A Bezos circle
Rick Smith
Business Insider
Jul 3, 2021, 7:14 AM
Saturday, July 3, 2021, 7:14 AM
Jeff Bezos says work-life balance is a 'debilitating phrase.' He wants Amazon workers to view their career and lives as a 'circle.'
Katie Canales and Zoë Bernard
· Amazon's Jeff Bezos said in 2018 that the term "work-life balance" was a "debilitating phrase."
· A top piece of advice he offers to workers is not to view the two as a strict trade-off.
· Instead, he sees his personal and professional pursuits as a "circle" rather than a balancing act.
Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, isn't a fan of the phrase "work-life balance."
At an April 2018 event hosted by Insider's parent company, Bezos said new Amazon employees shouldn't view work and life as a balancing act. Instead, Bezos said it's more productive to view them as two integrated parts.
"It actually is a circle," Bezos said. "It's not a balance."
Bezos said his new hires should stop trying to find "balance" within their professional and personal lives since that implied a strict trade-off between the two. Instead, Bezos envisions a more holistic relationship between work and life outside the office.
"This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too," Bezos said. "But especially the people coming in. I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that's a debilitating phrase because it implies there's a strict trade-off."
Bezos said he didn't compartmentalize his career and his personal life.
"If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."
The billionaire Amazon founder will have to adjust to a new kind of workflow starting Monday, when he is set to step down from his role as CEO of the e-commerce giant. He will be replaced by Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy and plans to direct his focus to other endeavors, like his 11-minute journey to space and back on July 20.
Historically, the world's richest man has taken a nontraditional approach to work: He has said he made time for breakfast every morning with his family, doesn't set his alarm before going to bed, schedules surprisingly few meetings, and set aside a few minutes every day to wash his own dishes.
Read — and watch — the full interview with Bezos here:
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