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Work/Life balance is bullshit.

Tobias van Schneider
4 min readJul 3, 2016

by Tobias van Schneider
first appeared
on my private email list.

There is no question being asked more often than how I manage my work/life balance. Every time someone asks me that question I struggle with a straight answer.

For me the concept of work/life balance is bullshit. The fact that we call it work/life balance automatically implies that one of the two is negative and we need to balance it with the other.

It usually implies that you have work on the evil side, and life on the other. It makes it look like these two things are competing for your attention and well being.

But work and life are not separate. They are the same, there is only one thing, it’s called LIFE. Work is part of my life, it’s not competing against it.

Family is important, friends are important. But work is a huge part of who I am as a person. I believe work is one of the most important things in ones life.

I believe that work is the reason why I get up in the morning. It’s what I love to do with most of my days.

Now some might say I’m speaking from a privileged place because I can decide what I want to work on every day. And maybe yes, that might be true to some extend, but it wasn’t true a couple years ago.

I strongly believe that every person can make a living doing something they love. And often enough, it’s more of a mindset to become happy with your work. Often it’s not the

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Responses (221)

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Wait until you have a family — a happy one, and one with children — then you’ll understand the meaning of work-life balance :)
Of course not everyone is into children, in which case your assessment may be accurate. Finding meaningful work can…

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You are very fortunate (as am I) to have a hobby that is highly profitable (design) and you can turn it not only into a job but a career. Not everyone is as lucky as we are. There are a lot of people who love things they can’t get paid for , think…

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This article is all over the place. For example:
And yes, you still need balance, because you need balance with everything yo do.”
“But what you don’t need is life/work balance, because if you do, you might need to make some drastic changes with…

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