Work/Life Balance Is a Myth. Here’s What to Aim For Instead

Moving from balance to integration and energy symmetry.

Author

Regina Gerbeaux
February 08, 2026 • Reading Time: 16 minutes

Hi! Welcome to another issue of Force Multipliers, your weekly briefing from Regina Gerbeaux, where Silicon Valley's behind-the-scenes operators get battle-tested frameworks for their toughest challenges, from putting out chaotic fires to managing strong personalities.

I'm going to say something inflammatory: work-life balance doesn't help people get rich.

I realized this a few years ago when I was learning about tax strategy from Tom Wheelwright. He explained that if you want to vacation in Hawaii and write off the trip, you need to incorporate work into your visits. Do real estate deals there. Spend more than 50% of your time on legitimate business. Then the whole trip becomes a tax write-off.

My first thought was, "But there's no work-life balance if you do that!"

And that's exactly the point.

If you line up the things you love doing with the work you have to do, those things stop being "life" activities you're protecting from "work." They become integrated. You get to have fun in Hawaii, reduce your taxes, make more money, and feel energized instead of depleted.

This isn't just about tax strategy. I've seen this pattern show up again and again in the operators and founders I coach. The ones who thrive aren't the ones with the strictest boundaries. They're the ones who've figured out how to integrate their work into a life they actually want to live.

The ones doing it "for the love of the game" never burn out. The ones white-knuckling through "balance" always do.

A Tale of Two Leaders

I want to tell you stories about two different leaders I knew.

First, there was a CTO I met about a decade ago. He loved writing code and was the kind of guy who would hack on side projects and spend his free time making stuff. In a world full of distractions and dopamine-driven addictive behaviors, it’s becoming increasingly rare to find leaders who love doing the hard stuff, but he was one of them.

When he became a CTO, he did something most people would call irresponsible: he put himself in an IC position so he could code as much as possible.

He hired only autonomous engineers who also loved to code. The only non-coding work he did was working closely with his product and sales-focused CEO, who had crystal clear vision.

But otherwise, he refused to be a manager. Instead, he’d form the roadmap with the CEO, then get right back to what he loved most: coding.

This CTO went through Y Combinator and became one of the best companies to come from that batch. I don't think they could have achieved that level of success without the CTO's love for coding and his ability to create a job for himself that let him keep doing what he loved all the way through scaling.

On the flip side, I knew a CEO who liked to talk a big game about working hard and playing hard. Based on the stuff he wrote on his socials, you’d believe he was one of the wisest, hardest workers! After all, he spoke with so much conviction, everyone around him assumed he practiced what he preached.

The problem was, his goals were always set so they were too easy to achieve.

One time, when I asked him for his top goals for the day, one of his top goals was “write top goals.” 💀

Once he was done writing them, he checked that goal off, smiled and said, “One down!”, and then went off to scroll social media.

…the company, obviously, never really got anywhere. I wish I were making this story up. I’m not.

For most companies that fail, it's usually because the CEO either inflicts an unnecessary amount of pain on themselves (and their personal life takes a hit), or because they don't want to withstand any pain because their "why" isn't strong enough beyond chasing accolades or vanity metrics.

This CEO fell into the second camp. He wanted to play more than work, and he wasn't interested in subjecting himself to any discomfort whatsoever. I guess you could argue this isn’t real work-life balance, but to him, it was, because he believed he really was working hard.

And his company died because of it.

The Playbook: Moving From Balance to Integration

So let me ask you this: are you building a life that works for you? Or are you just grinding yourself into dust for someone else's definition of success? Do you believe in work-life balance? Or do you want something even better?

Here’s the playbook on achieving work-life integration.

Step 1: Audit your personal hygiene first 🪞

Before you do anything else, answer these questions honestly:

  • Do I have friends?

  • Do I have people I love who love me back?

  • Am I exercising regularly?

  • Do I sleep well?

  • Am I relying on substances to get through the day?

  • How often do I engage in escapist behavior (doomscrolling, binge-watching, numbing out)?

You can't be a good operator without the above. But beyond the above, work as hard as you want.

If your personal hygiene is solid and you still feel energized by your work, you're probably doing it right. If your personal hygiene is falling apart, something needs to change.

Step 2: Ask yourself if you should even be an operator 🔍

Operations takes many different forms, and not everyone should do it the same way at every stage of their career.

In your early 20s: This is when you should be chewing through glass to get the experience you need. Don't look for balance at this time. It's okay if your personal life takes the backseat as you grind to get the valuable experience you need to grow ahead of your career.

I knew I was doing the right stuff in my 20s because I never felt burned out from it. I felt energized. Putting together Notion playbooks and templates put me in flow state. I made one of my best templates in Coaching Founder history because I had a 2.5 hour delayed flight. I did the whole thing during the delay while sitting in the terminal.

It never once occurred to me to check my phone, scroll TikTok, or get bored. I just liked making the templates.

In your mid- to late 20s: Take what you've learned and figure out how to package your skillsets into something that makes you valuable and unique. You will become known for something. For me, it was putting together write-ups and Notion playbooks and templates, along with teaching (I've taught since my late teens and have a knack for guiding people).

Beyond that: Learn specific skillsets that help you grow in your specialty. What makes you into the top 1% of your class, and how can you do it in a way that you derive joy?

One thing I don't love is tweeting, so even though some operators are great at it, I just don't enjoy it and don't invest much time learning how to make something go viral. I love writing longform, so I spend a lot of time perfecting this. I also feel much more competent at writing evergreen material versus trendy top-of-the-news topics, so that's what I focus on.

Step 3: Figure out what works for you as an operator 🧠 

Ask yourself:

1. What industries do I like being in?

2. What specifically do I love doing there? Why?

If you can focus and get into flow with something, that's a good sign you
should continue doing it.

3. If I were projecting 5-10 years into the future, what kind of life would I have as an operator?

Not "what kind of post-money life would I have" but really "what work would I
be doing?"

Then work backwards on what skillsets you have to pick up. (For more on this,
see my post on how to learn anything quickly.)

4. Who do I need to learn from to make this happen?

Through the internet, through a chatbot, or in real life - who should I work for?

Step 4: Ask yourself, "How do I make this exquisite?" 🥰 

This is where integration gets tactical. Let me get personal with you for a second.

I'm a naturally social creature. If you ask anyone who knows me, they’ll all tell you I’m a raging extrovert.

Therefore, I love doing deep work with other people. In fact, one of my really good friends is sitting on the couch with me as I'm writing this. In the past, I also used to use Zoom or Whereby to do coworking sessions with people. There's something so nice about having lofi playing in the background and doing some deep operational work.

Figure out the best way you do work:

  • Do you do best with lots of deep work all at once?

  • Do you like switching from quick easy wins to harder stuff?

  • Do you knock out the harder stuff first, then celebrate by doing a bunch of small quick wins?

This reminds me of when you're in high school or college, studying for exams or doing homework. How did you do best back then? Did you like getting the hardest subject out of the way? Doing all the easy ones first for quick wins? Something else?

That style will probably inform how well you do here.

For me … I was always a pretty disciplined studier in college and liked knocking things out based on what was most difficult and important and that I would need the most time doing. But that's not a hard rule.

Tim Ferriss has talked about using email writing as a warm-up technique to get into a writing flow before tackling bigger projects like his books or blog posts. The idea is that responding to emails feels lower-stakes and helps loosen up the writing muscles before diving into more substantial work.

But I noticed if I tried this technique, I'd get sucked into doing a lot of minute tasks and would never move the needle forward.

So I don't do it that way. That doesn’t make it the wrong way! It just means it didn’t work for me.

Figure out what works for you, then design your days around that.

Step 5: Stop building for other people 🛑 

This is the biggest misconception operators have about work-life balance: they think they need to protect themselves from work because they're doing work that drains them.

But they're only drained because they're building for other people.

They worry about what their followers online will think, what influencers will think, what famous people will think, what their friends will think. They cater to what others want, rather than what they want.

It's funny, because when you build product, "Build it and they will come" is wrong. You have to build for your customers, and that means caring about what they want.

But when it comes to building for your ikigai, you have to do what you want and love.

There's always a weird niche that captivates people. TikTok is actually a great example of that. People build full followings posting shorts about…

And so many other cool niches.

There's always something that you can do that you love, that others will be interested in too. People are interested in flow. Flow makes something meaningful. Flow is mastery, and people love seeing mastery.

It's why even if you have zero interest in figure skating yourself, it's hard to look away. It's why even if you don't play the piano, watching someone shred a sick improv will captivate you.

People pay attention when you do work you love. So you might as well prioritize the work you love doing, rather than trying to please the people around you.

The Signal That Tells You You've Crossed the Line

At some point, grinding stops working. People burn out, resent their work, or realize they're grinding for the wrong reasons.

Here's how you know if you're doing it for the love of the game versus doing it because you think you're supposed to:

If your personal life ever takes a hit, it might mean you haven't successfully integrated your work into your life well enough, or the other way around.

If you love someone and they want you home, and you want to be home too but you don't want to leave your work behind, and you want to make adjustments - it might be time to redesign how you work.

Always do an audit of personal hygiene (see Step 1). You can't be a good operator without those basics. But beyond the basics, work as hard as you want.

I don't think anyone ever builds anything meaningful without hard work.

What do you think? Are you optimizing for balance or integration? What would your work look like if you designed it around what energizes you instead of what you think you're supposed to do?

Until next time,

📌 Resources mentioned:

People & Experts:

  • Tom Wheelwright - Tax strategist and author of Tax-Free Wealth

  • Tim Ferriss - Entrepreneur, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, and host of The Tim Ferriss Show.

Past Force Multipliers Articles:

Examples of Flow & Mastery:

Tools Mentioned:

  • Zoom - Video conferencing platform

  • Whereby - Simple video meeting tool

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Check out Coaching Founder for downloadable Notion templates and write-ups on how to level up your execs, your teams, and yourself.

About Regina Gerbeaux

Regina Gerbeaux was the first Chief of Staff to an executive coach who worked with Silicon Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Brian Armstrong (Coinbase), Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Sam Altman (OpenAI / Y Combinator), and Alexandr Wang (Scale).

Shortly after her role as Chief of Staff, then COO, she opened her own coaching practice, Coaching Founder, and has worked with outrageously talented operators on teams like Delphi AI, dYdX, Astronomer, Fanatics Live, and many more companies backed by funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

Her open-sourced write-ups on Operational Excellence and how to run a scaling company can be found here and her templates can be found here.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner, daughter, and dog, and can be found frequenting 6:00AM Orangetheory classes or hiking trails nearby.

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