Reading through my feeds the other day, I came across an interesting take on the recent posts by Jason Calcanis, and Techcrunch’s Duncan Riley and Michael Arrington regarding work-life balance and start-ups. If you’ve been following the debate, you can skip down a few paragraphs. For those of you who haven’t seen these articles, here’s one of the points that came from Jason’s original post that seems to be the root cause of a lot of the debate:

“Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks (sic) if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.”

Techcrunch’s articles show the two sides of the response, one completely lambasting Calcanis posted by Duncan Riley, and a second by Michael Arrington looking at it from a more even standpoint. To be fair, Riley’s original response was based on the original text above, prior to Calcanis’ edit and strikethrough. Before this change to the article, that one point can also highly influence the view of the other points, which otherwise contain some useful tips (if not applicable to or right for every situation, they’re at least some things to consider).

In fact, I think Arrington’s article sums up a lot of the uproar’s cause quite nicely:

“Overall, I get the impression that if he had spent just a few minutes editing his post, he would have had a 100% different reaction from readers.”

But as I said above, I’m not chiming in on those articles directly, but rather a response/commentary piece on the articles by Ryan Healy of Employee Evolution (and the new Brazen Careerist).

Ryan’s post leaves me in something of a bind. I agree with a lot of his points, but find that I don’t necessarily agree with how things add up at the end. Now, I’ve been thinking about this, trying to figure out specifically what it is that’s causing this sense of discomfort. I think I’ve finally narrowed it down, and felt that I’d like to share these thoughts and see if I’m making any sense . . .

(If you haven’t read Ryan’s post, now would be a good time to do so, otherwise what follows might seem a little out of context.)

I’d say that Ryan has a pretty good background when writing about getting a startup up and running. He, along with Ryan Paugh (also of Employee Evolution) and blogger and author Penelope Trunk, has just launched the new BrazenCareerist.com, as a career center and blogging hub for the rapidly growing Millennial/Gen Y populace. As such, he’s really just been through it.

However, I think that my discomfort comes from the fact that so much of this article is purely talking about success in entrepreneurship or a demanding career.

Now, I’d say that I have a fairly demanding career, with multiple projects on the go at any time, ranging from small process improvements to managing multi-million dollar contracts. And if I choose, I could easily spend 24 hours a day working on one thing or another, or finding more that can be done within the scope of my work (or the scope that I’d theoretically expand it to).

The thing is, perhaps this is where I’m different; I don’t base my success purely around my work. Maybe that’s why I’m writing on work-life balance. Sure, I enjoy my job, I do want to succeed in it and there are times when it expands to fill more hours than I’d ideally like (hence the drop in posting frequency of late). I also enjoy time with my fiancée, our families, our friends, and doing lots of other things, whether alone or with others. Maintaining a balance of all of these things is my goal.

This might explain why I agree with the individual parts of this article. I do agree that the system seems backwards in that a lot of workplaces expect the greatest level of time commitment during the time when many people are trying to raise their families and be a part of their children’s lives. While I’d say that the statement, “a personal life in your twenties typically means bars, friends, girlfriends and boyfriends,” is perhaps a little too large a generalization, I would agree that for some (perhaps more), “all of [these] can take a back seat to work if you make that choice.”

I think what’s overlooked are the last five words to that sentence: “If you make that choice.” Choice is the key aspect that I find missing. Ryan has chosen the life of an entrepreneur. He arguably knew what he was getting in to, and what he was foregoing when he started this venture. For those that choose that or similar paths, I’d say this article is fairly accurate. If you want to succeed, and your scale of success is career oriented, then I’d say that you do, “need to have the desire and ability to work 24 hours a day.”

I’d say that’s too limiting, and through this process, I think that is my problem with the article. When it’s entitled something as general as, “The New Work-Life Balance,” and it wraps up with, “It’s the new work-life balance: work now, balance later,” one would think that this is an article with a fairly general application, focused on work-life balance. But instead it basically says that if you want to succeed in entrepreneurship or your career in your 20’s then balance doesn’t exist. I don’t think I’d call that work-life balance.

If your path is different, with different goals, different obligations, and a different scale by which to measure, then you need to work with that now. Even if some of your goals are longer term, leaving them out of your planning today can make them that much harder to achieve in the future.