At least by one metric (number of comments–a whole four!), yesterday’s post on work-life balance clearly struck a cord. It’s obvious that this is something people care a great deal about, and I want to expand upon my point, because I think I may have sacrificed clarity for brevity.

You may be familiar with the story of Archimedes, the famed Greek mathematician who discovered, among other things, how to determine the volume of any object regardless of its shape. As the legend goes, poor Archimedes had been summoned by his king to find a way to determine whether a gift, a wreath claimed to be made of solid gold, was all it was cracked up to be. Of course, melting down the gift to find out what was really inside was a non-starter, and Archimedes wrestled with this problem for weeks–all the while being tortured by his king to find a solution.

Realizing her husband was on the brink of exhaustion, Archimedes’ wife encouraged him to take a break. Don’t worry, she assured him, a solution would come in due time. Soon after, while taking a bath, Archimedes noticed the water level rise as he got in. In a moment of respite, the genius had stumbled upon displacement as a way to determine volume. So excited was he, the story goes, that he cried Eureka! and ran dripping wet and butt naked all the way to the castle to report his findings.

It’s a charming tale, but by now you’re probably thinking that I just disproved my theory–had Archimedes not taken a break from his work he might not have discovered displacement at all–but that was far from my point. Indeed, some of my own best ideas come at the most surprising times, when I’m not working on a problem at all. It’s as if the moment you stop searching for something it finally reveals itself.

The message I was trying to relay is that if your work is truly something you enjoy, then there’s no need to feel guilty about enjoying it. Too often we see work as this thing we do in order to earn enough money to do the things we really want, but why can’t we see that both are possible at the same time?

This has nothing to do with being too busy to call your mom on Mothers Day, helping coach your kid’s little league game, or finding the time to spend a quiet evening at home with your loving wife. Of course those things are important. Rather, it’s about that guilt that amasses when we feel like we spend our entire lives as machines destined to work, work work. And it’s also about finding work that feels like fun, fun, fun, in a way that fulfillment, not guilt, consumes us. I’d argue that entrepreneurs are more likely than most to attain this enlightenment, in the sense of having the audacity to follow their dreams regardless of the risk.

No matter what you do, whether you work at a company big or small, whether you work 20 or 100 hours a week, remember that it’s possible to find harmony and balance in your life every second of the day, regardless of the task.