Ep. 368: I Want Work-Life Balance. Am I Doomed to Mediocrity?

Last month, a 22-year-old entrepreneur named Emile Barr wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed with a provocative title, Work Life Balance Will Keep You Mediocre. In it, Barr claims financial success requires sacrificing sleep, health, and social connections in your twenties. Now this article annoyed a lot of people, including me. But here's a key question that has stuck around. Is it possible that Barr might be at least partly right?

This is a debate worth having, and it's exactly what we're going to get into today. I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions. Today's episode, I want work-life balance in my doomed the mediocrity. All right, so we should start with the actual op-ed itself. I'm going to bring this up here on the screen, if you could do that, Jesse, for people who are

watching uh instead of just listening. So as mentioned, the title of this article is Work Life Balance Will Keep You Mediocre. The subhead was for financial freedom by age 30, optimize ruthlessly during your peak physical and cognitive years. This came out online uh August 18th. This came out in print the next day on August 19th.

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