Work-life balance, work-life harmony, work-life integration, or even mixing public and private life; whenever we face work, there is always a discussion about endless work and life.

If you ask someone who seems like a manager, they may talk about life through work like Jeff Bezos of Amazon. If you ask someone else, they may say that is just corporate servitude. Both positions exist. Recently Jeff Bezos, or the New York Times, also stirred up the media.

Full memo: Jeff Bezos responds to brutal NYT story, says it doesn’t represent the Amazon he leads … _The cruel and back-stabbing environment described by The New York Times in a report this weekend on the workplace…_www.geekwire.com

Then there is the job called engineer. Engineering requires learning, which makes this problem even harder. According to one article, more than twenty hours of study per month may be necessary.

ITエンジニアの勉強時間は月20時間以上！？好きなことして生きる方法 - paiza開発日誌 _こんにちは、今回は谷口がお送りします。 ITエンジニアの皆さんは、普段どれくらいの時間、プログラミングの勉強をしていますか？エンジニアであれば、 仕事でもプライベートでもプログラミングをしているという人が多い のではないかと思います。 …_paiza.hatenablog.com

Now, the title actually has a small trick in it.

Read normally, it can mean:

Fulfillment of “work and life” that never “ends”

But I also tried to make it readable as:

Fulfillment of “work that never ends” and “life that will someday end”

Work basically never ends. A company may disappear one day or someone may be fired, but those are partial cases. Looking at the world as a whole, work never disappears, because it is something like an activity of humanity as a whole.

Life, however, is personal, and it will someday end. There is no such thing as the life of humanity as a whole; each person has their own life. That is why life someday ends.

For that reason, my view is that we should value the life that will someday end. You are the only one who can value your own life. Then, based on that, you think about work.

In other words, work and life are not things that can be compared. It is better to think that work exists within life.

So my view is:

Work based on your own life.

One more important thing at the end:

Life is an absolute value system, while work is a relative value system.

There is no need to compare your life with other people. It is enough if it is good for you. If you relativize it, it moves away from fulfillment. You should not bring relative values such as cost performance into questions of life.

On the other hand, work is based on relative values. Work is done for someone else, and teamwork is necessary, so decisions need to be made with relativized values. Thinking in terms such as cost performance is important. And maybe, once in a while, it is okay to show a little absolute value too.