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Will.i.am is busy. When he’s not writing hit songs like “OMG” for Usher, he’s looking for the next big pop star on The Voice UK, or running his new AI company, FYI. So how exactly does he balance it all?
The Grammy Award–winning artist turned tech entrepreneur revealed to Fortune that he maxes out the five-to-nine after the daily grind of his nine-to-five, and he advises Gen Zers to forget about work-life balance if they want to emulate his success.
“If you’re trying to build something that doesn’t exist, it’s about dream-reality balance,” he says. “Work-life balance means that you’re working for somebody else’s dream. You just have a job supporting somebody else’s dream, and you want to balance your work and your life.
“But if it’s dream-reality balance, then it’s not work. It’s a dream that you’re trying to put into reality, and you’re ignoring your current reality.”
For example, after working on his tech venture from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Will.i.am says that he goes back to work on his creative business until 9 p.m. But before his AI company was a reality, his day was flipped. He’d work on music first before dipping into his tech side hustle well into the evening.
It’s why he advises young people to reframe how they think of their time off work and their current nine-to-five reality.
“I’m not really paying attention to this reality,” he explains. “I’m trying to bring that one [a new business venture or idea] here and focusing on how do I get people who believe in this dream to help me materialize it? So for that, you have to make some type of sacrifice to bring this thing that doesn’t exist here.
“From that perspective, work-life balance is not for the architects that are pulling visions into reality. Those words don’t compute to the mindset of the materializers.”
Will.i.am doesn’t even take time out for his birthday — and goes to work in China on Boxing Day
Of course, many young people already devote hours to their side hustles and personal development after work. Millions of Gen Zers and millennials are tuning into people’s five-to-nine evening routines on TikTok.
But Will.i.am says chipping away at your dream when most people are off work extends to weekends, birthdays, and holidays.
“I didn’t party. I was always a square, meaning, ‘You work too much, man, let’s go out.’ Like what? Go out. I don’t want to go out. I just always worked,” the rapper says. “It’s your birthday what are you gonna do? Work. You ain’t gonna celebrate?”
The multimillionaire says he’s always saved the celebrating for the stage, where he can finally enjoy the fruits of his labor.
“There’s nothing that’s ever gonna feel that glorious than when you’re actually at a festival. But how do you get to headline a festival? You’ve got to work. My friends would go out and party, hanging out with chicks, doing drugs, drinking. I was just in the studio working, writing songs.”
To this day, he says that he hasn’t gone out and celebrated a birthday — including his most recent one, which was on March 15.
“Like on Christmas for the past 12 years: I could celebrate Christmas with my family, and then on the 26th, I fly to China because that’s dream maker heaven. Anything you want to make is there.”
Will.i.am was speaking to Fortune in Rome for the rollout of Raidio.FYI radios in Mercedes-Benz cars.
Will.i.am’s daily work routine
7 a.m.: Will.i.am is not a part of the CEO-approved 5 a.m. club. Instead, he told Fortune he wakes up at around 7 a.m., and he sticks to this routine whether he’s living in L.A. or London.
8 a.m.: “I walk, do my calls, and get to work,” he says, with the aim to start work at 9 a.m.
9 a.m. to 5 p.m.: “I get a lot done from nine to 12, do my little lunch, then back to work at one, finish at five, and that’s all my tech, like entrepreneurial activities.”
5 p.m. to 9 p.m.: “The night hours are creativity,” he says, adding that specifically between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. is when he gets the best ideas. “That’s the juicy bits, [when] I’m freaking soaking in emotion, to where I just rinse it out in the phone.”
9 p.m. onward: When Will.i.am was in his late twenties, he says going to sleep at 4 a.m. (and waking up at noon) was the norm. But now, at 50 and balancing both his tech and music ventures, he starts unwinding for bed after 9 p.m. and is asleep by 11 p.m.
Written by Orianna Rosa Royle for Fortune as “Multimillionaire musician Will.i.am says work-life balance is for people ‘working on someone else’s dream’ and not for visionaries—he grinds from 5-to-9 after his 9-to-5” and republished with permission.
