Marc Andreessen: I don't believe in work-life balance - clip from Lex Fridman Podcast #386 with Marc Andreessen. Guest bio: Marc Andreessen is the co-creator of Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

You told Tim Ferriss that the perfect day is caffeine for 10 hours and alcohol for four hours. You didn't think I'd be mentioning this, did you? It balances everything out perfectly, as you said. It's so perfect. So let me ask, what's the secret to balance and maybe to happiness in life? I don't believe in balance, so I'm the wrong person to ask about that. Can you elaborate why you don't believe in balance? I mean, maybe it's just, and I, look, I think people, I think people are wired differently, so I think it's hard to generalize this kind of thing, but I am much happier and more satisfied when I'm fully committed to something, so I'm very much in favor of imbalance, yeah. Imbalance, and that applies to work, to life, to everything. Yeah, now I happen to have whatever twist of personality traits lead that in non-destructive dimensions, including the fact that I've actually, I now no longer do the 10-4 plan. I stopped drinking. I do the caffeine, but not the alcohol, so there's something in my personality where whatever maladaption I have is inclining me towards productive things, not unproductive things. So you're one of the wealthiest people in the world. What's the relationship between wealth and happiness? Oh, uh. Money and happiness. So I think happiness, I don't think happiness is the thing. To strive for? I think satisfaction is the thing. That just sounds like happiness, but turned down a bit. No, deeper. So happiness is, you know, a walk in the woods at sunset, an ice cream cone, a kiss. The first ice cream cone is great. The thousandth ice cream cone, not so much. At some point, the walks in the woods get boring. What's the distinction between happiness and satisfaction? I think satisfaction is a deeper thing, which is like having found a purpose and fulfilling it, being useful. So just something that permeates all your days, just this general contentment of being useful. That I'm fully satisfying my faculties, that I'm fully delivering on the gifts that I've been given, that I'm net making the world better, that I'm contributing to the people around me, and that I can look back and say, wow, that was hard, but it was worth it. I think generally it seems to lead people in a better state than pursuit of pleasure, pursuit of quote-unquote happiness. Does money have anything to do with that? I think the founding fathers in the US threw this off kilter when they used the phrase pursuit of happiness. I think they should have said. Pursuit of satisfaction. If they said pursuit of satisfaction, we might live in a better world today. Well, they could have elaborated on a lot of things they've written about. They could have tweaked the second amendment a little bit. I think they were smarter than they realized. They said, you know what? We're gonna make it ambiguous and let these humans figure out the rest. These tribal cult-like humans figure out the rest. But money empowers that? So I think, and I think they're, I mean, look, I think Elon is, I don't think I'm even a great example, but I think Elon would be the great example of this, which is like, look, he's a guy who from every day of his life, from the day he started making money at all, he just plows into the next thing. And so I think money is definitely an enabler for satisfaction. I was supposed to say, money applied to happiness leads people down very dark paths, very destructive avenues. Money applied to satisfaction, I think, could be, is a real tool. I always look, by the way, I was like, you know, Elon is the case study for behavior. But the other thing that has always really made me think is Larry Page was asked one time what his approach to philanthropy was. And he said, oh, just my philanthropic plan is just give all the money to Elon.