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