My entire career was switching from one discipline to another.
For me, the key was twofold:
1) Spend a lot of extracurricular (not work) time, exploring new tech that interests me. This often included purchasing expensive kit, and attending classes, on my own dime (but I could usually use the spend in my tax write-offs).
2) Be willing to accept being paid a lot less than my peers.
My career is a fairly eclectic one. I’m now retired, and spend a lot of time learning stuff, which is fun.
This is me to a big extent. Sometimes I feel like I to learn for learning's sake. Which is okay, or at least that is what my therapist tells me. I struggle with the fact that I "think about doing" vs actually doing.
My work is my hobby too, that is why I struggle sometimes wondering if I will ever retire. Why retire when what I'm doing is for the most part fun. Sure, there are days that I'd rather be "doing X", or more like "studying X" than actually working but I'm enjoying work so much lately that it soon passes.
Work also forces me to actually DO instead of thinking about doing. I have to perform. People are depending on me to get stuff done and that is a big motivator. With my personal projects, no one needs it or is expecting it so it is too easy to abandon.
The overwhelming majority of people who work around 40 hours a week have plenty of free time.
"I don't have freetime" is usually a tell sign that people either don't know how to manage their time / prioritize free time activities, or have made choice that they refuse to see as choice but as obligations instead (which implicitely just means they prioritize this activity a lot)
> The overwhelming majority of people who work around 40 hours a week have plenty of free time.
Overwhelming majority? Plenty of people don't make enough from their 40h/w job to pay all their expenses and have to get another job or have to share responsibilities with a working spouse. Having kids or aging parents is also a common demand on ones time.
If you want to argue that this doesn't add up with "The overwhelming majority of people who work around 40 hours a week have plenty of free time." then please provide sourced numbers rather than baseless internet doomerism.
Oh and I'll add that the average commute time in the US is among the shortest in the OECD, since the long commute boogeyman always end up popping up in these discussions.
Good point. Still, plenty of households can't get by on one 40h/w job. And regardless, childcare and elder parent responsibilities are things that I'd consider taking away from 'free' time, not a part of it.
Yeah. I worked 30 hours/week when I went to undergrad full time for CS. Later I went back to grad school while also working full time. There is a lot of free time in many people's day. I'm also not saying it all has to be productive, I know mine certainly isn't, but it should be deliberate. I love sitting down to watch a movie or play a game, and I hate when I get sucked into some social media for 30 mins or an hour without realizing it.
Idk if it's about my demographic, but everyone in development positions who I know has to work till 7pm. There are people at less serious positions who leave at 5.
what works for me: I need to establish a "normal state" that includes some of this, achieve momentum and then add a little more. Most of us have a lot of slack hiding in the required activities, but you can't recapture this all at once. Do something scheduled but onyl a few hours a week. Once it ends, keep doing something scheduled in that timeslot - even if it's not "official" (ex: I go to the library on a specific day/time and study low-level electronics). It is way easier to keep going with your normal routine and supplement than it is to make big changes all at once.
How did you manage to write off for your expenses for tax purposes? I thought this was not possible for regular employees in the US (your profile says you're in the New York). I'd love to be able to do this.
It’s been awhile, so I can’t remember exactly how it worked (I’ve used an accountant for the last 30 years or so), but I was able to argue that it went to benefit my day job (which it actually did), and I mixed in a lot of stuff that directly benefited my day job (like taking my team out for a holiday dinner, on my personal expense, as the company didn’t do that kind of thing).
I wouldn’t do it without a decent accountant. In my experience, they always paid for themselves.
I believe that. It's been a very long time, since I declared anything like that. I think I remember my accountant telling me that I couldn't anymore, so I shrugged, and declared what I could. Also, I retired in 2017.
For programmers it wasn't that big of a deal. Maybe some electronics purchases were no longer deductible, or a little bit of software, etc. Home office could be sizeable.
Some other professional got royally screwed - e.g. a concert violinist can no longer deduct a $50,000 violin purchase if they're employed by an orchestra as a W2
For me, the key was twofold:
1) Spend a lot of extracurricular (not work) time, exploring new tech that interests me. This often included purchasing expensive kit, and attending classes, on my own dime (but I could usually use the spend in my tax write-offs).
2) Be willing to accept being paid a lot less than my peers.
My career is a fairly eclectic one. I’m now retired, and spend a lot of time learning stuff, which is fun.