While millennial and Gen Z workers consistently rank work-life balance as their number one priority, I\u00f1aki Ere\u00f1o, the chief executive of one of the world\u2019s largest healthcare companies, says if you\u2019re obsessing over balance, your problem isn\u2019t the hours. It\u2019s the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the balance of your life becomes a topic, then you have a problem,\u201d Ere\u00f1o exclusively told Fortune. \u201cYou need to like your job, to not feel that your life needs to be balanced.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Essentially, in his eyes, needing to separate work from life with a hard 5 p.m. cut-off doesn\u2019t make sense when you genuinely love what you do. So if you\u2019re constantly counting down the hours to the end of the day, it\u2019s probably a sign that something fundamentally isn\u2019t clicking.<\/p>\n
Ere\u00f1o says he loves running the \u00a316.9 billion-a-year ($23 billion) Fortune 500 Europe company with over 100,00 employees so much he thinks about it while at the gym lifting weights with his 23-year-old son<\/a>. And it doesn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n \u201cI enjoy thinking about business things on the weekends,\u201d the 61-year-old admitted. \u201cI do emails, and I read my papers and all of that. Do I feel that that is a big pressure? No\u2026 I enjoy doing that. So I don\u2019t feel I need to think about how I balance my life.\u201d<\/p>\n His advice for anyone who lives for the weekend? \u201cI think the advice here is to take some time to think about what you like doing,\u201d he added. \u201cDon\u2019t do a job that you don\u2019t like, so then you need balance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In other words, stop chasing work-life balance and instead start asking yourself why you\u2019re craving it\u2014it might be time to change not just your schedule, but your career.<\/p>\n The Fortune 500 CEO\u2019s strict daily routine<\/p>\n When Ere\u00f1o\u2019s not running a multi-billion dollar healthcare group, he is, by his own admission, still very much in work mode. Just not in a way that feels punishing to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n He starts most mornings around 6:30 a.m. with a black coffee and six newspapers\u2014three in English, three in Spanish\u2014on his iPad before jumping on the tube (Britain\u2019s subway) to Bupa\u2019s London office.\u00a0<\/p>\n By 8 a.m., the meetings begin. They\u2019re back\u2011to\u2011back until roughly 6 p.m. That\u2019s when he takes a mental pause: \u201cI spend some time with myself, a little bit of reflecting on the day, maybe answering a few emails.\u201d Then he finally leaves the building\u2014not for the sofa, but for a 50\u2011minute walk home that he originally introduced as a \u201cdetox\u201d and has since turned into a non\u2011negotiable daily habit.<\/p>\n When he\u2019s \u201coff-duty,\u201d he hits the gym\u2014keeping pace with his Gen Z son.<\/a> \u201cI go to the gym six times a week. I do four days of weights and two days on the treadmill,\u201d he said, adding that he\u2019ll often talk through work dilemmas with his son (who doubles up as his personal trainer) while working out.<\/p>\n And he insists that that kind of regimen is \u201c100% totally\u201d necessary when managing over 100,000 employees and serving the needs of over 60 million customers worldwide<\/p>\n \u201cMy decisions impact many people,\u201d Ere\u00f1o added, and that \u201camalgamation of staying grounded, doing some exercise, and having a stable life as possible\u201d is the framework that keeps him sane and able to lead with clarity under pressure.<\/p>\n Many CEOs scoff at work-life balance<\/p>\n It\u2019s a take that might ruffle feathers in a post-pandemic world that has come to treat work-life balance as a non-negotiable. But some of the most successful people on the planet would tell you Ere\u00f1o is simply stating the obvious.<\/p>\n Scale AI billionaire Lucy Guo, who wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and works until midnight, puts it plainly: \u201cI would say that if you feel the need for work-life balance, maybe you\u2019re not in the right work,\u201d she told Fortune<\/a>. The 30-year-old, who had dethroned Taylor Swift as the youngest self-made woman in the world, says work simply doesn\u2019t feel like work to her. \u201cI love doing my job.\u201d Sound familiar?<\/p>\n Likewise, the Grammy-winning artist turned AI entrepreneur, Will.i.am echoes that when you\u2019re building something that\u2019s truly yours, the grind doesn\u2019t feel like a grind.\u00a0 \u201cWork-life balance means that you\u2019re working for somebody else\u2019s dream,\u201d he told Fortune<\/a>, adding that he\u2019s not even stopped to celebrate his birthday in years.<\/p>\n LinkedIn<\/a> cofounder Reid Hoffman goes even further, saying that workers who chase work-life balance are \u201cnot committed to winning.\u201d<\/a> When he was running the company, staff were expected to always be on\u2014with one exception. Dinner with family. After that? \u201cOpen up your laptop and get back in the shared work experience and keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n Jensen Huang\u2019s company, Nvidia<\/a>, recently became the most valuable in the world\u2014and he says, it\u2019s thanks to his relentless, always-on approach.\u201dI work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. I work seven days a week,\u201d he\u2019s said. \u201cWhen I\u2019m not working, I\u2019m thinking about working<\/a>.\u201d His justification? \u201cIf you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn\u2019t be easy.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite having dinner with his family every night in the White House, even former President Barack Obama that you shouldn\u2019t expect to have work\u2013life balance if you want a thriving career. \u201cIf you want to be excellent at anything\u2014sports, music, business, politics\u2014there\u2019s going to be times of your life when you\u2019re out of balance, where you\u2019re just working and you\u2019re single-minded,\u201d he said on The Pivot Podcast<\/a>, adding that when he was running for president he went a year and a half without proper weekends.\u00a0<\/p>\n