Ask HN: Why don't you work less?

I just came back from a 9 month break.<p>After being in the Valley since the dot-com boom, and going through the bust, and other personal issues, I was pretty burnt out, suffering from stress-related health issues, and after a couple of health scares, decided enough was enough.<p>I quit my job amicably, and spent 2012 just "doing my own thing". This entailed spending time on small, frivolous projects that I normally wouldn't have had time to pursue, and learning things that might help me in my career later on. I also spent a lot of time cooking dinner for my wife.<p>I don't spend a lot of money in general, but even so, I didn't curtail my spending at all, so I ate through a big chunk of my savings. I didn't care, and my wife and I even went on several trips. Obviously, having a working spouse helps, but one thing you learn after suffering through a few health scares is that money will come and go, but you're only young once, and your health (physical and mental) is pretty much the most important thing you have.<p>I didn't have any vast goals like creating a startup, or even creating my own iPhone app. I ended up not doing a lot except learn, but I really did feel refreshed and more important, I felt a lot better about myself and about programming in general. I spent 6-7 days a week, 6-10 hrs a day programming and learning, so I didn't waste any time at all, but didn't feel stressed out once. I even started working out again, although I didn't hit any of my weight targets.<p>After about 9 months, I figured it was time to get back to the world of the gainfully employed. Thankfully, no one cared that I took the time off, and I was able to get a new job at a company that I really am excited about within a few weeks.

Everybody I know who earns anywhere close to enough to take 6 month of the year off work themselves half to death. 60-80 hour weeks (or more), all-nighters, weekends, hardly any time off etc. etc.<p>Not interested.<p>I'm much happier working 40 hours a week, never having to work over the weekends, hardly ever having to do any over time or face ridiculous deadlines, and having a reasonable number of vacation days I can spread out through the year. I consider this a much better work-life balance and I'm equally happy taking a pay cut to get this.

Because I don't make that much money.<p>Because I enjoy working.<p>Because, with 3 kids at home, work is a lot less work than being home. The most exhausting week this entire year was the vacation we took to the beach.

Because I'm paranoid that either the industry gets hammered (jobs go away or salaries fall) or my own ability to earn somehow goes away. I work a lot and save a lot now because I can. I don't judge other approaches negatively, but I'm hardwired from an early age to work like this.

I do, problem is, I'm extremely lazy, I cant work for long periods of time because i get fed up with it, but i've found a way to deal with it and make good money. I'm a contractor. I work anywhere from 1 week to 3 months at a time in a place, get paid a day rate and then take some time off and repeat.<p>My current earn to frugal living ratio is: 5 working days buys me a month of living expenses.<p>Currently though i'm working very hard because i'm in the process of buying a non-tech real world "lifestyle" business that will run with minimal hours after a initial time investment peroid, which should allow me to give up contracting completely, should i choose to.

<i>but taking 3 or 6 months off per year should be doable in this profession due to the nature of the work and very high earnings.</i><p>It would be doable money-wise but I would think it would be hard to find a company willing to go along with this arrangement- although if people know otherwise I'd love to hear which companies offer this level of flexibility. In the past, others have suggested using the time between jobs for this - but (in the US at least) you'd still need to pay into COBRA if you wanted your health insurance to continue during that time. Also, having worked through the dot-com period at the beginning of the last decade, I'm always a little cautious about assuming that it will be easy to land the next gig.

For me this answer is more one of personal preference. I love what I do.<p>After I sold my first company I was sure I would take 5 years off and not work, I couldn't even sit still for a month before I was itching to build something else and soon started something new.<p>It's more of a lifestyle choice and my family and those around me probably suffer a bit, but the truth is my work is my addiction. I often wake up in the middle of the night and walk to my computer because I have just realized a solution to the problem I was trying to work through earlier in the night.<p>Some people don't understand those who keep going even when they don't have to, and I cannot speak for those who do, but in the case of myself I don't understand those who stop.<p>I am constantly thinking of a better way to do something or a more efficient method for something I have already done and I truly believe its just my personality. If I were a high school football coach I would want to coach college and if I were a college coach I would want to coach in the NFL.<p>Likewise if I were and NFL coach I would want to win superbowls. I feel the same way about business. No matter if I have success or not I can always find ways to improve and I constantly strive for better. My girlfriend will tell you its a sickness and my parents will tell you they don't understand but all I can tell you is I know no other way.<p>Everyone is wired differently but I truly believe entrepreneurs share some similarities about their ways of thinking. Not all are motivated by money (see Steve Jobs) although some are (Larry Ellison, Richard Branson) but most are motivated by changing the status quo, making an impact on society or at least their market and at least with most of the good ones who I have met they don't see stopping as an option.

I've just recently been thinking about "working" 20-30 hours a week, so I have time to work on some projects of my own. I find there are two main obstacles to reducing my paid "work" load.<p>1. I currently rely on contract work, and I find that I don't have contacts that want to employ a contractor for 20-30 hours a week, or even a set of contractors who want to employ for a combined 20-30 hours a week. Usually when people hire contractors, they want something done as soon as possible, without distractions.<p>To obtain my desired work hours per week, I will have to greatly extend my contacts list. Which I should do anyway, but it won't happen overnight.<p>2. Health insurance. I have mild schizophrenia which, untreated, makes it hard for me to reason logically. With the proper medication and care I remain gainfully employed as a dev/sysadmin/devops role. On top of that I have Tourette syndrome.<p>Insurance for anyone with these kinds of pre-existing conditions is expensive; laws changed such that very soon they won't be able to _deny_ it to me, but they can price it as high as they like. Despite having substantial savings, long periods of not having any income is out of the question for me. Therefore, either traditional corporate employment, or full-time contract work at a high enough wage to pay for high-quality insurance, are the way to go.<p>I don't mention these things in a "waaaa, waaaaa, I'm so helpless" way--far from it. I've attained more than the average person in my career, in terms of skills and pay.<p>Rather, I think people on this site forget sometimes that not everyone is suited to risk it all on a startup, and not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, and not everyone has to be an A+++++ level developer to get by, and it's not a sin to seek some stability.

Many HNers do, in fact, have very non-traditional work schedules. (For roughly the same reason why many have very non-traditional salaries. By the way, both are probably underreported out of modesty.)

I'm not self-employed, so I have to follow the general guidelines laid down by others with respect to employment. This includes working 5 days a week for the full year.<p>I have other flexibilitties associated with my job, like flexible work hours, telecommuting and open vacation policy, but it doesn't change the expectation of me being in the office 5 days a week as a general rule of thumb.

I just went from five days to three days a week in my job in industry in order to work as a researcher the other two days. I had to take a pay cut to do so, and I was lucky that my company was happy for me to do this.<p>So far, it's working out great - I do the research work from home, occasionally commuting to uni, and it's great to have the balance of academia and real life work.

I work anywhere from 100 to 130 hours a month. I find I don't end up doing anything productive with the time off. I have a list of side projects I want to do, but non have been touched.<p>Instead I usually ride my bike. Which is productive in it's own way, and more the lifestyle I want anyway.

1) Because if I'm not working, there's a huge list of things that I should be doing. We've got family arriving in a month for the Christmas season. If I wasn't feel working I'd either be prepping for that or feeling guilty for not prepping for that. Doing a certain amount of physical work is a great antidote for the stresses of a desk job, but more than that is just work.<p>2) Money is addictive. My wife hates getting called for work at 3AM. But those calls pay so well for very little work that it's hard for her to take her name off the call list.<p>3) The fear that if you always say "no" to requests, you'll stop getting requests.

Relevant: <i>I think you’re all fucking mad. Deranged.</i> From "A Short Lesson in Perspective. <a href="http://www.lindsredding.com/2012/03/11/a-overdue-lesson-in-perspective/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lindsredding.com/2012/03/11/a-overdue-lesson-in-p...</a><p>Your perspective is just that: <i>a perspective</i>. When his body changes (for the worse) so does his perspective.

Unless you're a consulting, I don't think it's really possible as a programmer to take 3 months off every year. If I could, I would though.

If I worked less, I'd want to spend the extra free time doing something important. The problem is, I don't think there's anything I could spend my time on that would be (a) more important than my normal work and (b) at least as likely to succeed as my normal work. I'm much more likely to do something I can be proud of if I put all of my time into one project rather than splitting it between several different projects.<p>If work is just a thing you do for money, then minimizing the amount of time you spend doing it makes sense. If you actually find work satisfying and care about the results, then I think it often makes sense to devote as much time as possible without causing yourself to stop enjoying it or become unproductive.<p>Having said that, I do try to reserve some time for side projects because that's a good way to develop new skills that I can apply to my main project.

I'm currently taking a break from working. This year, I've been a contract developer, which has been very lucrative because I charge a very high hourly rate. I can now afford to take the next few years off, depending on what city I move to of course. Thing is, for my whole professional life, I've been a workaholic. I used to think that it was fine for me to work so much because I just love programming so much, but I think all those 60 hour weeks gradually wore me down. I think I'm at the point now where I have to force myself to chill out for a while and develop other interests in my life besides coding. So, that's just what I'm going to do.<p>Luckily, I don't have children or a mortgage, but I do have a health problem that requires me to maintain health insurance, which I pay for myself.

Do you have children?

My problem is, I enjoy working. Sometimes it is stressful and sometimes it's fun. But at the end, if I am not working 3 days in a row, I literally collapse and start freaking out. I don't mind not getting paid but what I do mind is not working and/or learning.

Keeping in mind I'm a younger, single person with no serious debt and I live fairly frugally; I haven't taken a contract in a couple months. I'm currently living off of the money from my last contract and working on a startup idea I formed during my "time off". (note: I don't take time off, I love programming too much. The time off is just from clients so I can explore things like Monads and Macros... Mmmmm M&#38;M's).<p>I find out about my YC application tomorrow, so I may not need to take client work for awhile, If I don't get an in person interview for YC, I will probably need to pick up a contract before January.<p>tldr; I do only work between 6-9 months a year or less.

I am working now to work less in the future. My earning power is pretty good at the moment, and I have a side project that brings in some extra cash. Both my wife and I live cheaply (she's about to start work as a doctor).<p>We're working really hard on saving now, so that when we have kids we can both afford to go part-time, so as to not miss out on them growing up, and hopefully retire a bit early.<p>We're now at the point where our returns on our savings boost our annual income by about 10%, so slowly building up enough capital to give us that future flexibility.

I know some folks that do.<p>Software Engineer salaries in the UK are generally pretty good, but not really equivalent to their US counterparts, so a lot of folks can't really afford to do this.<p>As a contractor/freelancer I make more money but have a lot less security and have to look for new contracts once in a while. I anticipate being able to take a couple of months off each year though. The problem is that work translates directly to income, so I could take those two months off, or I could get that new car or pay down my mortgage by a chunk.

I do work less. And it's the best thing that has ever happened to me. Can't imagine myself going back to 9-to-5. I usually work up to 4 hours a day / night, and I do it when I really feel I'm up to it. The rest of the time is mine. I don't need a watch. I don't need a calendar. I don't care what day of week it is. And it's fantastic. I like to take a day or two or three or a week or a month break now and again.<p>So, I suppose it's only up to finding an employer who would accept you working like this or working for yourself. Either way is good.

Because I don't earn _that_ much. I earn enough to be very comfortable (around twice median wages), but not enough to just take months off work.<p>Also, I enjoy large chunks of it.

I enjoy writing every day around the clock anyway. If I write on my own it's a hack, it I team up with a designer, it's a good looking hack, if I team up with a company I have designers, marketing, testers, servers/clouds, a large user base, a brand, etc. - so you can see why I often prefer to write for a company anyway. Throw in equity, options, rev shares...well then I'm improving something I own any time I put extra time in anyway, not just going for a bigger bonus.

In my old job I was longing after more time off and more time to do other things. Yet I was spending about 2* 3 weeks abroad every year.<p>Now however, I do not feel the same need for this. I love my job, I get to do some (not meeting intense) travelling with it and I love the people I work with and what I do. Basically I don't my job is what I do for fun.<p>That's why I work more now.

I do work less. I don't think it's unusual for consultants. But my neighbors, family, and other people in my life definitely think it's weird.

I work 6-9 months each year, taking at least 3 months off for creative projects/travelling.<p>Easiest way to do this was reduce expenses. When I was with my ex, I lived on about 90% of earnings. Being single (for most of the last 5 years) I've been living off a lot less, but with a lot more travelling. (normally around 35-40%, but last financial year was 50% as I had six months off)

Money runs the world (whether we like it/acknowledge it or not).<p>If you have enough money, you can do such a thing. If you don't, you're a bit more restricted.<p>Throwing in some kids, house, family, health issues, whatever compounds it, but at the end of the day, the more money the better.

Because I would have trouble paying the bills. The demand for software engineers in Malaysia is...lacking.

I went back to university and had to work less as a consequence. I'm very happy of my decision.<p>Of course, my earnings took a serious hit, and that's probably the biggest reason only few people do work less. But I consider it was worth it!

The "work" is always consistent. Should I work less on a high paying gig I will fill the time with personal or less profitable projects of interest. Savings make the periodic transitions mostly seamless and life a through enjoyment.

If you look at top movie actors, they also seem to work themselves to death, while earning absurd amounts of money. Why? Because their career has a huge potential for a short shelf life.<p>I believe it's the same thing in software.

I just like working.<p>Eternal vacation/hobby projects with no gain sound awesome until you actually do it. It get's boring fast. I lasted 4 weeks in to my early retirement before I just had to do something.

Because I love this shit. Working hard makes me proud of myself. Relaxing and taking holidays actually makes me feel guilty about being 'lazy'. The harder I work, the better I feel. It's weird.

a - Because I don't make that much money<p>b - Because it's not an easily available option. It's not impossible but having this kind of a "requirement" would be pretty limiting.

Oddly enough I'm trying to work more so I can do three months off/pay off debts. Dont' think I'd want to work less then I currently do.

Some of us do :)

Because working in a flourishing start-up/hoping to strike it rich/etc etc blah blah blah.

Because I don't have a girlfriend and houses don't pay for themselves.

Because part-time employees don't get health insurance.

Stay at home wife and two kids in private school...

Insurance. At least, until 2014.

40hrs a week, bad location with a bad market, even worse for one that tries to be into ruby, innovation instead of the 'common path', have some debt<p>+ some more 18hrs a week of trying to grow out of the 40hrs+debt... can't work less otherwise it means dropping the tombstone on the dream of a satisfying life(moving to another country or bigger economic centers here could do too but health issues in family impede me). Sucks.