Comment by GrandMasterBirt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GrandMasterBirt | Hacker News Reader

GrandMasterBirt

To answer a question in the article:

1) We forget our dreams and risks because if we have children or just people depending on us to put a roof over their heads and food on the table, we can't just drop everything.

2) Once you live in luxury, it is hard to drastically cut back a few months (like spend 1000 a month vs 3000) and then have enough money saved to just take a risk and hope for the best.

3) Even if YOU can achieve (2), your spouse might not be able to.

4) Loans, assist with this risk averseness, since you don't want to lose your house/invested money. Honestly this is why I am debt free. When a company I worked for went under, people were ripping their hair out, I was just smiling "cool, I got time to look for a better job".

5) In reality, you DO HAVE FREE TIME. I have 1 child (3yo), and a full time job, and a wife in college, AND I find time to r&r AND work on a startup, AND spend time with child/wife. If I have enough hours, no excuse for you. I have co-workers with even more responsibilities than I do AND they manage to find time for a side company.

In reality people who say "I don't have time" are just not willing to sacrifice anything for their dreams. Even if you fail you can at least live your life knowing you tried, if you succeed it feels even better, otherwise your whole life is spent envious of someone else's success.

> In reality, you DO HAVE FREE TIME

... Yes, but also no. There are only 24 hours in a day. I've had quarters in school where my day contained roughly one hour of time not spent sleeping, traveling, in class, at work, or in lab. My choices: eat, or do something fun and starve, literally. It was close to two full time jobs, and IIRC I was spending my weekends replacing the engine in my car, which had exploded.

> In reality people who say "I don't have time" are just not willing to sacrifice anything for their dreams

You are technically correct, but some of those things I feel don't deserve disgust. For example, I'm unwilling to give up a minimum amount of sleep, a minimum amount of food, and school. The former two for obvious reasons.

It's possibly time for me to point to the freely available book Arnold Bennet's 'How to Live on 24 Hours per Day' as an interesting read.

Also available as a free Kindle book on Amazon. I must say I'm enjoying reading it as much for the images it conjures up in my mind as for the advice:

"(for nowhere can one more perfectly immerse one's self in one's self than in a compartment full of silent, withdrawn, smoking males)"

How does the free Kindle thing work? I only find one for 2$ on my Android Kindle app. I don't think I have ever seen a free Kindle book.

This is the link I used:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JQU7DA/ref=docs-os-doi_...

How do you find the free time? I am simply too tired to do anything most evenings after work. I don't think it is just a matter of willpower, otherwise, why sleep at all. I don't watch TV, but I have 2 hours commute time per day.

If you still have energy in the evenings, you should consider yourself lucky, rather than be condescending.

I have 2 hours commute time per day.

That would be a huge problem, for me at least. I've had commutes like that before, and I had absolutely no energy left after the job and commute. Is there any way you can fix this?

I am still not decided that I want to keep the job (only doing it the second month), in the long run I would want to move. Meanwhile, I try to go by bicycle most of the time, so that at least the commute time can count as exercise. But granted, the 2 hours are probably severely missing from my time. Also, while I love the cycling, it's probably more tiring than other forms of travel.

Try doing it only once every two day, and decide to use the gathered time to do some work. Time gathered back from other activities is very productive because you decided to sacrifice something, so you make a good use of it.

The extra commute time from riding may well be made up for by the extra energy it should give you now and the long-term benefits to your health and well-being.

> In reality people who say "I don't have time" are just not willing to sacrifice anything for their dreams.

Agreed, I posted my story above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541331), but I will tack on I also found time to work on a couple of fairly substantial side projects (http://fleurdevieclinic.org/ and http://tmedweb.tulane.edu)

My point was that you can do your full time job, and do side work as well. As long as there is no legal problems with that. If you want to come home and turn off your brain, then don't complain its the job that is stopping you. You can work many hrs, just that when I come home I don't work for x hrs straight. I have inspiration, I work for 20 minutes here and there. I have none, tomorrow is when it will happen. I try not to overwork myself too so I can still be good at the main job.

I couldn't agree more. It pisses me off when people say "I don't have the time." What they really mean, is that they don't want to make it a priority. People need to consider their time like an investment, and maybe they'll consider watching TV can be a waste of time. I wrote about this [http://techneur.com/post/535211849/dont-have-the-time]

Actually, it can help if you have a risk-averse spouse. We aggressively pay off our mortgage so that we'll be free of that expensive obligation sooner. It requires sacrifices from everyone, kids and parents--but we're not convinced that the most important portion of a child's upbringing is how much you spend on them.

It reminds me of the old joke, "You can always squeeze out more time or boos."

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