[shostack]

It is absolutely more difficult. It is very easy to wax poetic about the types of jobs one will and will not do when one has job security in the form of many readily available, high-paying jobs. Most are not that lucky and in fact would be grateful to work more hours because it might put them over the threshold to full time and benefits for example.

Others like lawyers, are on a similar situation treadmill tied to hours worked. It is often up or out at big firms, and going up always entails working lots of billable hours. Work fewer hours, make less money and no great future.

Ultimately, the path to success increasingly seems to be freeing yourself from a single entity that controls your pay (i.e. Employer, single client or customer, etc.). From there it is down to finding ways to scale your output beyond your hourly constraint (you only have so many hours in a day you can work, even for high pay) and ways to diversify income to reduce risk.