[JohnFen]

> is there no escape from 9-5 as a concept?

There is absolutely an escape from that as a concept, but it involves a tradeoff: if you're willing to live on a reduced income, you can gain more time not working.

Also, as you've noticed, being self-employed means you will be working more, not less. The wins of self-employment are other things, not the ability to work less.

> Are all these books about working 2 hours a week while making millions, are just BS?

Unequivocally yes. There are a handful of people who've pulled that off (and they aren't the ones writing those books), but the odds of you being one of them are so low as be approximately zero, in part because it involves a whole lot of pure luck.

[throwaway_43793]

My question wasn't clear enough I'm afraid. It's not that I don't want to work, it's more about the fact that I don't want to participate in meaningless rituals. There are absolutely zero reasons to have the 9-5. Software can be written also from 8 to 10, and from 4 to 8, but for some reason the entire world has gone mad and married the 9-5. On top of that, nobody really writes code for 8 hours. So instead of the 1-3 hours that I waste in a corporate world for meaningless "cooler talks", I could spend with my family, or workout. But no, I need to conform to 9-5.

[JohnFen]

I misunderstood based on your comments about freelancing. It sounded like you found it unacceptable that instead of 9-5, freelancing means you'd be working longer hours.

If you freelance, you can work on whatever schedule suits you best. Outside of the occasional meeting, you don't have to even be awake from 9-5 if you don't want to.