Asymptomatic

Take Some Time Off

April 13, 2007 4:57pm · 5 Comments · , and

You know how I'm always saying that I have so many back-burner projects that I don't have time for? And how I wish I had a little time here or there to work on any one of them to the point that they could surface to at least see if they would sink or float?

Berta recently had her yearly review at work, and she's going to be making a little more money. Not a whole lot, but enough to keep pace with inflation and eating out at restaurants. I jokingly asked her if I could quit my job, and of course she told me she wasn't making that much more. "Maybe we should play the lottery," she says. Well, the Lottery idea never really worked well in the past, but I have been toying with the possibility of quitting my job anyway.

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Don't get me wrong- I don't dislike my job. But you must admit if you are a working person that your job probably gets in the way of a ton of productive things that you would rather be doing. I'm not talking about "Getting a tan" or "Watching BayWatch re-runs". I'm talking about honest-to-goodness productive, well, "work".

Here are just a handful of projects I'd complete if I wasn't working 8-16 hours a day:

I wonder what the time commitment would be to finish all of them, defining "finished" as a state where I was happy enough with them to the point of not having to involve myself obsessively with them daily. Would that ever happen? Is it likely that I would be "satisfied" with, for example, Habari to the point where I could take a regular job again and let Habari return to the background?

I know of some stories of people who just had enough of the daily grind and quit to make their own way and become successful at their new endeavors. I know plenty of people who would go on retreats to Louisiana to help with disaster recovery. I know some people who did just that - quit their jobs to go help. I don't think that's for me, but I bet that with a change of lifestyle as significant as quitting work on purpose, I might reconsider that position.

Where would the money come from? I guess that's the primary concern. If I could work out how not to work for the amount of time it would take to finish all of these things, would I? Getting back into the work force would be another concern.

I'd like to say that this is just a passing idea. But I had that discussion with Berta a couple of days ago. I think that my mind will spend a few cycles every day thinking about it until it figures out a way to pull it off - if that's even possible - and then it'll work out how to sell the idea to the stakeholders.

What would you do? If you could take a year off of paid work to do something else productive, what would you do?

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Comments

  1. Are you still going to work on Wordpress too? Or just leaving those?

  2. If at all possible, I would try to travel during any non-working period. That costs money, though, and makes the whole "not working" part of the equation a little complicated.

    I'd try to spend more time with my kids, and participate in their education at school in ways that I am currently unable to do. I would probably try to watch more sunrises, too. In all honesty, though, I don't think I could handle a year without work. I lack the discipline to direct myself for long periods of time. Without the constraints of work, I would flounder uselessly between too many projects, and would likely complete few -- if any -- of them.

    What is your passion? If you could pursue the things about which you are passionate, how would you do that?

  3. Joe: I've got priorities. I'd like to work on WordPress plugins some more, since there is still a lot of room there for improvement. I won't be working on WordPress itself any more except as work requires. And as soon as I can start recommending Habari for jobs, I will.

    skippy: My passion? It's odd. I really think that programming is my passion. I just love to do it. I never wanted to do it for money, though. I thought I would teach math and have computers for fun. Now, I do computers all the time and still, oddly, don't have a lot of time for the passion of it.

    If I could pursue the things about which I am passionate, I would start spending more time doing what we had talked about for Habari, but for all of my pet projects. There would be requirements, use-cases, code, test-cases, and documentation. Everything would be done "by the book" and in that process, I'd learn more about which parts of the book to keep and which to toss.

    I've had classes that teach how to prepare yourself for independent projects since I was in 5th grade. Keeping oriented shouldn't be too much of a problem, especially when it's something about which I care deeply.

    And sure, I think I would invest more time in my kids and in gathering rosebuds while I may, and while that may have as much or more value as those other things, they're less productive than what else I could fully occupy a work day with. After all, the kids would be at school most of the day.

  4. I don´t think you or anyone else needs to spend a whole year without work just "finding yourself". For me a mixture of work and freetime is perfect. Work hard and enjoy the opportunities your work offers you, e.g go on holiday or even do a little bike tour with your family. What do you think? Would that be an addition for you?

  5. I never said "find myself". I know pretty well who I am.

    What I need is time to do all of the other things that I'm passionate about that occupy my mind when I should be concentrating on work.

    As much as it would be enjoyable, a little bike tour with the family isn't going to get done the list of projects above, for which there is already no time without the time spent on vacations and biking. If you see what I mean.

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