The People Who Don't Choose Work-Life Balance Risk & Win Big
Why will the concept of “work-life balance” never work for 10% of the population? Also, why do you need to understand if you’re from the 90% or are you the chosen 10%?
Introduction
The concept of “work-life balance” is often discussed on social media.
Every time I see posts/ blogs/ videos about work-life balance, I sense a gap as a business owner.
I don’t think the concept of work-life balance is applicable for everyone, and I know I might get hate for saying this, but it’s important for me to state my POV with my audience, so here goes.
The two types of people in the world
The way I look at life, I think the overall population can be divided in two categories.
These categories are:
1. 90% of the people who work as a part of the team as trainees, executives, managers, senior managers and in many cases, even the C-Suite of many companies becomes a part of this 90% of the population.
I refer to this bunch of people as “the infantry”
2. 10% of the people who are business owners, people who are building a side hustle, experimenters, passion driven working professionals who are on a personal mission, etc.
These 10% people consist of the colonels, the brigadiers, and the generals.
What does the life of the 90% look like?
The infantry is the most important aspect of any army.
These are the foot soldiers. They’re the ones who are predominantly responsible for winning any war.
These bunch of people need the best nutrition, support, facilities, training and rest to perform at the peak of their productivity.
In the world of civilians, these are people who are entering the corporate workforce, and who keep rising in their career until mid-level management.
The expectation of time, effort, energy from these people have to be realistic, balanced, structured and as per the regulations and industry standard.
Why is “work-life balance” healthy for these 90%?
Only when the infantry is well rested (and well taken care of in the form of providing necessary training, feedback on their deliverables, career growth) will the infantry of any organization take the company ahead.
Yes, I understand that the level of competition is intense in the corporate world today.
In some scenarios, expecting the infantry to stretch a little for a couple of weeks is reasonable (as far as they’re compensated, acknowledged and well appreciated) for the extra effort.
However, if a company is expecting the infantry to keep pushing themselves all the time, if the culture of the organisation is to grow by burning the midnight oil Monday-Friday (and sometimes on weekends too), that’s just a reflection of bad, exploitative and unprofessional management.
The life of the rest 10%
Now, let’s look at the remaining 10%.
These are the strategists. These are the people who make plans, create strategies, decide on the roadmap of the future, and create processes/ policies for the next few quarters/ years down the road.
The work of these 10% is practically never ending.
It’s just the nature of the job.
If you can’t imagine your life like the 10%, that’s perfectly alright.
There’s a reason why there is a clear demarcation between the two categories, and no category can exist without the other.
Also, as you can clearly see, the number of people needed in the first category of people is 9 times higher than the second category.
Why is “work-life balance” not possible for these 10%?
Let me try to answer this question from a different perspective.
What does the work-life balance of a mother/ father look like?
Does a parent get a break from being a parent?
Just the thought of this is preposterous, right?
Similarly, the concept of work-life balance is non-existent for the 10%.
Lives of the 10% don’t work on work-life balance. It works thoroughly on the concept of priority management and creating a balance.
What about balance?
As I mentioned in the last section, people in the 10% don’t focus on work-life balance, they focus on creating a balance/ learning how to manage priorities in their life.
Imagine a director of a movie.
The day a movie goes into the pre-production phase, the director of the movie practically cuts connections from almost all aspects of their life that are not associated with the movie.
Their life changes path during the journey of pre-production, production, shooting the film, editing the movie (and post-production) and getting the movie ready for release.
During this journey, a director will make time/ space for family or anything else that’s important only if it's absolutely unavoidable.
Even when the rest of the crew has a weekly off, you will find the director working on the next scene, talking to people from the costume department, the art department, touching base with the actors, the assistant directors, etc.
What you need to understand is that it’s the choice that the director makes for their life.
And this is just an example of a movie director.
Life looks pretty similar for someone who’s working in product development, wherein a new feature is going to be added on the app (example: Shorts launching on the YouTube platform), or the CMO of a company during the launch phase of a new product/ region, etc.
The 10% people (and the team of people that they handpick for the assignment) invest a lot of time, effort and energy voluntarily towards a project for a guesstimate time period, and for that time period, every member of the team understands that work-life balance is going to be non-existent.
It’s the choice of the 10% to pick up projects which may take 6 months (an event like a concert), or a year (director of a movie), a few years (director of a trilogy movie series) or a decade (a founder building a company) or a few decades (a founder building a company that ends up becoming a conglomerate).
The idea that I find absurd is that the world tries to not understand these two categories, and every once in a while, people from the 10% end up saying statements that are either said without explaining the complete context, or the statement gets cropped in the world of short form video content and even a logical statement/ idea gets presented as toxic, unrealistic, inhuman, etc.
Conclusion
The purpose of me sharing this post is as simple as can be.
You know your mindset, your life, your aspirations and your life goals better than anyone else.
Forget what the world says/ believes/ expects.
Create your life goals, and let those goals help you determine if you would need to live life of the 90% or the 10% to achieve those goals.
For example, I’ve happily chosen the 10% life for myself, and I’m happy to give it my all.
Even if you need to expand/ minimize your goals because you don’t like/ prefer the life of the 10% (or 90%), that’s okay too.
It’s your life and only you should be allowed to make the roadmap of how you’re meant to live this life and achieve the goals that you resonate with.
If you’re confused/ overwhelmed, feel free to connect with me and ask me your questions on Instagram DM.
Your Thoughts!
Thank you for reading this long post till the end.
Do share your thoughts on what you’ve just read.
Do you agree with the perspective shared, or do you think I’ve missed the mark.
Let me know what you would like to add/ alter in this idea of work-life balance.
Let’s continue this conversation (or ask your questions about the post) in the comments below.
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Prompt used to create the image for the note
P.S.: Image made on Meta AI using the prompt, “Imagine a thirty something business owner at office post-midnight all alone”
I wouldn't say that only the life of the 10% is in an always on mode.
In some aspects of life, everyone is either like an entrepreneur, or like an employee.
We should retain the choice to do what we want. That may come at a cost.
Otherwise, hard relate to this post. Well written. Nicely articulated.