The Grammy Award–winning artist turned tech entrepreneur revealed to Fortune that he maxes out the 5-to-9 after the daily grind of his 9-to-5, 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 9-to-5 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 put in hours to their side hustles and personal development after work. Millions of Gen Zers and millennials are tuning into people’s 5-to-9 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 just last week 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. 

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on March 23, 2025.

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Meanwhile, the Midwest and Northeast have been blanketed by record snow this December, a payday for skiers who usually covet conditions out West.

In the Western mountains where snow is crucial for ski tourism — not to mention water for millions of acres (hectares) of crops and the daily needs of tens of millions of people — much less snow than usual has piled up.

“Mother Nature has been dealing a really hard deck,” said Kevin Cooper, president of the Kirkwood Ski Education Foundation, a ski racing organization at Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada line.

Only a small percentage of lifts were open and snow depths were well below average at Lake Tahoe resorts, just one example of warm weather causing well-below-average snowpack in almost all of the West.

In Utah, warmth has indefinitely postponed this winter’s Midway Ice Castles, an attraction 45 minutes east of Salt Lake City that requires cold temperatures to freeze water into building-size, palatial features. Temperatures in the area that will host part of the 2034 Winter Olympics have averaged 7-10 degrees (3-5 degrees Celsius) above normal in recent weeks, according to the National Weather Service.

Near Vail, Colorado, Bearcat Stables owner Nicole Godley hopes wagons will be a good-enough substitute for sleighs for rides through mountain scenery.

“It’s the same experience, the same ride, the same horses,” Godley said. “It’s more about, you know, just these giant horses and the Western rustic feel.”

In the Northwest, torrential rain has washed out roads and bridges and flooded homes. Heavy mountain snow finally arrived late this week in Washington state but flood-damaged roads that might not be fixed for months now block access to some ski resorts.

In Oregon, the Upper Deschutes Basin has had the slowest start to snow accumulation in records dating to 1981. Oregon, Idaho and western Colorado had their warmest Novembers on record, with temperatures ranging from 6-8.5 degrees (2-4 degrees Celsius) warmer than average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Continued warmth could bring yet another year of drought and wildfires to the West. Most of the region except large parts of Colorado and Oregon has seen decent precipitation but as rain instead of snow, pointed out NOAA drought information coordinator Jason Gerlich.

That not only doesn’t help skiers but farmers, ranchers and people from Denver to Los Angeles who rely on snowpack water for their daily existence. Rain runs off all at once at times when it’s not necessarily needed.

“That snowpack is one of our largest reservoirs for water supply across the West,” Gerlich said.

Climate scientists agree that limiting global warming is critical to staving off the snow-to-rain trend.

In the northeastern U.S., meanwhile, below-normal temperatures have meant snow instead of rain. Parts of Vermont have almost triple and Ohio double the snowfall they had this time last year.

Vermont’s Killington Resort and Pico Mountain, had about 100 trails open for “by far the best conditions I have ever seen for this time of year,” said Josh Reed, resort spokesman who has lived in Killington for a decade.

New Hampshire ski areas opening early include Cannon Mountain, with over 50 inches (127 centimeters) to date. In northern Vermont, Elena Veatch, 31, already has cross-country skied more this fall than she has over the past two years.

“I don’t take a good New England winter for granted with our warming climate,” Veatch said.

Out West, it’s still far too early to rule out hope for snow. A single big storm can “turn things around rather quickly,” pointed out Gerlich, the NOAA coordinator.

Lake Tahoe’s snow forecast over Thanksgiving week didn’t pan out but Cooper with the ski racing group is eyeing possibly several feet (1-2 meters) in the long-term forecast.

“That would be so cool!” Cooper said.

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Janie Har in San Francisco, Michael Casey in Boston and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed. Gruver reported from Fort Collins, Colorado.

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