[kintamanimatt]

I'm going to assume you don't have a whole bunch of children, an underwater mortgage, or massive amounts of debt to service — or some other very compelling reason the following advice isn't going to be practical for you. But if you can swing it, it's vastly more fun and productive than some of the other suggestions:

Start freelancing, quit your job, and move to a cheaper country where you can survive on something like 22 hours of billable work a month (+ business development). Then spend the rest of your time working on your stuff, or whatever you want to do! No sleep deprivation is required, you can still have a life, and you don't need to rigidly structure your time. It's a decent way to keep stress levels down too which yields more productivity!

It does help if you have some savings as a buffer too!

[ereyes01]

This concept of moving to a different country and living on less hours of work sounds too good to be true. I've heard it proposed before, but I've never known of anyone who has pulled it off. Are there any good examples to read about?

I've met really smart English-speaking developers from other countries (namely Brazil), and I didn't get the impression that they can laze around and work 22 hour weeks to put food on the table and live comfortably.

Perhaps it can work as a temporary thing, like moving around for a year or two, while retaining a home base in your developed country of origin...

[kintamanimatt]

My suggestion is a form of arbitrage and it's really quite doable.

If you live in a cheap country and earn money in a more affluent one, you don't need to work as many hours. If you choose to earn money in the local market, you'll end up replacing one 40 hour work week for another. Your Brazilian buddies likely work locally which is why they have similar time constraints as someone living and working in NYC would do.

You also don't keep a homebase in your country of origin because that increases your expenses! It really requires getting over the mentality that the country you were born in has to be your home; it doesn't.

I live in the center of Prague right now. I used to live in London. My expenses all tolled come to around 22,000Kč/month, although I could do it on less. That's roughly £600/US$850/€800. The number of billable hours required to maintain this lifestyle isn't much. I'm also vastly happier here than I was in London.

My suggestion is a method of abandoning a full time job if that full time job is getting in the way of more important goals and aspirations. Something has to give, of course, and cutting expenses in a way that isn't detrimental to happiness is one way to do it.

I acknowledge this advice isn't for everyone. It's like going to the gym: some people don't want to do it, some people can't do it, and some people won't do it despite good intentions. Also, not everybody can do it at the same time!

[dkns]

Were you born in UK? How's social life in Prague for a foreigner like you? Is language a huge barrier?

[kintamanimatt]

Indeed I was born in the UK, so in my case living in the Czech Republic indefinitely doesn't come with any visa hurdles and such.

The fact I don't speak Czech is a very rarely a barrier. Sometimes if I'm in the grocery store and I'm not entirely sure what I'm buying I have to use Google Translate. I struggled once in the post office when trying to mail something internationally. I probably should learn conversational Czech, but I'm more interested in learning Spanish.

The nightlife in Prague is awesome and my social life is ideal.

[bigmanwalter]

How do you maintain your business development back home? Is it all word of mouth?

[uououuttt]

I did this more or less.

I moved to Cambodia 3 years ago, spending ~500$ per month on average so far. It's not for everyone of course, but I truly don't care about things that most others would consider necessities. All I need is an internet connection and healthy food, both of which are readily available here.

It's easy to find a clean apartment for 100$ per month in Phnom Penh, that is if you wouldn't be too horrified to actually live among the local people, like 95% of the expats here are.

[SimpleMinds]

I've done something like this. After quitting office work I followed up with working remotely. I'm not sure if I could pull this without spending some time (1+ year) in office where I was able to build connections that allowed me to find remote projects without too much hassle.

As another comment was suggesting, key is to find work for client who is based in "rich" country (for me right now that's US, some of the Europe) and is ok with you working remotely.

If I wanted to work in current location, I'd have to take significant salary cut + start pulling those mentioned 40h/week