for thought, and I hope you consider this because when people talk about work-life balance, I don't think it makes sense because again, you're compartmentalizing them. You don't want to be doing that. You want work-life harmony where you're combining them. All right, so let me know what you think in the comments. Do you think there should be work-life balance? Do you think I'm wrong? Do you think— what do you think about work-life harmony? And before we go, if you're coming from YouTube, don't forget to check out the next video over there. And, and whatever channel you're coming from, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe because it helps us grow, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.