You already don't owe anyone your time. You contract with an organization to trade your time for money, which you can then trade for other stuff. Most such employment contracts can be ended easily by either party if they don't like it.

I've spent a significant amount of my career working on problems of my own choice, both in someone else's employment, with a co-founder, or on my own. The limiting factor turned out not to be time or money: it was that the set of problems that are worth solving in today's economy and can be solved by one person (or even a small team) is vanishingly small, and I just had a bigger impact when working with larger organizations.

> it was that the set of problems that are worth solving in today's economy and can be solved by one person (or even a small team) is vanishingly small, and I just had a bigger impact when working with larger organizations.

That's an important observation. There isn't really that much interesting technical work left that a single programmer can do, as the field has been thoroughly mined for such work for decades now.

Interestingly, it's very different in art world - in technology, the new solution has to be an improvement upon state of the art, whereas in creative pursuits it merely has to be different and interesting. Hence, there's basically infinite work left for writers, painters, solo musicians etc.

It's cyclical in tech too. There are subfields of tech where one person can still do useful original work - cryptocurrency, for example, or drones, or some of the low-level kernel hacking like the recent io_uring post. The key is "impact", though - because those are currently hobbies that aren't really ready for mainstream consumption, you're not really going to make an economic difference with your work. There's a tipping point that needs to be crossed where a little subfield becomes a big business, and then suddenly all the folks that were playing around with that technology end up sitting on a gold mine of a career.

If you had millions of dollars, you'd still need to brush your teeth. And sleep and eat and shower and use the toilet. Would those things mean you're not truly free?

You'll always be 'forced to work' even if that work is just keeping your body alive and well. Perhaps it would be worth trying to find happiness now, rather than hoping it's hidden behind the next achievement.

There's a big difference for me between 8 hours of mandatory work vs 1 hour of self care/other misc activities. I would still consider myself free in this case.

I just don't see how I can find happiness when I have to give away 8 hours of my prime mental resources 5 days out of 7 while having stress of needing to meet expectations and impressing others. I just don't see how.

I just need to be able to do things when I feel like doing them as opposed to confirming with someone else's set routine and answering to them. Otherwise I won't be satisfied/happy.

And even during that 1 hour you are allowed to make your own decisions about... the color of your toothbrush, just to give a stupid example. At work, you can usually only dream about this degree of freedom.

His main point was about not owing his time to someone. Not something. I can totally relate to that perspective. I value my time over anything else and it is apparent that money, if you have enough of it and use it wisely, gives you power over how that time is being used. Especially if you’re looking to the future.

It’s a matter of perspective though, as always, and to me, happiness lies in being able to set my agenda and share power over it with whom I choose, not with whom I’m forced to share it with.

It's odd to me how some studies say that above 70k income there's not much difference to happiness.

I've definitely got happier, more hopeful and more confident in myself as I've started to make enough to see that there's a possible way for me to escape this routine and still have decades of life left to live where I can spend time on whatever I want while still having youthful energy.

And I do feel like focusing on getting to that point as early as possible should be my main goal right now. The more money I make in present the more I can invest to achieve that point even earlier (as money makes money) as opposed to being half in, half out.

Almost everyone just scales up their spendings though, there is no scenario where they can retire early.

I guess maybe I find the situation more unbearable than others, I couldn't live with myself if I used up my escape plan resources.

Very likely, from my perspective I can't live my life saving all my monetary resources to only enjoy my life when I'm on my 50s or 60s. I'm not born in wealth or in a wealthy country, I had to work a lot to get out of the initial hand life dealt me, including getting out of my home country.

I won't sacrifice another 10-15 years of my life while I'm young to have a possibility to have all the time in the world when I'm 60.

It's a matter of perspective as you pointed out.

True. I'm old and I just have no desires anymore to spend money on. Low appetite, low libido and low energy, tired of traveling ... wish I had 1/100 of that money when I was young.

@piva00

Yes that would be way too late. I am hoping to achieve this by the time I am 32 or 35 at the latest. If I get lucky, by 30.

I won't have enough from career likely by 30, but I should have enough to start some side project that would hopefully garner enough passive income.

There is certainly a difference between needing to give someone your time and needing to maintain your body/health.