‘If you love what you do, you don’t need work-life balance, you need work-life integration’
Brewdog co-founder James Watt says he has suffered a wave of abuse since he shared his controversial comments on work-life balance on social media.
The businessman said the idea of work-life balance is an invention by “job haters” in a bizarre social media post.
Standing next to his fiancé Georgia Toffolo, Watt suggested balancing your career with a healthy personal life is problematic and is for people who dislike their job.
“I think the whole concept of work-life balance was invented by people who hate the job they do, so if you love what you do, you don’t need work-life balance, you need work-life integration,” he said in the Instagram video, which he has since deleted.
His fiancée Toffolo continued: “It’s so true, when I met James I was quite taken aback at how aligned we are in the important stuff and one of those things was a lack of work-life balance in a really beautiful way.
“Work knows no bounds. Constantly in our home, we are working but we do things we find incredibly fulfilling and we also have a supportive other half that loves that high-octane obsession with what we do.
“I’ve always known I would end up with someone like James because it would not work otherwise. If someone was saying ‘you need to knock off now’ I would be thinking ‘what, do you not like my business? Do you not believe in me? Are we not striving towards the same thing?’”
It wasn’t long before the clip started doing the rounds on social media, with many mocking the multi-millionaire couple for their ‘work-life integration’ suggestion.
Watt had initially uploaded the clip to Instagram. However, he ended up deleting the video, explaining in a follow-up post that the comments has “crossed the line from debate to personal abuse.”
Watt revealed that he had suffered homophobic abuse as well as people saying they want to ‘murder him with a hammer’.
He said: “People are saying they’d like to murder me with a hammer.
“All because I posted about my approach to work-life balance on Instagram…
“The video went down well on here last week, with almost 2 million views and the vast majority of the responses being overwhelmingly positive.
“But on other platforms where it went viral, the amount of abuse I received was off the charts.
“And whilst I am always up for respectful discussion, there are only so many times you can be called a gay Scottish egg-headed c*** in one day.”
In a re-upload of the video, he added “some context” about what he meant with his words.
Watt wrote that his words were “just my perspective” and acknowledged “everyone has their own take on work-life balance versus work-life integration.”
He also said his content was “aimed at founders, entrepreneurs and people who want to push their careers forward.”
The business owner, who has an estimated net worth of around £262m, went on to say that “most successful leaders I know don’t separate work from life” and that “integration doesn’t mean chaos,” explaining this can “be as simple as reading books, watching movies, or listening to podcasts that inspire growth.”
