[MattGaiser]

You seem to be seeking to avoid working very much overall rather than avoiding the 9 to 5, which is a very different question. You are looking more at things like FIRE, except you don't want to do the intense burst of productivity route either.

To do that, you need some combo of a skill that pays extremely well for little work and a certain financial frugality. I have found plenty, but they are mostly:

1. Rules arbitrage, so I am exploiting someone's rules in a way they would not appreciate.

2. They do not scale. I don't make substantial income from them.

[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.

I'm fine working 8 hours a day, I just want to do it on my terms and build my work around my lifestyle, rather than morph my lifestyle to suit the stupid notion of 9-5.