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Comment by jusben1369 | Hacker News Reader

It feels like the author picked the 8 hour work day. I don't see that as part of the overall discussion on balance.

The main point of balance is that you are a more complete human being when you participate in a wider range of activities. Even if that just means you're a better developer because you stepped away for an hour or a week and got a new perspective. Just because you're not miserable only doing primarily one thing doesn't mean you wouldn't be happier if you forced yourself to learn or see or try new things at regular intervals. You'd most likely be much more interesting to those around you too.

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Balance is what YOU as an individual need to be balanced. You are projecting your opinion on everyone else that you need to do other things to be happier. That is what makes YOU happy. So go do it! But, it doesn't mean that everyone will be happier doing that. The point of this post is that everyone needs balance and needs to do what they think will make them feel balanced. And rather than adhering to dogma of others, we should each individually do what's best so long as expectations are set with those in our company.

Nope. Balance has a reasonably well defined meaning.

You can argue that balance isn't necessary for everyone or that the "balanced life" dogma is wrong. That's an interesting conversation. Better than trying to redefine balanced to mean "either balanced or the opposite, whatever you feel like", that seems rather silly.

What you need to make your life feel balanced is different from your peers. If you need to take more time off, then do it. But if you only need 1 week of vacation like Elon Musk, then that's his balance. That's the point -- let's not create one standard set of rules for what balance is because people operate differently.

What? No.

A balanced life means you split your life among all different areas of life. That's what that phrase means.

Elon Musk has rejected the idea that work/life balance is necessary and that's just fine. That's how he feels happiest. It seems to be working pretty damn well for him.

I'm not saying there's any kind of standard set of rules, I'm saying that if you reject the dogma of balance then say so, don't try and redefine what it means because people are dogmatic about "balance = good, not balanced = bad"

If the goal is to be happy and if some people find greater happiness doing 'work' while others find greater happiness devoting time to 'life', then surely there will be some people who will split their time accordingly.

Maybe it's not technically 'balance', but do you really think when someone says 'work-life balance' that they mean 50-50 split between work and life? When I hear it used it usually means 'spend less time on work and more on life', and I think hippo33's is correct: not everyone needs to (or should) spend less time doing work because that's where they may find the most happiness.

I absolutely agree.

We both (along with hippo33) agree that everyone does not need to lead a balanced life. There are other valid choices like a life of dedication to a specific cause or pursuit. Or anywhere in between that makes you happy.

We disagree on whether you should use the word balance when you "technically" mean the exact opposite. That's poor communication in my opinion.

> redefine what it means because people are dogmatic about "balance = good, not balanced = bad"

You don't seem to understand that this is how language drift works. When "people are dogmatic" about how certain words are used, those connotations leak into the definition itself.

People are dogmatic about a variety of activities being the best way to live.

I'm not convinced anyone but two people here feel that "balance" is now used to also mean single minded focus.

I'm not convinced anyone here at all thinks it means single-minded focus. That's a straw man you're setting up in order to make a meaninglessly semantic argument.

Ah, I think I just got it.

You mean "fulfilling". Not balanced, balanced means something else. You seem to think I'm trying to tell people how to live when I am actually trying to tell you that you are using the wrong word to express your idea.

I agree with your point wholeheartedly by the way, I was just confused by your use of the word balanced to mean fulfilled.

That you are replying to every single comment with a defensive rationale tells me your motivations for posting this are not balanced with the interests of the site. Not to mention that you are offering dogma while saying you're trying to steer people away from dogma.

Balance is like an indifference curve in a time allocation between various things (work, friends, hobbies) one chose or has to do.

Each one of us has its own indifference curve. And when we age and add new things, the indifference curve change and therefore the repartition of time.

I for one loved videogames and invested most of my time in it. Now that I have other options (other "things" to do), even if videogames are still fun, they represent a lower proportion of my time because other things are just bringing more satisfaction.

Maybe if I added kids to the "things", they would take a bigger chunk of time - most people say they bring more satisfaction than most other things.

In case people still don't get it, it's your life that you balance. No one but you can tell you what that means.

Good Lord. Please let's get things straight. Could people stop confusing "happiness" with "balanced" If you forgo balance to focus exclusively on one element of your life you might well be happy. But you're not balanced. Don't try and tell people your life is balanced. Tell people your life is not balanced and that's from an active decision to forgo balance and you're very happy with your decision. However, don't squeeze the english language through a food processor to make it do what you want.

Touche.

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