Oooh - I'd kill for a four day week...

If you really wanted a four day work week, you would have one. You'd make it a priority and either negotiate it into your current job or go find an employer who was flexible enough to allow it.

The fact that you're working 5 days a week can be taken as a statement that you are in fact content to work 5 days per week.

I used to get this a lot when I'd come back from a long trip. "I wish I could just drop everything and go traveling for a whole year..." But you can. You just haven't. And if you thought about it, you'd probably realize that you really just prefer to lead the life you're leading.

The key is to understand yourself and what you really want. Then do that.

I do understand why people work like crazy, they have huge mortgages or other loans. I cut my hours before taking huge loan (I have smallish student loan to pay), so I just need to adjust my future house/apartment to my income. It's much more easier this way, than to first take huge loan and the trying to cut hours.

But for my friends who don't have that much debt, I always recommend them to work less. Here in Finland we have quite heavy progression in income tax. It makes the pay cut smaller, since your tax percentage goes down. And if you have small kids, kindergartner bills goes also down, since you can pick them up earlier.

It's amazing how big difference two hours a day can make. Nowadays I exercise at least three times a week (I lost 10 kilos this fall, yay!), I cook better and healthier food and do some programming as a hobby.

Before cutting my hours, I made more or less average pay, now my salary is pretty much the same as median salary.

And I don't think I get any less done at work than I used to. I'm quality assurance engineer and I don't believe that anyone can really be productive for 8 hours a day in non-trivial tasks.

Ironically, Dutch engineering education is among the best of the world, but after college, there's nothing that keeps computer engineers like Dijkstra, van Renesse, Vogels, Kaashoek, Moolenaar and van Rossum at home.

It works because we have a very modest house with an equally modest mortgage. We own the car, my wife runs a very tight budget and we don't have many other outgoings. Our largest expense (greater than the mortgage payments) are school fees; we send our 4 kids to a Montessori school but we're happy to pay the money because we can afford it (just) and it's something we both strongly believe in

The downside to the extra time I have, is that I haven't exactly used it wisely - in fact I've mostly squandered it, which makes me sad looking back at the year gone by.

We have had "part time doctors" in the US for a while, not to mention a movement toward "girl specialties" (read: gyno/derm/few others). It's a significant contributor to our rising medical costs.

Supply of medical services = (# of doctors) x (average hours worked). The # of doctors is basically fixed (all medical school slots are filled, and there is no movement to build more), which means part time doctors reduce the supply of medical services. Net result: rising prices (note: not the only cause of this), fewer people being treated.

Hopefully things work out better for the dutch than for us.

I think China has a very forward thinking idea on this: if training slots are limited by government fiat, raise standards for women relative to men (since society will get fewer hours of output from a given woman, she will need a higher productivity to compensate).

My normal day would be: get up at six and start work answering emails. Around eight I'd rustle up a quick breakfast and eat it at my desk while I started making the calls I needed to make. Done at noon.

If the 6 AM start time seems horrible, consider this: my commute from bed to desk was less than 30 seconds and being done before noon was a powerful motivator.

However a large portion of my job was traveling to different meetings throughout the state. Depending on the location, these trips could take three to five hours. So, if I had two meetings a week, I'd cut back my "office time" the day before or the day after.

Regardless of how much travel I did, I was done for the week when I hit 30 hours. I was done before Friday 90% of the time.

For about four months of that time, my fiancee (who also worked from home) was living with me. We would often go have lunch together or see a matinee.

"Can I work 3 days a week?"

They accepted a week later, and I spent the entire summer working 3 days at this company, while spending more time with my wife and newborn son.

Sometime in September/October, I received another email from another old client who was desperate for developers. I told him that I could only spare 2 days a week, not expecting him to accept this. Only he did. Shit, now I have to work 5 days again! But this job is only a 15min commute, and I can work from home 1 of these days.

I guess the point of this story is that sometimes you will get what you ask for, especially if you have a good reputation. All you have to do is... ask for it.