I haven't worked 40-hour weeks in nearly 7 years, and have recently started working for myself as a consultant. If you go this route, it can be very rewarding.

I haven't worked 40-hour weeks in nearly 7 years, and have recently started working for myself as a consultant. If you go this route, it can be very rewarding. Work no longer becomes something you "have" to do, or something you escape during the weekends, but instead something you're doing because you want to, and doing it as much or as little as you want (within reason, you still probably have bills). The most important lesson I can share is to be forgiving to yourself. You will definitely spend whole days watching youtube or doing something 'unproductive', sometimes for long stretches. Then you'll get dizzy thinking of all the lost opportunity and feel even worse that all you're doing is being 'unproductive'. Remember this is normal, and human. If you're able to tell yourself it's OK, and try to just aim for being a little better about it, you'll be fine. If you beat yourself up about it, it'll just take you that much longer to get out of it and get to things you want to do. Nowadays I recognize my unproductive cycles as a need to do something different for a while (eg. drawing, cooking, music) but it took some time to get used to harnessing my own motivation and accepting that it waxes and wanes as it does.