One of my most reviled posts is called, Do People Really Only Work 40 Hours A Week Or Less And Complain Why They Can’t Get Ahead? The post paints me as an unsympathetic person full of tough love. “Thank you sir! May I have another!”

I wrote the post back in 2011 when I was burning out from working in finance. Every week was a ~60-hour grind of doing the same thing I had been doing since 2009. Whenever I heard someone complain on the bus or online about their single-digit-hour workday, it irked me.

Oh, how I wished for a 9 AM to 5 PM workday. Instead, I was always expected to get in by 6:30 AM and stay connected until 9 PM because I needed to correspond with my colleagues in New York and Asia who were in different time zones. 

Wanting to go straight to the corner office without putting in the work is human nature. As an old man now, I empathize with those of you who want six-pack abs while eating donuts every day. Sign me up! Nevertheless, I encourage you to act more rationally if you want to get ahead.

There are extremely smart people out there who are also working extremely hard at their goals. If you’re of average intelligence, as I am, it’s very difficult to be successful by working normal hours.

I’ve made the case the best time to work may be during a pandemic. With fewer things to do, you might as well spend more time making more money. Further, if you are able to work from home, you could actually figure out a way to work less and still get paid in full!

Since March 2020, I’ve talked to many tech friends about their work schedules. About 80 percent of them said they loved the flexibility of working from home because they had more freedom. They also said they were able to work fewer hours and get the same amount of work done. As a result, they could play more tennis during the day, catch a SF Giants matinee game, take long naps, and travel everywhere.

Hearing about their flexible work schedules made me really think about going back to work full-time. Our worlds were converging, therefore, I thought I might as well get paid. Besides, with two young children, having subsidized health care, paid time off, 401(k) matching, and a steady paycheck sounded good.

But my wife knocked some sense back into me by asking whether any of my tech friends had kids. None did. Therefore, the freedom my friends had working from home would be different from the freedom I was imagining.

I put my dreams of getting paid to do less aside until now.

Being smart is generally a good thing. You can use your smarts to make more money and do more things with ease. However, what if you live in one of the smartest countries in the world. Can your smartness shine through when many of your peers are equally as intelligent?

Or what if you live in one of the happiest countries in the world. If you’re not always happy, will you feel like there’s something wrong with you? Surely, there are some unhappy people living in Norway and Sweden, two countries that consistently rank in the top 5 happiest countries in the world.

Although there is a growing apathy towards work given some people’s investment returns are beating their work income, the best time to work might be right now.

One of the biggest things I disliked about work was having to commute. Now that my son is back in preschool, I have to leave the house by 8:30 am to drop him off no later than 9 am. Then I’ve got to pick him up by 3:45 pm, otherwise, we’ll be charged a late fee.

Driving 15-20 minutes each way is not that big of a deal. It’s just something I haven’t done since 2012. It’s more the obligation of having to be somewhere at a certain time that takes getting used to again.

Commuting Monday through Friday puts me back in work mode. I turn on my favorite podcasts, play them on 1.5X speed, and away I go. Invariably, there will be something that happens during my rush-hour commute that increases stress.

Therefore, perhaps I should get a job if I’m already going to experience the mundanity of the daily commute for the next 14 years. At least this way, my commute will feel more productive.

If you’ve been a stay-at-home parent for several years, thinking of coming out of early retirement, or disgruntled with your current job, this post is for you.

One of my biggest regrets while working was not taking a sabbatical. If I had taken a one-to-three-month sabbatical, I probably wouldn’t have left finance at age 34. Instead, I probably could have kept grinding until age 40 and made a lot more money.

Alas, I was too afraid to take a sabbatical because nobody else did. Everybody was afraid that if they took a sabbatical, their year-end bonus would be slashed. Further, all my colleagues, including myself, were hungry to climb the corporate ladder.

It was a shame not to have a sabbatical culture, even though our employee handbook clearly stated we could take one every five years. If there had been one, I’m sure employees would be much happier and employee turnover would have been significantly lower.

Thankfully, I’m my own boss now. The main pressure I feel is mostly self-induced.

In my Pre-Retirement Checklist For Post-Pandemic Life, I set June 15 as the date to start taking things down a notch in preparation for a sabbatical. Then I ended up taking a two-month sabbatical and now I’m back.