Once you understand and are persuaded of how everything hinges on your savings rate, this gives greater confidence to take sabbaticals, or explore other options

Once you understand and are persuaded of how everything hinges on your savings rate, this gives greater confidence to take sabbaticals, or explore other options including self-employment. Temporarily dropping your spend rate is both a useful exercise and a way to extend things even farther. According to that article, if your savings rate is 50% of your take-home pay, you're done in 16 years. If your savings rate is 64%, you're done in 11 years. Both of these assume you're starting from zero. I'm still working, but I've found the mindset change from that article (and many others on his site) to be extremely useful when choosing how to spend my time and money now. Think of it as just another tool in your toolkit for making the most of life, both now and in the future.