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> Working less than 40 is nice but once you get down to 20 you have whole DAYS where you can do whatever you want I spent around 10 years working about 20 hour

by nickjj 5y ago

> Working less than 40 is nice but once you get down to 20 you have whole DAYS where you can do whatever you want I spent around 10 years working about 20 hours a week doing freelance work. It's good until it's not. Basically, yes you do have a lot of time and often times you can decide to be done at noon if you'd like. Taking entire days off is also possible unless it's expected to do something in a timely fashion such as meet with someone or produce results by XYZ day. I found in practice it wasn't possible to really drop off the grid for continuous 4 day weekends. I came to the conclusion this lifestyle is only really worth it when you have more money than you would likely ever have if you worked this schedule for a long time. For example, if you only worked 3 days a week but had millions of dollars then this would be super interesting because you could go and do fun things all the time. Having $5,000 a month to spend guilt free to do whatever would be amazing if it didn't cut into any type of retirement fund because you're already set. But if you're working for half a salary chances are you don't have millions of dollars tucked away unless remarkable things have happened to you. So what you really end up doing is finishing at noon some days and then procrastinating on everything while you do nothing productive or fun because you've done everything you could with your budget 100 times over after years of this lifestyle. At least that's what happened to me. Your mileage may vary. I realized I'm happier when I feel like I'm maximizing my time. That doesn't mean always working but it means feeling like I'm making enough to where when I want to take off 2 weeks a few times a year to do something really fun it's fully enjoyed. Then I fill in the gaps between trips doing assorted fun but not crazy things. With 40 hours of payments this becomes less of a financial burden. Only problem now is having less time to do them.

wildmanx 5y ago
> So what you really end up doing is finishing at noon some days and then procrastinating on everything while you do nothing productive or fun because you've done everything you could with your budget 100 times over after years of this lifestyle. This indicates that you are tying "free time" closely with "spending money" by doing some costly activity. Perhaps that's the issue right there. Just sitting in the sunshine at a lake with a book, or with a cappuccino in a cozy coffee place downtown chatting with friends, neither costs significant money. Or go running or biking or swimming or rock climbing. Or hack a cool side project in Haskell, whatever floats your boat. I'm not sure what you are aiming for to do with your free time, but if anything that doesn't cost significant money you book as "just procrastinating" instead of enjoying the free time, then that's the issue here.
- nickjj 5y ago
  > This indicates that you are tying "free time" closely with "spending money" by doing some costly activity. Perhaps that's the issue right there. I'm kind of the total opposite really. I can have fun and enjoy myself without spending "real" money but guilt free money IMO make things more enjoyable when you're talking about keeping yourself occupied for spans of years. For example I do walk a few miles every day, totally disconnected. I really like this. I've been doing this for a bunch of years on both a 20 and 40 work week schedule. I usually walk around my neighborhood but there's a couple of spots within a 10 mile radius that are nice to mix it up by going through trails, etc. But when you finish work every day at noon those walks are going to fill up an hour or 2 of time. The same goes for reading for an hour or so. There's still a ton of time left. Everyone is different but even as someone who can keep themselves fairly self entertained walking + reading + coding gets tedious if you're doing this every single day for 4-5 hours for ~10 years straight. It's not that they become boring but it leaves you wanting to do more things. I still do find legit joy in walking and occasional reading but when that's done my idea of procrastinating is basically looping HN, Reddit and YouTube while thinking "why are you doing this, wouldn't it be better to just work 40 hours and save more money so you have better options later?" or "yeah, go do something else but wait that's $75 bucks -- are you sure it's worth it?". One thing I would like to try is moving somewhere new every 3-4 months. I think that could fill a gap of boredom because I find exploring new areas by foot really fun.
deleted 5y ago
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PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Taking entire days off is also possible unless it's expected to do something in a timely fashion such as meet with someone or produce results by XYZ day. I found in practice it wasn't possible to really drop off the grid for continuous 4 day weekends. I've tried to hire part-time employees or 4-day workweek employees in the past. You described essentially the #1 roadblock. It actually works okay as long as you have a steady stream of non-urgent, totally isolated, async-okay work for them to do. Most companies run out of that type of work fairly quickly and prefer full-time employees who can work together with their teammates. It actually becomes a constant annoyance for the rest of the team if the 1 person working part-time is only sporadically available, so they now have to shape their workweeks around that person's availability. > For example, if you only worked 3 days a week but had millions of dollars then this would be super interesting because you could go and do fun things all the time. Having $5,000 a month to spend guilt free to do whatever would be amazing if it didn't cut into any type of retirement fund because you're already set. Without going into too many details, I can actually speak to this. It's another scenario that's amazing at first, but (I really hate to say this) gets old over time. The problem for me was that few other people were available to do things during the week. I grew close to some friends with similarly erratic schedules (professional nurses often work 3x12 schedules, for example), but it's a small population. I enjoy doing a lot of things alone, but being able to do them with friends would be more fun. I also started feeling like I was missing out on interesting engineering problems that my friends were working on. Once you have the means to be selective about the jobs you take and money can be a secondary concern (to a degree) you have the option of joining a lot of very interesting companies and working with very interesting people.
- deleted 5y ago
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- jakupovic 5y ago
  >The problem for me was that few other people were available to do things during the week. This describes what I felt after a few months of "not working". Most people I knew, and probably most people in US, are in a 5/2 schedule. Work 5 days then you get Friday night and whole weekend off. If you add 5 more days to that schedule it all mixes and after a while it got old, too. your millage may vary :)

by nickjj 5y ago

wildmanx 5y ago

> So what you really end up doing is finishing at noon some days and then procrastinating on everything while you do nothing productive or fun because you've done everything you could with your budget 100 times over after years of this lifestyle. This indicates that you are tying "free time" closely with "spending money" by doing some costly activity. Perhaps that's the issue right there. Just sitting in the sunshine at a lake with a book, or with a cappuccino in a cozy coffee place downtown chatting with friends, neither costs significant money. Or go running or biking or swimming or rock climbing. Or hack a cool side project in Haskell, whatever floats your boat. I'm not sure what you are aiming for to do with your free time, but if anything that doesn't cost significant money you book as "just procrastinating" instead of enjoying the free time, then that's the issue here.

nickjj 5y ago
> This indicates that you are tying "free time" closely with "spending money" by doing some costly activity. Perhaps that's the issue right there. I'm kind of the total opposite really. I can have fun and enjoy myself without spending "real" money but guilt free money IMO make things more enjoyable when you're talking about keeping yourself occupied for spans of years. For example I do walk a few miles every day, totally disconnected. I really like this. I've been doing this for a bunch of years on both a 20 and 40 work week schedule. I usually walk around my neighborhood but there's a couple of spots within a 10 mile radius that are nice to mix it up by going through trails, etc. But when you finish work every day at noon those walks are going to fill up an hour or 2 of time. The same goes for reading for an hour or so. There's still a ton of time left. Everyone is different but even as someone who can keep themselves fairly self entertained walking + reading + coding gets tedious if you're doing this every single day for 4-5 hours for ~10 years straight. It's not that they become boring but it leaves you wanting to do more things. I still do find legit joy in walking and occasional reading but when that's done my idea of procrastinating is basically looping HN, Reddit and YouTube while thinking "why are you doing this, wouldn't it be better to just work 40 hours and save more money so you have better options later?" or "yeah, go do something else but wait that's $75 bucks -- are you sure it's worth it?". One thing I would like to try is moving somewhere new every 3-4 months. I think that could fill a gap of boredom because I find exploring new areas by foot really fun.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Taking entire days off is also possible unless it's expected to do something in a timely fashion such as meet with someone or produce results by XYZ day. I found in practice it wasn't possible to really drop off the grid for continuous 4 day weekends. I've tried to hire part-time employees or 4-day workweek employees in the past. You described essentially the #1 roadblock. It actually works okay as long as you have a steady stream of non-urgent, totally isolated, async-okay work for them to do. Most companies run out of that type of work fairly quickly and prefer full-time employees who can work together with their teammates. It actually becomes a constant annoyance for the rest of the team if the 1 person working part-time is only sporadically available, so they now have to shape their workweeks around that person's availability. > For example, if you only worked 3 days a week but had millions of dollars then this would be super interesting because you could go and do fun things all the time. Having $5,000 a month to spend guilt free to do whatever would be amazing if it didn't cut into any type of retirement fund because you're already set. Without going into too many details, I can actually speak to this. It's another scenario that's amazing at first, but (I really hate to say this) gets old over time. The problem for me was that few other people were available to do things during the week. I grew close to some friends with similarly erratic schedules (professional nurses often work 3x12 schedules, for example), but it's a small population. I enjoy doing a lot of things alone, but being able to do them with friends would be more fun. I also started feeling like I was missing out on interesting engineering problems that my friends were working on. Once you have the means to be selective about the jobs you take and money can be a secondary concern (to a degree) you have the option of joining a lot of very interesting companies and working with very interesting people.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jakupovic 5y ago
>The problem for me was that few other people were available to do things during the week. This describes what I felt after a few months of "not working". Most people I knew, and probably most people in US, are in a 5/2 schedule. Work 5 days then you get Friday night and whole weekend off. If you add 5 more days to that schedule it all mixes and after a while it got old, too. your millage may vary :)