“’Work-Life Balance’ Will Keep You Mediocre” was the headline of a Wall Street Journal article by now-23-year-old entrepreneur Emil Barr.
Barr seemed to direct the article to people his own age – people in their 20s, often grouped as Gen Z. He wrote about how he’d made a lot of choices that helped him build a business that made “millions in its first year” while he was still in college.
Barr said he would sleep 3-4 hours a night, go to classes and essentially spend the rest of every second working on the business. He said it was occasionally “necessary” for him to take a helicopter instead of a car because his time was “so precious.”
He also said he’d be the first to admit that the cost was “brutal.” He gained 80 pounds. He lived on Red Bull. He lost friendships and struggled with anxiety.
NYU professor Suzy Welch (widow of the famously intensely-driven General Electric CEO Jack Welch) checked in to say she gave Barr points for saying something she can “only mutter” to her MBA students – “that you can’t ‘well-being’ your way to wealth.”
It’s easy to wish Emil Barr all the best while still observing that he’s about the last person in the world who should be offering criticism of work-life balance because that’s obviously something he does not value right now. It’s clickbait – or worse – for him to imply that people in their 20s (or anyone!) who doesn’t want to live the way he lives are destined to be “mediocre.”
As to not being able to “well-being’ your way to wealth,” many reasonable people value their well-being much more than putting forth extreme efforts to attempt to obtain extraordinary wealth. They believe it’s possible to be successful and happy without becoming the world’s next billionaire. (It is.)
Vague buzzwords like “work-life balance” can sound like some kind of ideal, a standard worth shooting for. But it can be hard to feel like you’re getting it right and all too easy to feel like you’re getting it wrong.
It’s also easy for so-called influencers to criticize the “balance” choices others make and insist that whatever hard-core thing they’re doing is “the only way” - when that’s not the case at all.
One non-negotiable fact of life is that there are only 24 hours in a day.
Are there times when something will take unusual precedence over other things? Of course! There are plenty of situations where putting in the time or making a specific sacrifice is well worth the effort.
There also will be things that you might know you do not want to do – no matter what the rewards might be.
The whole point of you living your life is that you get to make decisions about what’s right for you and what’s sustainable for you. You get to branch out and course-correct as you see fit. You get to change your mind. The “balance” might never be 50-50, and that’s okay.
Your best bet is to develop your ability to trust your own judgment while staying open to well-intentioned feedback from people who actually know you and care about you.
Feel free to ignore toxic self-serving clickbait from influencers – strangers with their own issues and agendas - who say you’ll be “mediocre” if you don’t do things their way or if you don’t follow their “brutal” path. They’re wrong!
From the “Smart About Money” Canton Citizen column published on October 29 2026.
Nick Maffeo is the President & CEO of Canton Co-operative Bank – right next to the Post Office – in Canton. Have a question? Email to info@cantoncoopbank.com.