This resonates with me a lot. All over my life, even when I was still just a student, I've had people telling me that I could do much better and that I could as

This resonates with me a lot. All over my life, even when I was still just a student, I've had people telling me that I could do much better and that I could aspire to much more. I invariably looked at their proposal, saw a huge amount of work that I was definitely not willing to put, and I continued my path of having the minimization of stress as one of my main priorities. I've mentioned this a couple of times here in HN: the real trick is to keep learning outside of your job. Don't count on your job as a source of intellectual satisfaction; if you learn something while on the clock, that's great, but that will come and go. Having a steady source of brain food outside your job gives you much more control and ends up being much more satisfying. Also, never ever trade sleep hours for work hours. Sleep as much as your body wants, work as much as you are stipulated (i.e. 40h a week and no more), and squeeze as many satisfying activities (learning, in my case) out of the rest of the time. And yes, diversify if you want: this is why I dropped out of a PhD and started new degrees instead. I guess that this applies to me because I have zero ambitions outside the purely intellectual ones. YMMV. I strongly feel like I would be much more miserable if I were more ambitious, especially taking into account that I've been, for a long time, acutely aware that time is much much more valuable than money.