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Building a vision of life without work (2015)

• silexia 5y ago
  I built my company and have had wealth enough to retire for a decade. Work gives us meaning and purpose and sharpens our skills and minds. I plan to never retire.
• lastgeniusua 5y ago
  it's called communism
  • disintegore 5y ago
    I am immediately reminded of the Soviet union's full employment policy, and the absurd jobs they had to invent in order to fulfill it. As a matter of fact they regarded a lack of unemployment as a clear indicator of the superiority of socialism over capitalism. More on this : https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employment/ https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employmen... With that said, I expected an article on post-work society. I'm a little bit disappointed.
    • Koshkin 5y ago
      Except that, theoretically, “communism” is different from “socialism”, and, indeed, in a communist society one could choose not to do anything “useful” (since no one has to work for a living).
      • disintegore 5y ago
        I don't believe the Leninist notion of communism incorporated the idea of "not working for a living" either, but I could be wrong.
        • Koshkin 5y ago
          This is simply a consequence of all goods being available to anyone free of charge.
          • disintegore 5y ago
            Goods which, presumably, appear into existence through pure magic.
            • Koshkin 5y ago
              One of the tenets of the theory of the communist society is that most people would choose to work (a few hours a day).
        • huragok 5y ago
          Small-c communism the theory and large-C Communism the Marxist-Leninist tendency.
        • mmcdermott 5y ago
          The root difference between communism and capitalism comes down to their respective views of human nature. Communism views human as fundamentally decent but are made lower by the exploitation of those with capital and power. Capitalism, on the other hand, views human beings as lacking this decent base and presupposes that they will not produce things of mutual benefit without motivation. The critique of communism that people will not work for a living isn't so much based on the ideas in communism itself (which devoted a lot of propaganda to the noble farmer and mechanic) but on what the net result of the policy of equal distribution would cause. Someone who believes in capitalism necessarily believes that a communist system removes the incentive to work.
          • disintegore 5y ago
            That would imply that the individual in question cannot imagine any incentive to work other than the profit motive, which in my eyes is not only an extremely depressing notion to contemplate, but also one that falls apart very rapidly if you consider that human society predates capitalism by thousands of years, and that even within capitalist society itself there are countless examples of the opposite.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  This is one of the biggest missing pieces in internet FIRE discussions. So much of the FIRE discourse is about not working that many don’t realize that they’re going to be extremely bored with 16 hours to fill every day. Worse, their friends are all busy with their lives. It’s actually a common failure point of FIRE post-mittens that didn’t work out. Especially with couples, where it’s more likely that at least one person will realize that maybe jobs, and the sense of purpose and social life that comes with them, aren’t so bad. The other big issue is that people underestimate their spending in a post-work FIRE lifestyle. It’s tempting to subtract out costs like commuting and work clothes and assume your costs will go down. In practice, if you plan on traveling and spending more time on hobbies your costs are likely to go up.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Got to admit that watching people struggle with the question of what to do without a job to fill their time is just completely wild to me. It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has so little they want to do outside of work that they can't easily find ways to fill up the 8+ hours a day their job takes from them. I have a list of things I'd like to do a mile long that I know I'll never actually find time to do because I've prioritized other shit I want to do.
    • luffapi 5y ago
      Exactly I have so many hobbies, social opportunities, home improvement projects, chores… that get neglected because the bulk of my time and energy goes to work. I’ve saved enough to have multiple year breaks in my career and not once was I at a loss for something to do. Quite the opposite, it was apparent exactly how much of my life was being wasted on goals I found uninteresting (at best), all in the name of not starving to death or living on the street.
    • nend 5y ago
      It's a completely wild thought to most people. It's one of the reasons why so many people end up struggling with it. "That won't happen to me, no need to make a plan for how to avoid it or make a plan for what to do if it happens, because it's not going to happen." Obviously not everyone has problems filling their time. But for most people it's difficult to imagine what it'd take to fill years worth of free time, when they've never experienced anything close to having to do that.
• clipradiowallet 5y ago
  I hope I have this problem some day. Retirement seems a long, long, long way off. Feeling the rat race pretty intensely the last 5 years.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I feel you. I don't know if it is the pandemic or I've just reached mid-life-crisis age, but I'm so ready to not be working that I'm considering just quitting right now and killing myself when the money eventually runs out.
    • Nemrod67 5y ago
      please don't kill yourself, there needs to be more people being fed up for things to move, not less :)
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • solarengineer 5y ago
      I recently played out this scenario where I run out of money and then just end myself instead of begging. I concluded that I'm extremely likely to be doing something meaningful and would rather have the survival money. So that's what I'm focused on now - working on my bucket list, moving towards meaningful activities already and figuring out how much I'd need to becoming financially independent. The Bogleheads website has proven useful. Edit: My message for those who think that killing themselves might be a reasonable choice: There are those who wish for just that one extra day for meaningful work or to be with their loved ones. While not all may have loved ones, a person could find something meaningful to do. For those who like the Marvel movies, I think Tony Stark ended up doing rather well with the gift of life that he'd received in the first Iron Man movie. Another inspiring quote for me was from the Star Trek movie: "Your father was captain for a total of 20 minutes. In those 20 minutes, he saved 800 lives. I dare you to do better".
      • 5y ago
• kevinwang 5y ago
  This person also posted an amazing, unvarnished update recently (about 5-6 years later): https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-update/ https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u...
  • SavantIdiot 5y ago
    This follow up is way more compelling because it deals with the reality. I'm jealous of the authors communication skills and their partner's: there are some very hard statements in there about feeling worthless and falling behind because of no job. I wonder of those words were spoken calmly, or shouted through tears. Here are their discussions: https://livingafi.com/post-fire-relationship-disconnect/ https://livingafi.com/post-fire-relationship-disconnect/ TL;DR: He has to go back to work due to medical issues, and his relationship didn't work out. But he's still got his chin up and it's great.
    • quietbritishjim 5y ago
      > [article author, to wife] ... I thought that what you wanted was to live a life of freedom, with me. We’d talked about this. > [article author's wife] Not exactly. I wanted to have kids with you and work and be like everyone else. Live a normal life. I’m tired of being weird. And I don’t want to go back to work if you aren’t. That’s weird too. You wouldn’t even be a stay-at-home-dad. You’d be nothing. > [article author] And that was it. That the second big ticket problem, critical issue #2. She couldn’t get her head around the idea that we were different. I don't buy his analysis. I don't think she wanted to do those things because others were doing them. I think she wanted to have kids and a classic family and happened to point out, oh, by the way, other people do those things too. Maybe it's easier to think that your former partner is shallow and busy comparing herself to others, rather than admit that the desire to start a family is a normal and genetically ingrained emotion. Ironically, his new partner has told him she's interested in having kids and they're both working. I know, it's easy to claim to understand from an armchair, and I'm not saying I've necessarily got this right, but it's definitely interesting to consider.
      • deleted 5y ago
• mwidell 5y ago
  I think it helped me a lot to "practice" by living on nothing but saved money for 6-12 month periods a couple of times earlier in life. I always found myself very happy and with plenty of exciting things to do during these periods, so when I finally left the rat race for real I knew exactly how I wanted to structure my life.
• madmaniak 5y ago
  The worst thing about not working, travelling, meeting lots of great people and ideas is that those people "needs" to work. So you don't hang around too much, and their ideas are not being developed with time.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ModernMech 5y ago
  work - noun - activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. This article conflates "working for a living" and "work". In our society, we don't seem to consider work outside of employment by a corporation to be actual work. But activities like child care, elder care, household maintenance, community volunteering, pursuing an education, creation of art are all examples of unpaid work that we do every day that are important to society. Even open source coding for free is work. If you don't have to work for a living, there's still a lot of work to be done. The flip side to this is, as a society, we should probably start paying for all the unpaid societal work people do for free. IMO this is the best argument for something like UBI.
  • tomrod 5y ago
    There is a term for this kind of work: cottage industry. My understanding is that it isn't captured by most standard economic measures, like GDP.
• vessenes 5y ago
  I find the FIRE folks very interesting. If you read the followup post at https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-update/ https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u... you will find out that this lifestyle isn't for everyone, or for everyone's partners. One thing I think the FIRE folks can miss is the sense of worth, improvement in personal power and confidence that comes from struggling. Struggling could be making things, building a business, learning job skills, writing a novel, whatever. However, 5 years of just 'I checked my investments, I'm in within 1% of nominal, I guess I should feel no stress right now!' shouldn't be the end; many people interested in this lifestyle seem to feel like they have arrived when they can do that. As a launch point, it has its benefits. But to my mind, it shouldn't ever be thought of as a goal in itself. I read the follow up post as a sort of tacit admission that the FIRE lifestyle can lead to this huge gap in personal development, and often during really key years for relationship and brain development, 30s and 40s are super prime years for learning and applying learning. It seems like a terrible waste to spend it sitting on one's metaphorical porch, sipping tea.
  • GavinMcG 5y ago
    I agree. The author blamed his former partner's unhappiness—in her own words, a feeling like they weren't "going anywhere," like there was no "forward progress," like there was no longer a "sense of momentum"—the author chalks all this up to a "pressure to keep up with the mythical Joneses" and to the idea that she is simply "wired to be like everyone else." It takes him a year and a half to realize that maybe goals and purpose matter: "without my former partner, I became depressed and anxious and again struggled with one of the great questions that terrorizes us all: Purpose."
    • GavinMcG 5y ago
      As a side note: I think the author probably is still getting it wrong on a certain level. He concludes that "[t]he most important cog in the machinery of my personal happiness turned out to be a simple one: Having a wonderful partner." This exemplifies an unhealthy relationship with boundaries and a disposition toward codependency. To be fair, he also acknowledges that "money doesn’t make you happy. People do. Connections and relationships do. Purpose helps, too." Those are all true. But going so far as to make someone else "the most important cog" is problematic, as the author had a chance to learn. Making someone else responsible for your personal happiness puts an enormous amount of pressure on them, and infidelity is a predictable (though morally wrong) reaction to a relationship of dependency. The author still doesn't "get it" looking back: his "one regret" is that he "didn’t take [his] partner’s initial unhappiness more seriously." But he describes how seriously he did take it: "I encouraged her to explore her own life and find activities and goals that would help her feel better. I suggested therapy and offered to go with her. I was clear that if she wanted to go back to work I was eager to support her in this. I wanted her to do anything that might help." He concludes: "my suggestions and support weren’t enough — I never could figure out what she wanted or how I could help." But this is just more of the same problematic dynamic re: boundaries. It wasn't his job to fix his partner or to make her happy any more than it's fair to make the other person responsible for his own happiness. On the other hand, he's currently "not so much worried about a life without work as I am a life without meaning or purpose or love" and making those "exist in harmony, and without a ton of financial stress." And that's about all any of us can hope for. I hope he stays focused on finding meaning (outside having a particular person feel positively about him!) for the long haul.
• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  I'm 52 and have 2.5MM in an IRA (200k cash) and debt of just a $200k mortgage (and this is weaksauce compared to my peers who all became VPs or C*Os). And the idea of trying to live off an IRA that is currently stocks/bonds/ETFs scares the bejeebers out of me. I think it is more about the personality than the money: do you have the risk-tolerance like this guy to say "fuck it, it will all work out," or are you like me and think, "its still not enough ... inflation is gonna explode ... the market will collapse as soon as i quit ... if i stop working i'll never get hired again because i'm old ... if i retire early i'll probably get in car accident and go broke from medical bills...". Some of us are just naturally full of panic, others can jump into the mist and be OK with that. EDIT: Added this scene from Indiana Jones (#3) that has stuck with me my whole life (and I'm an athiest!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JIfjNnnMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JIfjNnnMA
  • someelephant 5y ago
    Sorry to hear you operate at such a high baseline anxiety. I certainly hope you've explored every avenue outside addictive medications for getting it under control. And yes, I think any American should rightfully be terrified of being bankrupted by medical bills. But the world is a big place and a lot of it is much safer than the US.
    • SavantIdiot 5y ago
      Thanks. My therapist has taught me a technique of collecting "past evidence" every time I start to spin-out, and it helps me control it, but I'm not sure I could apply it to such a big thing, yet. We're working on it. But I like his approach more than my friends who are like, "you are better off than 99% of the USA so STFU." Yes, I know that, but it doesn't address the core mental issue(s).
    • mikem170 5y ago
      > American should rightfully be terrified of being bankrupted by medical bills FYI: Retirement accounts are protected from medical bills in many states, even without filing bankruptcy. This varies, and the amount protected, by state. The feds allow one million dollars in an ira to be protected from medical bills if declaring bankruptcy. [0] [0] https://pocketsense.com/can-ira-pay-medical-bills-7887792.html https://pocketsense.com/can-ira-pay-medical-bills-7887792.ht...
• fallingfrog 5y ago
  I would fill 110% of every day with meaningful activity if I didn’t have a job.
  • someelephant 5y ago
    The issue a lot of that activity is acutely meaningful because you lack time now.
• kebman 5y ago
  "What will you do with your time?" How many of you really have a problem answering that? Am I the only lucky one who's got a gazillion projects I want to finish all at once???
  • LesZedCB 5y ago
    if you got more than four paragraphs down you would read > If you are one of these people, congratulations. You’ve already got the answers you need. Although you may be retiring FROM something, you’re also very clear on what you’re retiring TO. You can stop reading right now.
    • kebman 5y ago
      Got stuff to do, so naturally I stopped reading a lot sooner.
• giantg2 5y ago
  If it's difficult to envision yourself without work, then you probably put too much of your identity into your work. Maybe that's not a bad thing if you truly love your job, but for most of us that is a huge mistake. Finding passions outside of work and approaching ideas as a child would is the simplest way to phrase the solution. As a child everything is new and exciting, it's easy to entertain yourself (quite cheaply too), there is less aversion to doing new things than someone who has spent decades being conditioned via a familiar and habitual routine.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • bpodgursky 5y ago
    Ah, I can do this too: If it's easy to envision yourself without work (or a passionate constructive hobby like art or writing), you're probably not a very interesting person.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• michalf6 5y ago
  Society which values work will outcompete the one which does not. You and people around you aren't the only ones on this planet, there are highly motivated people elsewhere who will gladly put in effort to take your place.
  • ElViajero 5y ago
    > who will gladly put in effort to take your place. That sounds completely alien to my experience. I go on vacation around 2 months a year. I work only the stipulated hours. And I have a great job, with great conditions, working with amazing people, learning things and having fun. This kind of mindset and approach to life gives me a peace of mind that allows me to have meaningful discussions, to mediate in disagreements and to not be too invested so I can easily adapt to new circumstances. Working "harder" just creates a tunnel vision, maybe is ok if your job is to sit in a chair and do nothing. But for any job that requires mind or body to be in shape, you need vacations and take it easy to perform at top capacity. On the other side if it really as you say and everything is about competition, then investing so much in just your job is going to make you lose at the rest of non-work competitions in live. But, I do not think that this is true.
  • mitjak 5y ago
    why should we compete? what does "victory" amount to? i'd gladly give up winning in favour of some form of survival guarantee and freedom to choose work rather than require it for survival.
    • heliodor 5y ago
      You're thinking of this from the wrong point of view. This is about evolution and dominance. A culture in which work is highly valued (even so far as at the expense of the individual) will expand and squeeze out other cultures. The same way a successful gene will reproduce and take over. Two excellent books that delve into this area are "Stumbling on Happiness" and "Sapiens".
      • mitjak 5y ago
• zoba 5y ago
  I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup and have been on a work-hiatus for almost a year. Now, I live amongst Amish people in the country. My biggest insight has been a mindset change. Previously my underlying approach to life looked like: "I will do X which will enable me to do Y so that I can finally do Z." I now approach my days with "What will make me happy?" This is an experiment I'm performing. A structured life feels safe and orderly - but what if living life and letting things unfold more 'organically' is better? It is a weird/uncomfortable shift because I can't predict what is coming. As an example, turns out I really enjoy building dams. A couple months ago I would not have been able to tell you that I'd be building a dam. I have no idea what it is that drives my own interests or affinities, but now instead of attempting to manipulate them for whatever X, Y, or Z goal... I just roll with wherever they take me. And they always seem ready to take me somewhere. My point is: In a life without work (in my experience) stuff will come up. Follow what arises, see where it goes. It certainly feels better.
  • low_common 5y ago
    Are you rich/have no kids? Because most people probably cannot relate to the life you're living right now.
    • low_common 5y ago
      Edit: Sorry, I did not read the article before reading your comment. The point was "what are you retiring to?" I understand what you're saying now.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • TheSmiddy 5y ago
      "I was 2nd employee at a unicorn startup" They're rich.
    • lupire 5y ago
      I don't think the Amish are particularly rich or childless?
• deleted 5y ago
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• xor99 5y ago
  Similar ideas explored here: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ http://earlyretirementextreme.com/
• kaycebasques 5y ago
  I've been on a 1-year sabbatical as of 4 June 2021. Not the exact same as early retirement but I bet the motivations / experiences probably have parallels. I'll note my own responses as someone 1-month into a period of no work: > Let’s talk a bit about the idea of loss. Having a sense of loss is not restricted to things that you like or love. I don't feel that much yet, but intuitively I see how it might creep up in the coming months. > When most people ask you what you’re going to do with your free time, they typically see you sitting at home, alone, in an empty space. Personally, I absolutely do not have that problem and is probably why I knew I could take the leap. There is SO much that I want to do and work on, I don't even think a year is enough time. > folks who cruise into post-employment life with a firm vision of how things are going to look tend to do better. One thing that's helping me a lot is that I pick a focus for each week. Last week I worked on my grandpa's autobiography (he told me stories and I turned it into a coherent chronological text and I'm now in the process of making a website out of all the stories, supplemented with historical photos). One week is a decent amount of time to make progress and then by the end of the week I start to get bored and get to transition to something else which keeps it exciting and fun. I also lined up a long list of goals before the sabbatical started. > My favorite method was created by Ernie Zelinski, author of several early-retirement lifestyle books. I'm not seeing anything on this author. Does anyone have a link to his most popular work? > We sort of know what we want to do, but when given a full day with no obligations, it’s common for us to fritter hours away. So far, this is not as much of a problem for me as I expected. It's not hard to focus on things that are interesting to me. I'm actually more aware of wasteful habits (Instagram, HN) because I know that I only have a year to really do all this sabbatical stuff. [1] https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    The author of the blog post followed up with a post-mortem of his FIRE experience several years later: https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-update/ https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-u... The TL;DR is that it was great for the first few years. He started diving deep into his writing passion and notes that he was very happy. Later, his writing hobby slowed and his partner became increasingly dissatisfied with their retirement lifestyle. Sadly, he talks about slowly losing friendships, losing interest in his writing, and eventually losing his marriage over FIRE-related lifestyle choices. I'm sorry it didn't work out for him, but it's an interesting contrast to this prior post about how he imagined his FIRE lifestyle.
• agumonkey 5y ago
  I have a hard time recalling two jobs that were worth doing for society the way they were done. The natural order of closed-door companies creates a distortion where almost nothing is done properly to ensure high efficiency and happiness [0]. It's always a blend of: - bad or absent hierarchy: bosses that never come down, that have no idea what's going on or the way things are done, that mostly only talk to you to send back more stats (on paper, with stick marks, no one will setup a shared spreadsheet to at least avoid pencil accounting every week) - absurd lack of material support (you need a table god damn wood tablet extension for your desk... hell no, it's 2020, come back when alien technology landed on earth) no-one hired to fix stuff, even in large offices, absurd stuff breaks, people only complain - incredibly bad division of labour: no training (people struggle with every tool interaction), no notion of efficiency (let's rewrite everything on another post it or file, with new doc IDs), desk/office structure is obsolete to the bone, the amount of paper flying between rooms is astonishing. imagine doing databases by moving db rows to another computer and waiting to reintegrate it back when (if) it comes back. For that reason only I do more to avoid justice problems because I don't want my life hanging in the hands of a bored-out secretary that forgot who took my file to where. - causing as bad human interactions: people don't understand shit, they walk on eggs, nothing has value to them, everyone is slightly adversary and will reject blame at the slighest possibility of an issue. Of course one can end up in a good-minded team where people are chill and communicate nicely and work together .. but it seems a low prob event. coming from computing, I cannot help but to see things as processing steps.. and the amount of work in most jobs is minuscule now that everything is digital. Computers / clusters are mostly waiting for sad humans to press the button. I kinda ballparked that my last company (retail store) entire operation could fit on a single machine (granted people stopped duplicating excel files with bad content causing them to all be over 3MB for instance) and a few programs (in terms of computation there was nothing going on, a few figures updated here and there, gameboy level arithmetics. when the world is gonna shift to humanless operations it's gonna be a cold day [0] not talking about ping pong tables and cloud shape cushions, more like having good ergonomics, good interactions with coworkers, and more importantly good understanding of the process and value of what you're doing. ps: I said "two jobs" because, at least for minds like mine, food production (or similar very linear, production-chain like ops) felt like a job. You had to prep 100 tunafish sandwhich, someone showed you the right way to perform, it was clean and fast, then you sell, then you clean. It's almost lubricated.. you sweat but there's no drag, no confusion, no hidden state.. very zen in a way.
• double0jimb0 5y ago
  A thing the FIRE community misses: The felt sense of Agency is VERY different between a) still making some income, feeling like your hand is still somewhat on the wheel and b) sitting in the back seat, with nothing to do but continually recalculating if / how long your nest egg will last (this quickly turns pathological) I believe the slow build up of stress in B) is unmitigable (probably goes against our species’ DNA). Doubly so if you’ve attached lots of self-worth to making B) happen. And if the author reads this comment: you need to get over yourself if you want to become a ‘writer’, I don’t know if there is an equivalent term for aspiring writers, but you are firmly in the equivalent “wantreprenuer” category. Be bold, fail, then learn, then fail some more. Don’t surround yourself with other wantreprenuers and blame them. Suck it up buttercup.
  • neogodless 5y ago
    > A thing the FIRE community misses Do they? I mean, no doubt individuals might miss this. I don't think "the community" misses this. Lots of people are very aware of how agency plays into life satisfaction. In fact, being compelled to work for someone and do what their boss tells them to do severely impedes their agency. And a lot of post-FIRE reports are that money is much less of a concern than it ever was while working. Because once you are completely behind the wheel of your life, you often find work you really enjoy, that also happens to add some extra money to that nest egg. Most reports I've read indicate that money has actually grown while they were "retired." Even LivingAFi reports this: > I still have an amazing stash of money. I mean, I was able to take close to five straight years off work and still have more than I started with, inflation-adjusted He later explains going back to work in more detail: > My fiancé is a librarian and she doesn’t make a ton of money. This drastically changes the early-retirement numbers for the two of us. > Anyway — bottom line is that my own asset sheet funds the lion’s share of our future together. > Additionally, I’m spending more than that 30K/yr I had estimated back in 2015. I’m at 40K now and we’ll be at 55K together I think, once we consolidate assets and buy a home.
  • mitjak 5y ago
    > sitting in the back seat, with nothing to do but continually recalculating if / how long your nest egg will last this problem doesn't exist if you correctly math out your existence to guarantee survival. having the ability to choose how to spend your time is the definition of agency.
• k__ 5y ago
  I did a sabbatical in 2014 and I had plenty of stuff to do. So much, in fact, that I couldn't imagine going back to work ever again. I couldn't imagine living polyamorous with more than two partners when working 40h a week. Let alone having some hobbies on the side...
• hsnewman 5y ago
  I retired 1 month prior to Covid, road it out and then moved to a new city across the country. I've been busy mostly every day, have lost 25 lbs, and have never looked back at having a full time job. My philosophy is: set goals and you will exceed them.
• PicassoCTs 5y ago
  The most drag on a life without work, is put by having to buy physical products, that are not useful, except for status display or decoration. This is why AR- done right would be such a game-changer. No more throw-away decoration bought at ikea. No more physical products like books, any stone with a small piece of cloth, could be a book. No more displays of status by buying advertised products - instead, status is what you create, growing out of your footsteps as you walk down a public street. If all those products fade to grey, lots of work will become unneeded. And we are almost there.
  • granshaw 5y ago
    Products are the least of most ppls worries. Family, housing, healthcare are way bigger costs
  • germinalphrase 5y ago
    The de-materialization of AR could lead in the direction you’re discussing, but almost certainly won’t. The infrastructure is/will be developed by organizations that are explicitly a part of (and escalate) the material and status culture you deride. Some of these companies explicitly make their wealth based on advertising and will hardly give up those profit streams willingly when the shift to AR takes place. Most people are trapped playing other people’s games, but the shift to AR won’t solve that.
    • PicassoCTs 5y ago
      They would completely eat their customers? Buy a Clock from amazon or place a AR-Clock provided by Google-TradingPlattform? One being good for the environment and some ARtist, the other being a hazard and supporting wastefulness, i can see this actually working out. Finally, its faster, its instant and not limited by physic limitations.
      • germinalphrase 5y ago
        So sell me on the vision. What do you imagine this world looks like? Who supplies the tech infrastructure, who supplies the ‘products’?
• dade_ 5y ago
  Critical illness insurance because everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.
• heurist 5y ago
  My dream replacement for full time work: study and make art (a hobby I have plateaued in); exercise; become a better software developer and data analyst (I'm a manager these days); work part time (very part time) on a couple businesses I am involved with - mostly in creative R&D. I've recently become aware of an "elite" engineering firm that looks far into the future to build original and innovative technologies for clients - I would focus similarly.
  • poslathian 5y ago
    What’s the firm? You can find me at my username at gmail if you didn’t want to broadcast
• nabbed 5y ago
  After growing tired of modern software development practices a few years ago, I just quit my job. I had no plan on going back to work (although I did after 18 months), and I had no plan on what I was going to do other than improve my math skills (which I did to some small degree) and learn to touch type (which I did not do). What I really learned is that my digestion problems and benign heart rhythm issues got a lot better during this period. I also just enjoyed parking my car in various locations within 20-40 minutes of my home and just reading, or studying, or listening to music.
  • sweetheart 5y ago
    > benign heart rhythm issues Hey, I have these, and don't know anyone else who does. Could you tell me more? Email is in my profile, if you prefer.
  • oftenwrong 5y ago
    >After growing tired of modern software development practices I'm curious to know what practices pushed you over the edge. I sometimes struggle to keep emotional distance from work, especially when I feel that others are making our collective effort less effective. I have to remind myself sometimes that I don't actually need to care. At the same time, I wonder if I would be happier starting my own thing, and calling the shots. Of course, then I would have to care.
    • nabbed 5y ago
      In recent years, and at multiple companies, I find there are simply far too many things that require at least some of my attention going on at the same time. Collaboration tools like Slack seem to encourage an interrupt-driven environment. Even when things happen serially, they happen at a mad rush (in the name of velocity). I have little time to reflect or gain perspective. Combine that with the fact the software has way more moving parts and integration points than it used to. Not only has velocity ramped up, but so has the number of possible interactions you need to consider. Improved testing techniques (unit tests, automated pre-commit tests, and integration tests) mitigate this quite a bit, but it doesn't fully compensate, especially since some of the "velocity" infrastructure itself is quite complex and can sometimes make a simple thing very difficult: I often find myself trying to work around flaky infrastructure. Most of my coworkers seem unfazed, so I think I just have the wrong constitution. I think also most companies really have no choice anymore but to operate in this manner.
• locallost 5y ago
  My plan is to at least take the next year off to think things through. I don't have nearly enough money for an early retirement, so this will have to be it for now. But anyway, an interesting thing happened. I am in talks to buy a small cheap piece of land that needs a lot of work. And suddenly I had all these ideas of what I could do there once I clean it up. Not only gardening again, but hobbies, learning new things etc. Basically all the things I want to do now, of which I just occasionally get to some of them, but am otherwise to drained to really get to it. So it's not about not working, it's not about not doing anything, I think I would die if it was like that. It's about doing something meaningful or at least something I don't feel is 60% BS.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  > It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to quit my current career and take something lower paying and more meaningful: teaching or contributing to a non-profit. That's me. I'm working for free, and happier n' a pig in poop.
• Vixel 5y ago
  I haven’t had a job in nine months now and between waking up whenever I want to and finally trying the things I’ve always had in my head to make a little money here and there, I don’t know how I would go back to a regular job. Sure on paper I make about half of what I used to make, But damn my stress level is low and days are nice
• danbruc 5y ago
  This seems unethical to me, you essentially make other people work for you. All the returns from your investments are created by someone who probably does not have the luxury of retiring early, someone who now not only has to work for their life but also for yours.
  • hiram112 5y ago
    That's not how the math works out, at least in theory. There are several principles going on: 1. You defer consumption today to instead spend it tomorrow. If you create $100K in value in a year, but only spend $50K of it, shouldn't you be able to instead spend most of that $50K in the future? Our whole retirement system is predicated on this. 2. If you take some of the wealth produced today, and instead of immediately consuming it, you "invest" it in something that enables more wealth produced tomorrow than otherwise would have been possible, you should be rewarded with some of that extra wealth produced. 3. Time value of money. Loaning your money or investing it carries a risk. If there is some chance that you may not get it all back, then there must be a premium charged to whomever wants to use your wealth today. Otherwise, you might as well spend it all as soon as you receive it.
    • danbruc 5y ago
      1. You defer consumption today to instead spend it tomorrow. If you create $100K in value in a year, but only spend $50K of it, shouldn't you be able to instead spend most of that $50K in the future? Our whole retirement system is predicated on this. Sure, you are spending what you earned. And if that is what you are doing, living a less expensive life so that you can finance your entire life with fewer working years, then that is perfectly fine. Probably even worth encouraging as this probably means you are consuming fewer resources. 2. If you take some of the wealth produced today, and instead of immediately consuming it, you "invest" it in something that enables more wealth produced tomorrow than otherwise would have been possible, you should be rewarded with some of that extra wealth produced. 3. Time value of money. Loaning your money or investing it carries a risk. If there is some chance that you may not get it all back, then there must be a premium charged to whomever wants to use your wealth today. Otherwise, you might as well spend it all as soon as you receive it. In principle I agree, you should be compensated for deferred spending and incurred risk. But something must still be wrong as the outcome makes no sense. If I had to guess, I would maybe suggest systematic overcompensation, i.e. maybe the expected return should actually be exactly zero. But this is impossible to do and then there would be no incentives to invest, so the target becomes positive expected returns. But as soon as the expected returns become positive you enter the territory of exponential growth which is not sustainable. At the very least returns should eventually drop to zero when the invested money has been multiplied so often that there is no more demand for investments. And all the time you are probably creating huge inequality and with this inequality one might also end up with a distribution of power where some can essentially demand further returns even if they should actually be zero. In the end I have to admit that I can not truly point my finger to the issue, yes compensation for investments sounds reasonable if you discuss it on its own, but if you look at the consequences at large things do not match up. Your money does no actual work, it creates no value on its own, why should it still allow you to live without working?
• chrisweekly 5y ago
  I saw "FIRE" in several comments, had to look it up: > "Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) Definition https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-independence-retire-early-fire.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-independence-... Followers of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) plan to retire before the traditional retirement age of 65 by dedicating up to 70% of income to savings while still in the workforce."
• BayAreaEscapee 5y ago
  I did it: I retired at age 40 with a net worth of about $5M. That was eight years ago. I diversified most of it, but I made two concentrated bets with a fraction and both of them were home runs. Now I'm above $5M. I have enough money to do whatever I want and my withdrawal rate is less than 1% annually. (I don't have expensive or flasy taste.) One of the things that I didn't expect (but that this article and some other sources hint at) is that I would fall into a trap of consuming a lot of alcohol. I recognized my problem and dealt with it. Now almost every day is alcohol-free, and I only drink when with other people who are also drinking. (For anyone struggling with a drinking problem, I urge you to try something called the Sinclair Method, which involves taking naltrexone or nalmefene. [1][2]) I don't really have much of a fixed address and spend 95% of my time abroad. I usually like to stay in a place for several months or more at a time. This sometimes involves long-term visas. Throwing money at immigration attorneys will solve a lot of those kinds of problems. Many countries have visa programs for self-employed or self-sufficient people. If not, you can always enroll in a language program and get a student visa to study the language of your host country. I also spend several months a year just traveling around to new places and visiting old friends. I enjoy my life. Sometimes at moments I miss my job in Silicon Valley. Then I realize how much grief and pressure it was, and I'm thankful for the life I have. At this article's author states: you have to know what you are going to fill your life with once you leave the working world. If you don't fill it with something positive, negative things will fill in. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Cure-Alcoholism-Medically-Eliminate-Addiction/dp/1937856135/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+sinclair+method https://www.amazon.com/Cure-Alcoholism-Medically-Eliminate-A... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EghiY_s2ts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EghiY_s2ts
  • qntty 5y ago
    How did you acquire the initial $5M? Sell a start-up? Lucky investment? Or did you have a high salary?
    • BayAreaEscapee 5y ago
      I had employee stock options in two companies that had a high growth rate. I lived very simply and saved more than half my take-home pay. I did have a high salary.
• dqpb 5y ago
  There is a third option besides working for somebody else and not working at all - that is, working for yourself.
  • granshaw 5y ago
    Hard to make a standard living selling things. Unless you’re talking about selling services, but then you’re again trading your time for money
    • dqpb 5y ago
      Entrepreneurship
• zamfi 5y ago
  One thing we've lost in the transition to two-earner families with the expectation that everyone has a career is exactly what's coming up in this thread: 1) People derive a lot of meaning from their interactions with other people. 2) For most people (at least, most people reading blogs like this) today, that meaning comes from employment, from the exchange of time for money in the service of others. But pre-television, and in many parts of the world still today, people gather socially for many reasons other than the strict definition of work above. The rat in the race doesn't know what to do when the race is over, because all the other rats are still in the race, and he's never been outside before. The list in this post is about how to make the outside world look like the race you just left: Do things! Find people to do them with! Get out of your comfort zone! These are mechanisms for people without strong social and community ties to fill their time. I would encourage anyone in this situation to consider what aspects of their prior race-like lives they would like to lose first, and to find communities they would like to belong to. Some of those many be activity-oriented, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they don't have to be interesting activities.
  • binkHN 5y ago
    > The rat in the race doesn't know what to do when the race is over, because all the other rats are still in the race, and he's never been outside before. Enlightening. Thank you.
• LesZedCB 5y ago
  i want freedom from starving to death and exposure, while having freedom to do whatever sounds interesting or meaningful, or just relax that day.
• mgh2 5y ago
  “Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.” - Calvin Coolidge Work, if executed correctly, has a purpose: personal development. It is hard to fulfill this endeavor by spending your most productive years in retirement. The "freedom" and "F the man" movements (crypto, 4HWW, FIRE, MLM, Kiyosaki, etc.) are all missing this essential ingredient of the human experience.