Having more than 5 hours of free time leads to declining happiness | Hacker News Reader

Having more than 5 hours of free time leads to declining happiness

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14 pointsAnhTho_FR8 comments

I’m interested to see in the comments here if this is true. I retired early and it does seem to kind of match my experiences. I feel aimless. There’s only so much video games and watching crypto charts and gardening I can do in a day. I’m thinking of going back into cancer research. I want to fight for things again and help the world.

My brother had a similar experience once and told me something that has stuck with me. “You’ve got to have a job or you get weird.”

My recent experience has colored my entire opinion of the thought of retiring early and retiring in general. I’m not sure I ever want that. Although I don’t want to lose 40+ hours of my life each week either. I think 3-4 days worth of work per week would be about perfect. Or working only mornings. Everything you actually need to do at work could probably be condensed down to each morning. The rest is filler and pointless meetings. But going to zero work hasn’t felt good either.

I took an 18-month break and I felt directionless too. I started with my bucket list: travels, writing classes, sports, organizing parties / trips with friends. But at some point, it felt a bit "vain"and my friends didn't have the same schedule. After this I decided to work part time on a contractor basis, and this definitely improved my level of happiness: having enough constraints to appreciate my free time more, having more people around me, being stimulated!

The number of people who grind for retirement, retire, and then realize all they needed was 20-30 hour work weeks and not retirement... there's something there.

I experienced similar when I temporary stayed at home with kids. Not exactly the same, because kids don't allow long free stretches of time and also they give it some meaning, but similar.

I'm in the same boat. But I was a pharmacist before retirement and I don't want to do that again. Also I live abroad now.

I want a remote job I can do for 20-30 hours a week. But so does everyone probably. I learned to code but not sure if there's any coding jobs that have such hours.

The key to enjoying leisure is realising that it, properly done, is not just frittering away free time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure#Serious_leisure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure#Project-based_leisure

> ... there is a third class of men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. These are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and ... their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example. — BAWR

Or put another way, people who are depressed are less likely to seek out activities to fill their time.

Correlation vs. Causation

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