Are you struggling with your work life balance? Do you feel like
you're either always working or you can't get ahead? If so, this video is for you?
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs, and I'm the founder and CEO go cloud careers. I've been working in the
technology industry now for over 25 years. And I've spent the last two decades helping people
get their first tech job or get promoted in tech. And I want to help you build the best tech career,
whether that's a cloud architect career, a Solution Architect, career and Enterprise
Architect, career, cloud engineer, career or any career in general. In today's video,
we're going to be discussing work life balance versus work life harmony. Here's the thing work
life balance is actually a myth. And we're going to show you why work life balance is not possible.
But you can get to work life harmony, which will boost your career and boost your happiness. See
work life harmony is really the key to long term career success. Now, before we get into why work
life balance is not possible, and why work life harmony is on as your real goal. I'd like to begin
with a quote from Mark Twain. Mark Twain said the secret of success is making your vocation
your vacation. Now I know we have an international audience. So let's translate vocation to holiday.
So if you make the thing that you love most, which you would normally do on vacation, your job, you
will never work a day in your life. And this is the key to long term success and happiness. Now,
yes, there are so many work life balance tips. And there's collections about data of work life
balance and mental health. And there's work life balance presentations everywhere. And there's even
significant information on work life balance while working from home. But here's the thing.
Work life balance is the opposite of career success. But work life harmony will get you
there. So let's describe why work life balance is impossible. So then you know what you can
do to get to work life harmony, and be happy and incredibly successful in your tech career
or any other career in general. Here's the reason why work life balance is not possible.
Work life balance works on the assumption that you don't like what you do at work. And that
you also still want to have a personal life and the two are at odds with each other. Now,
the problem is, we can't have things that are honest with each other when we're one person.
Now, let's be fair, some jobs lend themselves easily to work life balance, but elite careers
and elite tech careers need work life harmony. So my family used to own a diner. And here's an
example where work life balance can exist. We had some people working in the diner, they came in,
they did their eight hour shift, they went home and they forgot about everything until they came
back in. That was work life balance, I think we're very happy. You know, they could go home
from their shift and forget about it. And that's the secret in elite careers. We can't do this.
A physician, a lawyer, a cloud architect, and Enterprise Architect, a director of it.
We're always on duty. Now, sure, we may leave the office. But there's going to be times when
we're going to be called after hours, in the middle of the night, and on weekends. See,
that's my work. Life is not possible for elite tech careers. Because work life balance puts
the employee and the company at odds with each other. Now we want to make sure that we become
happy that we don't feel stressed that we live a good life. And this all comes from
work life harmony, work life, harmony is the secret to success. So I'm going to tell you
our definition of work life harmony, because there's other definitions of work life harmony,
but I want to go through ours. If you do something you love. You're never going to be working.
I left internal medicine approximately 25 years ago. And you know, I worked hard for an internal
medicine. I got home and I was tired. And when that phone rang a two o'clock in the morning,
it was waking me up again and again again. Then I moved to tech. Why did I move to tech? Because
I was playing with tech. I love tech. I mean, I really, really loved it. And one day my wife said
Mike, you know you're tired. You're working hard. And then you come home play with tech, why don't
you just work in tech, and I went, What an idea. So I became a network engineer than a network
architect than a cloud architect and an Enterprise Architect. And I don't think I've ever worked a
day in my life. Yeah, sure. I put an eight to 12 hour days. But it was my love. Seeing my job was
my hobby. And if I got a call from a customer on the weekend, I was still happy. I was so grateful
that I was being paid to have my hobby. I mean, seriously, it was the greatest thing in the world.
Now, here's the thing, if you love what you do, it's not work. So that's the first part of work
life harmony, is get your job or a career or build the career that you love. And now your personal
life and your professional life are not odds with each other. Now when you love what you do,
and you can reach this work life harmony state, your manager will see my manager saw my energy,
my enthusiasm and passion for the work and I kept getting committed while my team was
complaining about work life balance and not having good, good time. And my suggestion to them was,
if you don't love what you do, let's help you get to somewhere else. And during that time,
I've coached many people to get out of the job, they wanted to do something that made them happy,
and then they were happy. See, when you have work life balance you love every minute of your life,
our recommendation is just try and stop and look at your work and your life separately. If you're
doing that, it means the following You don't love what you do. And when you don't love what you do,
you're not going to be happy, you're not going to be healthy, you're going to be unfulfilled, and
your employers will notice that and you won't be getting promoted, because you're gonna be worried
about your work life balance. While everybody else is worried about how do I get to the top. So
we recommend that you do something that you really love. And when you find out what the thing is that
you really love, we recommend that you put a laser like focus into achieving your goals. I mean,
tune everything out and focus on extremely just getting to your goals, become great at it. Remove
all other distractions. For example, with Cloud architects, we see people that want to design
paradigm and sell and they take certifications from other people's careers like sis ops or
DevOps, etc. I've seen it in every tech career, people try to learn a little bit of everybody
else's job and well that's good if you're in the wilderness. When it comes to work life balance,
do something you love. Do something you love, do something you love. So when you find something you
love, whether it's becoming a cloud architect, a restaurant, tour, a physician or anything else,
focus on all of your time, effort, money, anything you can to getting to your goal,
make your vacation, your vocation, and you'll never work a day in your life. I
hope you've enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in another video coming very soon.