[chrisacree]

Where is the value in this article? The author tells us he likes to relax and so doesn't work full-time, therefore no one should.

Beyond stating the obvious of having more free time, he never really states any benefits of working part time. And he doesn't mention the hardships the undoubtedly come with it like lower salary and how they might be abated.

Overall, just feels like a brag about how great he is.

[gregd]

But you don’t have to listen to me, part-time mountain dweller and full-time maverick. Here’s Carlos Slim, the world’s second richest man: “We should be working only 3 days a week.” It is time, he says, for a radical overhaul of our working lives. We need more time to relax, for quality of life.

Quoting the world's second richest man as a backup to your argument (about working less), comes off as pretentious.

Those of us that work as hard as we do, want the same things, working less, enjoying life more, slowing down. Unfortunately, life is expensive. Our incomes have stagnated and our dollar buys less.

I'd love to only work 3 days a week, but at my current salary, I'd have to live in a tent with my family of 4 and eat ramen and the occasional squirrel.

[balabaster]

Not bad for a guy I never heard of before...

I'm working towards this myself. Homesteading is an easy way to move in this direction without needing such riches. It's not as much work as everyone says - though the work there is, is mostly physical. Your math/programming skills will help immensely if you want to build and automate everything yourself, which will make your life even easier in the long run.

Your dollar buys much more when you grow all your own produce, dairy and meat. Seeds are cheap, a couple of cows, a couple of pigs and a handful of chickens will cost you far less than your annual meat/dairy bill and give you all the meat/dairy you could want indefinitely. The only thing that's prohibitive is growing enough wheat for flour - and only prohibitive from a space standpoint; but flour is cheap and making your own bread is easy. You don't need to live off Ramen and Squirrel. Rabbits breed like... well, rabbits and they're pretty tasty, cheap to keep, pretty hassle free and their manure is great for compost. Of course, slaughter isn't a pleasant experience, it's not all sunshine and light.

I'm just an average guy, with an average income working an average 40 hours a week with a family. If I can afford it, then I'd wager that a decent portion of HN readers can afford it too. Life can be expensive if you let it, but there are many ways to live cheap and have a fulfilling life.

If city life is too expensive for you to have a good work/life balance, you're living in the wrong place and working in the wrong job or working for the wrong company... unless you live to work, if you do, then more power to you.

[random28345]

> Homesteading is an easy way to move in this direction without needing such riches.

Homesteading is a great way to work significantly harder for a lower standard of living.

> Your math/programming skills will help immensely if you want to build and automate everything yourself

Your math/programming skills will help a lot more by helping you exchange your labor for money, which you can then exchange for food, clothing, and shelter. Your average developer salary can buy you more and better food and goods than you can make yourself in a cabin in the woods.

If you prefer to spend 30 minutes a day collecting $6.00 worth of eggs and milk, that's a lifestyle choice, not a financial one.

[balabaster]

> Homesteading is a great way to work significantly harder for a lower standard of living.

I disagree with the lower standard of living. My standard of living hasn't changed any. In fact my sense of well-being and satisfaction has increased dramatically. My peace of mind that I know where my food comes from, from beginning to end is immeasurable. I will agree that it was a bit of work to set up, sure, but most of it takes care of itself. It takes 60 seconds to collect the eggs each morning.

I also disagree with your labour for money purchasing better quality food. Most of the food you buy in the store and at restaurants is packed full of stuff that's bad for you (look at the world's obesity and allergy problems that are escalating every year).

Homesteading is not analogous to living in a cabin in the woods (contrary to common belief). You can live a modern life with modern amenities while growing/making your own food which is more satisfying and better for you. We still have running water, a flushing toilet, a dishwasher, washer, stove, TV, cable and broadband internet - and I still live within an hour's commute of work and still buy clothes and other goods. Without having to buy all our produce/eggs, we free up a few grand a year for other projects/vacations/trips/excursions/events. So counter to your argument that it's a lower standard of living, our standard of living has increased.

Of course, you can sit in a restaurant eating high fat food joining the rest of the sedentary obese population and call that "a higher standard of living" if you choose; or you can use your time at the gym or out running or doing other exercise to keep your calorie balance in check, to keep our bodies healthy which takes what? Half an hour, an hour a day? I used to be like this, living the high life, enjoying the luxuries, increasing the size of my pants and my hours of exercise as each year passed. I'm done with it. I spend less time doing physical activity homesteading, I'm eating more nutritious food and I'm losing weight.

The other plus is that knowing how to provide all that stuff for ourselves eases our burden on the rest of society having to provide it for us and when stuff goes wrong and there's a run on the grocery stores and shelves are emptied, us and our neighbours barely notice the difference.

[gregd]

I'm not arguing against homesteading and it's actually been a dream of mine. However, marriage and children has altered my reality in ways that affect my ability to create a homestead.

Here in the states, you still, at a minimum, have property taxes, utilities, car/gas, etc to pay for even if you want to live a homesteading life. I lived this way for a decent portion of my childhood. We had no running water and a 12 volt electrical system in the middle of nowhere in Northern California.

[balabaster]

I've got a family too... I was your typical city dweller/consumer until very recently. I'm not saying that you have to give up everything that comes with city life, I'm merely suggesting get creative.

For sure taxes still need to be paid... do you have a spare room? Could you AirBnB to supplement your income? Could you reduce your utilities by switching up some stuff in your house? Perhaps it would be cheaper for a gas stove than electric? Could you put solar panels on your roof to sell electricity back to the grid? Could you get a bike and ride more places to use less gas? Would having septic save money on waste? Could you hang dry your laundry instead of using a dryer?

Not saying that all or any of those are feasible for anyone/everyone, just offering some solutions that many people overlook when they think they're stuck and unable to reduce their costs any further and these things can be switched up without changing your lifestyle much/any. Some of them have a (in some cases large) up front cost, but then your monthly expenses can be reduced significantly which reduces your longer term income needs.

...and I don't know how you lived without running water, that's something I just can't give up, along with my washer and dishwasher.

[gregd]

Living without running water sucked. We had to drive to town (another expense) to shower at the campgrounds for a dollar, three times per week. We also had to drive to a rest stop south of our town to fill our 50 gallon barrel full of water for the week.

Obtaining running water was the first thing we did but it consisted of hiring a well witcher, drilling for water, putting a well in, putting in a pressure tank and piping to the house. It was a major expense. We had gray water for a few years, but eventually had to put in a septic system when we ditched the outhouse and installed a toilet.

[balabaster]

This is something I will need to consider shortly (off-grid build in the next year or two), I have much research to do on this first. I didn't realize Well Witchers were still used, I thought there was some scientific method and Well Witchers/Dowsers had been relegated to history - fascinating.

[chrisBob]

In the US reducing your hours is often ever worse than just taking the fractional pay cut: part time jobs don't typically include benefits, so you end up with much less than 60% pay for 60% of the work. If it weren't for health insurance this would seem like a much more reasonable option.

[humanrebar]

> If it weren't for health insurance this would seem like a much more reasonable option.

If health insurance (or childcare or disability insurance, etc.) weren't tied to employment, this would be a much more reasonable option.

The first step towards more flexible work arrangements is to eliminate gap in taxes between self-purchased benefits and employer-provided benefits. This goes for everything from snacks to health insurance. It's silly and really an fairness issue (should the little guy needs a big employer to take care of him?).

[basseq]

> I'd have to live in a tent with my family of 4 and eat ramen and the occasional squirrel.

Or a "stone cottage in the Kumaon".

We've been trained to maximize the curve: could you live an albeit different life on 60% of your pay and work three days a week? Most of us work five days a week: why don't you work all seven days a week and make 40% more?

[gregd]

could you live an albeit different life on 60% of your pay and work three days a week?

Yes. It consists of a tent, eating ramen and the occasional squirrel.

[balabaster]

You haven't really considered the alternatives available to you.

A non-exhaustive list of possible solutions include: Do you have a yard or patio space? Start growing your own produce. Seeds are cheap and with a bit of time and love will pay you back forever more. Tomatoes, peppers and herbs will all grow well on a window sill. Potatoes, onions and garlic will all grow in a bag in the back of the pantry if you let them. You can multiply potatoes, onions and garlic quite easily.

A big bag of flour can be found cheap (Costco for instance), make your own bread/pasta. That way you can supplement your Ramen with nutritious meals without breaking the bank.

If you're in California (or somewhere else with a high amount of sunlight, which many HN readers appear to be) perhaps think about the option of solar panels on your roof to reduce your power bill (flyers and auctions are great places to find these cheap, Google will help you with installation and then you just need to find an inspector).

Actually look at everything you spend money on in a month and ask yourself if there's a cheaper way to get those things without costing you so much money... and really look for solutions, you'd be surprised what you can find with a bit of ingenuity/creativity.

[gregd]

How would you know I haven't really considered the alternatives to living cheaper?

I don't have a yard to grow vegetables. We live in an apartment. When we lived in Portland, we had a yard to grow vegetables but our monthly water bill was prohibitively expensive (we're talking hundreds of dollars every 3 months).

Costco has a yearly membership fee, which I think at a minimum, is up to $75/year.

I work full time and my wife is in school full time in another city. We have 2 children (I have 4 altogether) who are school age. How the fuck am I supposed to make bread and pasta? Our rent is just shy of $1400/month.

Buying solar panels? What do solar panels cost nowadays and how much is installation? I can't install solar panels in my apartment.

I don't have a car payment because our only car is paid off. Except for student loans, we are debt free.

Edited to add: The other huge expense for us now is healthcare. The cost of healthcare for a family of 4 is astronomical.

[balabaster]

I wasn't suggesting those are all the solutions to your woes. There are many creative ways to live and the solutions that are right for you aren't going to be the solutions that are right for everyone. Perhaps you're living the cheapest way you can in the environment you have to be in for the moment, perhaps the only creative thing you can do to live the life you want is to re-prioritize. Perhaps that is not feasible for the moment either. Only you know the answer to that.

Costco does have a membership fee which (I think you're right) is $75 a year, but you get an annual dividend out of that membership depending on how much you spend there. Over the course of your annual membership, it's easy to save way more than the $75 you spend between the dividend and because the cost per unit of goods are much cheaper for many things.

Solar panels can be expensive, it's a good idea to keep your eye on sales, flyers and auction sites to get great deals and only buy when you find a good deal. I have no idea how much installation would be where you live. Me and my father-in-law are both pretty handy and Google pretty much tells us everything we need to do to install them. All you need is an inspector. With Google you can pretty much do anything you can imagine with a bit of ingenuity.

Having an apartment is limiting, for sure. But even growing some produce in the window will save some money.

Making bread and pasta is easy: Flour, salt, eggs, water, yeast will see you through both. Having some basic ingredients in the house will take you a long way to being able to make whatever you want without having to pay retail for it, and it's thoroughly satisfying. Again, Google is your friend.

Congrats being debt free. That is a tough thing for many/most people to be able to say in today's economy.

[organsnyder]

It sounds like you're unable/unwilling to consider relocating as a way to minimize cost. That's fine—everyone is entitled to live where they feel is best for them—but there are plenty of locations where you could get much more space, in a good location, for less than $1400/month.

[andegre]

Yep, if he'd pay my salary for the other 2 working days per week, I'd do the same thing...

[ndarilek]

I didn't get that at all. In particular, he lists several regrets that those dying experience about their lives. My impression is that many of those regrets stem from spending too much time on things that others, rather than the self, find important in life.

Speaking for myself, there was a time in my life when I wanted to create and raise a family, wanted to own a house, because that's what people told me I should do. Yet here I am in my 30s. I have a happy relationship that for various reasons isn't aimed at having kids or owning property. I rent an apartment in a co-op community which, while it certainly offers its own challenges, also brings rich memories that I may not have had were I living in my own house in the suburbs. I'm bootstrapping a software company, which is significantly easier without a mortgage and 2.5 additional mouths to feed. And I'm happy. I wake up when I like, put in 20 or so hours per week of real work, then spend time reading or exercising or working on fun projects. That's not to say I'm better than anyone else, and not everyone has the luxury to choose as I have. But I'd likely not be here, with the freedoms and lack of stress I have had I chosen the life others said I should, which is what I took away from reading this. And it's not all easy. Sometimes I look at those of you who are younger and have done more in your 20s than I could ever imagine, and question my choices. Then I realize that my life brings its own rewards, and it's good to externally be reminded of that sometimes. There are certainly plenty of other reminders that someone with my talents could likely be raking in lots of money right now if they pursued a different path, and sometimes those are hard to disregard. :)

Also, as someone who has chosen to not pursue the rat race, I often feel pushback and criticism from those who have chosen it, as if my choices directly threaten their own. If an article seems more boastful than maybe it should, perhaps it's a reaction against having one's personal choices questioned, dissected and ultimately put down by someone working 80 hours a week with a family to support and a mortgage to pay, attacking others with the Gaul to not have taken on those obligations. Again, nothing wrong with our individual choices, and I don't put anyone down for making them. I just often find that not everyone shares that view.

[ammnyc]

"Also, as someone who has chosen to not pursue the rat race, I often feel pushback and criticism from those who have chosen it, as if my choices directly threaten their own."

great response

[chime]

I might be the odd one here but I don't think this article was about the practicality of working part-time but rather a motivator. Here is the key point:

> When we were done, they took me to chai, and asked me about my life in the mountains, my time in theater. “I can also say ‘I want to go and live in the mountains.’ But who will let me?” one of them asked.

> “Remember this,” I laughed, “you need no one’s permission to be yourself.” When I got back, I read The Top Regret again—”I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

It is a weird coincidence that this is the exact debate I'm having with my wife right now. I make more than enough for us to live well and I'm trying to show her how wonderful her life can be if she goes part-time or quits her job. I've told her that she can finally do all the things she really wants to do - more time to spend with our newborn, joining mommy groups, more time to exercise, cook/eat healthier, time for hobbies etc.

She keeps coming back with her worries of future career prospects, financial problems in case I can't work, her prestige in her line of work etc. I counter with the fact that she was the valedictorian of her medical masters class with numerous open job offers with no expiration date, how we can buy sufficient life/disability insurance, how she can continue to work part-time or teach an advanced class or two if she wants to remain involved in her profession without a lapse.

For me, this would be the dream. I'd love to work half as much as I do but I can't because of finances. She CAN work half as much without worrying about finances but she is still afraid of the major change. Frankly, it is just too alien of a concept for her. I would never force her to pick a specific path so all I can do until she makes up her mind is to offer her suggestions and paint a picture of what life could be if she picked the unconventional path.

[abrahamepton]

Sounds like maybe she should work full-time, because perhaps she wants to, and you should work part-time or not at all, as you clearly sound like you would prefer.

[zellyn]

Hmmm. You're writing this as if being a stay-at-home mom is pure bliss. It's not. It is completely wonderful to spend a lot of time with your children. But it also has a huge cost in adult self-actualization and development. Some of that is completely silly (the way our culture values people who work more than those who don't, or who are experts at projecting a sense of workplace-type competence). But some is completely legit: striving and succeeding in the adult work world can also be rewarding and exciting. From our experience, looking after a kid leaves very little time for hobbies.

That finances thing is a pain... same situation here :-)

[chime]

Of course it isn't. I've been consulting from home for past 5 years myself and there is good and bad in any option you pick. I keep bringing up part-time because of the self-actualization reasons. I am just saying look into non-full-time possibilities because being away from the baby all day is already stressing her too much.

[lukego]

> For me, this would be the dream. I'd love to work half as much as I do but I can't because of

[rokhayakebe]

Perhaps you can rearrange and be the one to work part time while she continues doing what she enjoys doing. You are the one who wants this more than her, and perhaps you will both benefit better if each one did what they wanted.

[SubuSS]

So why don't you do the part time thing and let her chase her career dreams?

[chime]

We can't afford that at the moment for numerous reasons. Also I love what I do, she isn't married to her specific job, and she misses the baby a lot all day.

My point wasn't that I'm forcing her to make a major life decision because I prefer that for some reason. I was saying she has the ability to go part-time, she wants to spend more time with the baby, yet she is very concerned with making this change because it is a rare thing to do in medical field.

edit for s73v3r: She's already near the top of her field's salary range.

[SubuSS]

I don't know if part time is that rare a thing. My family has a couple of doctors who have the option of switching into emergency care / drop in clinic care etc. where they can decide how many hours to work. In fact their hours are way more solid than ours - they are usually done when they are done with their x hours and the pay is very very good as well. Do see if you can dig around more about the alternatives.

[s73v3r]

But if she's allowed to pursue her career ambitions, then it might be possible in the future.

[aluhut]

And an unspoken brag about how much money he must have besides his job.

Maybe we should mail him and ask for a job.

[willholloway]

Walden by Henry David Thoreau was a brag:

"Thoreau pitched his Walden in this key; he claps his wings and gives forth a clear, saucy, cheery, triumphant note ... the book is certainly the most delicious piece of brag in literature ... It is a challenge and a triumph, and has a morning freshness and élan..." - John Burroughs

Stories like this give hope to all those trapped, and existentially unsatisfied in the rat race.

The internet (and USPS, UPS and Fedex) are the most amazing of all human inventions. It lets us live like Thoreau at Walden with access to the global economy.

I've been doing just that for the last 8 months, and it saved my life.

I suppose many will take that as a brag. Kindred spirits will be inspired, and maybe, just maybe we will coalesce into a liberation movement, and join together to make escape cheaper and accessible for more and more people.

[onnoonno]

If we'd all live like Walden, the planet would be a suburbian dystopia.

I sincerely hope many people WANT to live in cities.

[panjaro]

Point is: Why do we work more when we have machines that do work? Aren't machines build to help us? Doesn't that mean we should have more time for ourselves?

[prostoalex]

The society still needs a homo sapiens to intervene when the machine flashes "Unknown item in the bagging area", though.

Also, define "we". There used to be an entire substrata of people whose job was to pull the elevator to the right floor when requested by the customers entering the elevator. It looks like those guys are all finally relaxing somewhere on the beach now that we've invented automated elevators eith buttons.

[crusso]

The people who own the machines that do the work do have more time for themselves.

[balabaster]

The people who own the machines still charge for the products those machines produce for profit. Their profits have gone up, the retail cost of the products they produce hasn't gone down. Consumers still need to find the same money to purchase those products and so they still have to work to make that money.

Having machines doing most of the work helps nobody reduce their workload. All it does is make those that can afford to buy the machines to do their jobs have more time and/or long term profit. If you can't afford to buy a machine to do your job, there is no opportunity to reduce your income needs without reducing or finding more creative ways to provide for your material needs.

[prostoalex]

> the retail cost of the products they produce hasn't gone down.

I disagree, with almost anything that has both a handmade and a mass-produced version, the mass-produced variant will be cheaper - t-shirts, soap, mugs, suits, etc.

[hahamrfunnyguy]

He is basically saying you will have a fuller life, since you will have more time to experience other things.

I think many people work at jobs that are at best "just work" and at worst miserable experiences. I want more time to learn new things, help people, and do work that I am passionate about.