It’s All Living: Don’t “Balance” Work & Life. Integrate Them.

A Review of Intention: Unlocking the Lifeforce Inside High-Performing Entrepreneurs

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I’ve long loathed the phrase, “work-life balance,” as if work and life were two dichotomous realms, suggesting drudgery in one, and fulfillment and authenticity in the other.  It’s a zero-sum game, in which the work self and the life self must regard each other warily, guarding against encroachment.

The recent hit streaming series Severance dramatizes this dichotomy to a chilling extreme.  Episodes of the sci-fi psychological thriller follow employees at a faceless corporate behemoth who have agreed to undergo “severance” -- a medical procedure that ensures they retain no memories of the outside world while at work and have no recollection of their job once they leave.

This results in “innies” who exist only at work and “outies” who exist only outside the office. The former don’t get to invite colleagues to backyard barbecues, or organize carpools -- while the latter can never take pride in achievement of their work, come up with solutions to nagging work challenges while showering.

Without offering any spoilers, it will come as no surprise that this dichotomy leads to adversarial dynamic similar to the one Ayn Rand identified in critiquing the mind-body dichotomy.

Without offering any spoilers, it will come as no surprise that this dichotomy leads to adversarial dynamic similar to the one Ayn Rand identified in critiquing the mind-body dichotomy: “The two antagonists…have been set against each other—as irreconcilable enemies who could be united only by the surrender of one to the other. The philosophers…split man in two… and delivered him into perpetual war with himself.”

Pete Worrell, author of Intention: Unlocking the Lifeforce Inside High-Performing Entrepreneurs, Pete Worrell similarly rejects this dichotomy with his provocatively titled chapter,“Work-Life Balance? Schmalance.”  As Worrel deconstructs it: "Simply allowing the question to be formed in that way, we are creating an artificial duality, where evidently work is not life, and life is not work."  We share an antipathy to the common quip, “Thank God it’s Friday”—if you spend your week counting the days until your weekend, perhaps it’s time you look for another job.  Instead, the author offers a more life-affirming model: where high-performing entrepreneurs integrate purpose, relationships, and activities across both spheres, designing lives of richer fulfillment and harmony.

Worrell brings decades of experience advising high-performing Entrepreneur Owner-Managers (EOMs) through his firm, Bigelow LLC to bear in his meditative exploration of what fuels the world's most dynamic entrepreneurs, blending research, real life examples, and philosophical insights.  And it's in the latter that we see the influence of  Ayn Rand’s literature and philosophy.  

In my recent interview with him on Objectively Speaking, Worrell shared and even named some of his companies after characters in Atlas Shrugged.  Just as Rand celebrated man “as a heroic being…with productive achievement as his noblest activity,” so is Worrell celebrating the entrepreneurs he advises, as they seek to capture the value of their life-long accomplishments.

As Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged returns home after a long day at his steel mill where he’d just reached the peak achievement of the first pour of Rearden Metal, the sarcastic insinuations of his parasitic family relations all draw legitimacy from the dichotomous premise of the work-life balance.

Indeed, as Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged returns home after a long day at his steel mill where he’d just reached the peak achievement of the first pour of Rearden Metal, the sarcastic insinuations of his parasitic family relations all draw legitimacy from the dichotomous premise of the work-life balance.

“It’s always the same with you. You never think of anyone but yourself and your steel,” complains his wife.

“Hank, you might have thought of us first instead of… whatever you’re proud of now,” quips Hank’s mother.

Like the fictional Hank Reardens, Dagny Taggarts and Ellis Wyatts, the real life entrepreneurs Worrell advises all have “skin in the game.” It’s the one thing that sets them apart from even the most powerful CEOs who run companies started by others.  The former all have “skin in the game.”  The latter may win bonuses for exceeding corporate goals -- but it’s the Entrepreneur Owner Managers (EOMs) most fully reap both the upside when enterprises succeed AND the downsides when they fail.

Worrell illustrates this “skin in the game” mindset vividly by sharing the story of leaving to have lunch with one of EOMs he advises: While driving with her out of the company parking lot, she braked to a halt and jumped out to clear trash from the company's chain-link fence, dragging the whole soggy mess to toss in the back of her SUV.  Returning to the driver’s seat, she ruefully ruminates: “Why is it that it’s only the owner of the business who is the one who picks up the trash?”

Ownership, pride, and a perspective that bridges both humble beginnings, and a long-sought after reward for achievement.  Be honest: do we all treat cars we rent as well as cars we own?  We should, but with ownership the incentives for stewarding one’s property are naturally aligned.

Another similarity: throughout Atlas Shrugged, the heroic entrepreneurs are frequently henpecked by others for failing to be sufficiently “agreeable.” Think of James Taggart asking his sister Dagny: “Why can’t you be more cooperative, more agreeable?”  Or Wesley Mouch criticizing Hank Rearden: “You don’t understand the proper spirit of cooperation. You are too obstinate, too… unyielding.”

The entrepreneurs are criticized for “disagreeableness” precisely because they refuse to subordinate their judgment, creativity, or ambition for the sake of social harmony or being “liked.”

In such exchanges, Rand shows that the entrepreneurs are criticized for “disagreeableness” precisely because they refuse to subordinate their judgment, creativity, or ambition for the sake of social harmony or being “liked.” 

Worrell has picked up a similar pattern in some of the entrepreneurs he advises.  In one anecdote from Intention, he contrasts two sisters who co-own a high-performing tech-enabled design firm: one is warm and accommodating, the other prickly, impatient, and relentlessly driven. Guess which one drives results? Sometimes, Worrell suggests, delivering excellence requires not pleasantry but persistence, not comfort but confrontation.

In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark most famously dramatizes this unwillingness to “agree” just for the sake of being agreeable, when pursuing his own creative vision.  In the novel, Rand develops the concept of “second-handers” who live by measuring themselves against others.  Roark rejects this comparative approach, declaring: "A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

Worrell echoes this theme iIn his chapter, “Competition is for Losers,” in which he encourages entrepreneurs to focus on intrinsic value, unique strengths and  achievement rather than just comparing with and competing against others in their sector.  The author makes a compelling case that a constant focus on outpacing those behind you or catching up to those ahead of you is “poison to creativity, poison to discovering your Unique Ability, poison to subjective well-being.”  

The book culminates in a stirring call to gratitude and an acknowledgement of Ayn Rand and others who have enriched his life:

“We won the lottery.   We are basking in the warmth of our Founding Fathers, of the guys who stormed the beaches of Normandy, of the works of thinkers like Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Ayn Rand, E.O. Wilson, and Martin Seligman.  We can’t pay it back, so we have to pay it forward.”  

There’s an element of justice to gratitude, of recognizing the debt we owe those in the past who’ve contributed to who we are today, and how the right thing to do, is to repay that debt toward the future. 

In this he observes that there’s an element of justice to gratitude, of recognizing the debt we owe those in the past who’ve contributed to who we are today, and how the right thing to do, is to repay that debt toward the future. 

Worrell closes with a call to courage, reminding me of Ayn Rand’s quote: "I am not brave enough to be a coward. I see the consequences too clearly.”  It takes some courage to let go of being agreeable, of comparing ourselves to others, to naming the glaring obvious which others have chosen not to see.  But it is that virtue that is required of each of us more than ever in these contentious times.

Entrepreneurs, he writes, are “calmers of fear.” But rather than sugar-coating uncomfortable realities, “Courage is needed to candidly address issues that have been protected and sanctified by the minority who favor…political correctness.”  That may ruffle some feathers, and earn a reprimand from those demanding conformity to approved narratives, but “unlocking the lifeforce” within each of us, we can -- and must -- integrate inner conviction with outward expression, to more fully lead lives of integrity and honor.