Ray Dalio: Work-Life Balance and the Arc of Life

00:00:00.000 | - Much of your passions in life has been

00:00:03.720 | through something you might be able to call work.

00:00:06.960 | Alan Watts has this quote.

00:00:09.080 | He said that the real key to life,

00:00:12.640 | secret to life is to be completely engaged

00:00:14.920 | with what you're doing in the here and now.

00:00:17.680 | And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

00:00:20.440 | So I'd like to ask, what is the role of work

00:00:25.040 | in your life's journey or in a life's journey?

00:00:28.720 | And what do you think about this modern idea

00:00:31.160 | of kind of separating work and work-life balance?

00:00:35.200 | - I have a principle that I believe in is

00:00:38.320 | make your work and your passion the same thing.

00:00:40.640 | - Okay. - Okay.

00:00:42.440 | So that's similar view.

00:00:44.360 | In other words, if you can make your work and your passion,

00:00:47.480 | it's just gonna work out great.

00:00:49.080 | And then of course, people have different purposes of work.

00:00:52.960 | And I don't wanna be theoretical about that.

00:00:55.760 | People have to take care of their family.

00:00:58.080 | So money at a certain point is an important component

00:01:03.080 | of that work.

00:01:04.800 | So you look beyond that.

00:01:06.000 | What is the money gonna get you

00:01:07.320 | and what are you trying to achieve?

00:01:09.160 | But the most important thing, I agree,

00:01:11.920 | is meaningful work and meaningful relationships.

00:01:14.760 | Like if you can get into the thing that you're,

00:01:17.440 | your mission that you're on,

00:01:19.600 | and you are excited about that mission that you're on,

00:01:22.920 | and then you can do that with people

00:01:25.480 | who you have the meaningful relationships with.

00:01:29.040 | You have meaningful work and meaningful relationships.

00:01:32.400 | I mean, that is fabulous for most people.

00:01:36.080 | - And it seems that many people struggle to get there,

00:01:41.720 | not out of, not necessarily because they're constrained

00:01:46.080 | by the fact that they have the financial constraints

00:01:48.320 | of having to provide for their family and so on.

00:01:52.840 | But it's, I mean, you know, this idea is out there

00:01:57.160 | that there needs to be a work-life balance,

00:01:58.960 | which means that most people,

00:02:00.920 | and we're gonna return to the same thing,

00:02:02.640 | is most doesn't mean optimal,

00:02:04.880 | but most people seem to not be doing their life's passion,

00:02:09.000 | not be, not unifying work and passion.

00:02:12.000 | Why do you think that is?

00:02:13.320 | - Well, the work-life balance,

00:02:15.840 | there's a life arc that you go through.

00:02:19.960 | Starts at zero and ends somewhere in the vicinity of 80,

00:02:24.960 | and there is a phase, and there's a,

00:02:26.920 | and you could look at the different degrees of happiness

00:02:29.360 | that happen in those phases.

00:02:30.960 | I can go through that if that was interesting,

00:02:32.680 | but we don't have time probably for it.

00:02:34.720 | But you get in the part of the life,

00:02:37.260 | that part of the life which has the lowest level

00:02:41.400 | of happiness is age 45 to 55.

00:02:45.680 | And because as you move into this second phase of your life,

00:02:50.680 | now the first phase of your life

00:02:53.480 | is when you're learning dependent on others.

00:02:56.040 | Second phase of your life is when you're working

00:02:58.800 | and others are dependent on you,

00:03:00.560 | and you're trying to be successful.

00:03:02.640 | And in that phase of one's life,

00:03:05.200 | you encounter the work-life balance challenge,

00:03:08.520 | because you're trying to be successful at work

00:03:11.080 | and successful at parenting and successful and successful

00:03:14.360 | and all those things that take your demand.

00:03:17.160 | And they get into that, and I understand that problem

00:03:20.680 | in the work-life balance.

00:03:22.400 | The issue is primarily to know how to approach that, okay?

00:03:27.160 | So I understand it's stressful, it produces stress,

00:03:31.240 | and it produces bad results,

00:03:32.760 | and it produces the lowest level of happiness in one's life.

00:03:36.200 | It's interesting, as you get later in life,

00:03:38.960 | the levels of happiness rise,

00:03:40.820 | and the highest level of happiness

00:03:42.960 | is between ages 70 and 80,

00:03:44.720 | which is interesting for other reasons.

00:03:46.500 | But in that spot, and the key to work-life balance

00:03:51.440 | is to realize and to learn

00:03:56.060 | how to get more out of an hour of life, okay?

00:04:00.800 | Because an hour of work,

00:04:03.880 | what people are thinking is that they have to make a choice

00:04:07.600 | between one thing and another, and of course they do,

00:04:11.800 | but they don't realize that if they develop the skill

00:04:15.360 | to get a lot more out of an hour,

00:04:18.400 | it's the equivalent of having many more hours in your life.

00:04:21.740 | And so, that's why in the book "Principles"

00:04:24.540 | I try to go into, okay, now how can you get a lot more

00:04:28.120 | out of an hour that allows you to get more life

00:04:32.160 | into your life, and it reduces the work-life balance.

00:04:35.080 | - And that's the primary struggle in that 35 to 45.

00:04:39.980 | If you could linger on that,

00:04:42.220 | so what are the ups and downs of life

00:04:44.940 | in terms of happiness in general,

00:04:47.020 | and perhaps in your own life

00:04:50.020 | when you look back at the moments, the peaks?

00:04:53.660 | - It's pretty much the same pattern.

00:04:57.100 | Really in one's life tends to be a very happy period

00:05:01.460 | all the way up, and 16 is like a really great happy,

00:05:05.700 | you know, I think, like myself,

00:05:07.980 | you start to get elements of freedom,

00:05:10.460 | you get your driver's license, whatever,

00:05:12.740 | but 16 is there.

00:05:14.740 | Junior year in high school quite often

00:05:17.620 | could be a stressful period to try to get,

00:05:19.340 | thinking about the high school.

00:05:20.820 | You go into college, tends to be very high happiness,

00:05:24.340 | generally speaking.

00:05:25.500 | - Freedom.

00:05:26.340 | - And then freedom, yeah, friendships,

00:05:29.020 | all of that freedom is a big thing.

00:05:31.260 | And then 23 is a peak point kind of in happiness.

00:05:37.720 | That freedom.

00:05:38.700 | Then sequentially one has a great time,

00:05:42.040 | they date, they go out, and so on,

00:05:43.620 | you find the love of your life,

00:05:45.960 | you begin to develop a family,

00:05:48.600 | and then with that as time happens,

00:05:51.460 | you have more of your work-life balance challenges

00:05:55.060 | that come and your responsibilities,

00:05:57.140 | and then as you get there in that mid part of your life,

00:06:00.940 | that is the biggest struggle.

00:06:03.540 | Chances are you will crash in that period of time.

00:06:06.780 | You'll have your series of failures, that's that.

00:06:10.680 | That's when you go into the abyss.

00:06:12.580 | You learn, you hopefully learn from those mistakes,

00:06:16.060 | you have a metamorphosis, you come out, you change,

00:06:19.500 | you hopefully become better,

00:06:21.580 | and you take more responsibilities and so on.

00:06:24.260 | And then when you get to the later part

00:06:27.800 | as you are starting to approach the transition

00:06:31.600 | in that late part of the second phase of your life

00:06:35.580 | before you go into the third phase of your life,

00:06:38.260 | second phase is you're working, trying to be successful.

00:06:40.820 | Third phase of your life is you want people

00:06:44.660 | to be successful without you, okay?

00:06:47.460 | - Yes.

00:06:48.700 | - You want your kids to be successful without you

00:06:50.940 | because when you're at that phase,

00:06:53.420 | they're making their transition from the first phase

00:06:56.540 | to the second phase, and they're trying to be successful,

00:06:59.020 | and you want them to be successful without you,

00:07:00.940 | and you have, your parents are gone,

00:07:03.580 | and then you have freedom, and then you have freedom again.

00:07:07.660 | And with that freedom, and then you have these,

00:07:11.220 | history has shown with this, you have friendships,

00:07:13.820 | you have perspective on life, you have different things,

00:07:16.700 | and that's one of the reasons that that later part

00:07:19.260 | of the life can be real.

00:07:20.780 | On average, actually, it's the highest.

00:07:23.200 | Very interesting thing.

00:07:24.700 | If they, there are surveys, and say,

00:07:28.180 | "How good do you look, and how good do you feel?"

00:07:31.620 | And that's the highest survey.

00:07:34.940 | The person, now they're not looking the best,

00:07:37.500 | and they're not feeling the best, right?

00:07:39.260 | Maybe it's 35 that they're actually looking the best

00:07:42.140 | and feeling the best, but they rank the highest

00:07:45.580 | at that point, survey results of being the highest.

00:07:48.220 | - That's so fascinating.

00:07:49.060 | - In that 70 to 80 period of time,

00:07:51.300 | because it has to do with an attitude on life.

00:07:54.300 | Then you start to have grandkids, oh, grandkids are great,

00:07:57.860 | and you start to experience that transition well.

00:08:01.760 | So that's what the arc of life pretty much looks like,

00:08:04.860 | and I'm experiencing it, you know?

00:08:08.020 | - You've lived it.

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