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by maerF0x0 1139 days ago
> People shouldn't have to wait until retirement to enjoy it.

Also people should not pursue a strategy that concentrates ALL their enjoyment until retirement. It's a high variance strategy with IMO low EROI . My bias is because my father died in his 40s and my step father in his late 50s.. Both never saw a day of retirement despite saving for it.

I highly recommend a patterned approach to life enjoyment, yes this is highly privileged and I hope it will be universal one day.

Here's my strategy now that I'm financially stable:

I do something special, scaled to the time available, where they overlap I intersect them (ie, use the one weekend to build the one week)

* One weekend a month have a special plans

* One week a half disconnect, could be travel or camping, or staycation where you just chill and do stuff you love only

* Two weeks once a year - take an adventure, or a deep disconnect according to needs

* One month every 5yrs - Do something big that stretches you. Backpack foreign countries, or disconnect and focus on intensively learning a skill you intended to also practice going forward

* One quarter every 10 - Sabbatical (Sabbath) . Let your body and mind reset. Only do healthy and restorative things, celebrate every win you can remember, the only work you do should be investing in others, and do it at < 50% your capacity.

YMMV

1 comments

I'm happy you've boiled your recharging needs down to a science but none of this compares with long contiguous periods of unstructured time you can choose to use as you wish. Three months off every decade? Really?
Nb the described plan is luxurious by US standards.
I have ~ 15y of experience and I have a grand total of 3 weeks PTO. My father, at my age had 5 whole weeks and doesn't understand why I don't take big trips more. Despite the trend in 'unlimited vacation', I feel it's only getting worse.
Unlimited vacation has the greatest negative spread between "how it sounds" and "how it actually works". It's incredibly employee unfriendly.

As a leader, I will fight against it every time it gets proposed.

^^ you're correct on average, this is why it's good to establish in the interview what is common, how much is taken by higher ups etc.

If they push back you can literally say to the manager "You told me that 6 weeks was normal"

> with long contiguous periods of unstructured time

Can you tell me more concretely what you're thinking? How do you define "long"? And, what is it about my list (despite it's prescriptive structure) that makes the time usage not "unstructured" ?