Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores'

Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by BeetleB on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @04:03PM (#25586068)

Indeed. I realized some years ago that when trying to figure out how much my time is worth to scale everything with respect to the amount of discretionary free time I will have. If a new job will cut that free time by half then I expect double the pay.

And then I realized there are second order effects. Double my pay actually means much more than double my savings per year as my costs are more or less fixed.

So then I changed the formula to scale with respect to the amount I am saving versus the discretionary free time. Maybe a 30% raise would actually double my savings.

And by discretionary free time I am subtracting time spent doing chores. I live very close to work and even getting a job that requires a 1 hour commute each way makes a huge difference in my discretionary free time and should be compensated accordingly.

And then I took it one step further. I decided to take an Excel sheet and map out all the discretionary free time I think I will have for the rest of my life. And then I evaluated job offers based on which one will maximize that free time. So maybe cutting short free time right now is okay if it is more than compensated by having me retire a lot earlier. Of course then you may want to factor that free time while young is perhaps worth more than free time when your body is not that healthy.

And of course you may not live long enough to retire and you do want to take that into account as well and not put all your joy off towards the end.

It's a bit of a rabbit hole.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by ativzzz on Thursday December 31, 2020 @12:07AM (#25589789)

> I evaluated job offers based on which one will maximize that free time

How can you tell which jobs will give you how much free time? Besides commuting (I hope to work remotely forever), at many big companies, amount of free time greatly depends on the team you land on. Either way, there seems little insight into true work life balance of a company.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by BeetleB on Thursday December 31, 2020 @02:46PM (#25596336)

You mostly cannot know. If you know someone who works there they may have some insights. Mostly it's useful as a retrospective and realizing that I may have regressed in this new job and maybe I should look for another one.

But there are things one can know such as the number of vacations you'll have.

But yeah commuting is where you have the most certainty.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by craftinator on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @04:32PM (#25586375)

I think it's preference, do you want to enjoy your life while you're young, or bank that you'll live to an older age, and enjoy life when you're old.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by Retric on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @06:05PM (#25587372)

I think it’s more complicated as a 40h/week could be around ~40% of your time during the working years of your life. Making sure working doesn’t make you unhappy for the rest of the week is a huge deal.

Similarly, having more money hits serious diminishing returns. Watching a 500$ TV vs a 5,000$ TV doesn’t actually change much in the moment. Jump all the way to a 500,000$ home IMAX and watching a terrible movie still sucks.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by hezag on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @04:57PM (#25586631)

I think a better question would be: "Do you want to enjoy your life while you're young, thus increasing your odds to live longer and better[1], or bet you'll live to an older age and, hopefully, enjoy life when you're old?"

1: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/how-research-shows-you-can-l...

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by BeetleB on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @04:59PM (#25586657)

Or, you know, something in between. It's not an either or.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by BeetleB on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @05:02PM (#25586683)

For me, I've found that no matter how much I've enjoyed life in the past, other than good memories, it does nothing for me in the present.

I still enjoy life in the present but I do sacrifice a bit of it so I can also enjoy life when older.

If you don't want to completely sacrifice today for tomorrow you simply adjust the age related weight in the Excel sheet :-)

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by hnuser123456 on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @05:27PM (#25586954)

Fantastic comment. I've spent some time on spreadsheets for task tracking, giving priorities, due dates, estimated completion time, and subjectively evaluating "payoff". A spreadsheet isn't the best UI for something that changes so often though, I'd like to write something better that works for me and maybe share it, or someone can share their preferred personal tracker with me.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by markvdb on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @05:42PM (#25587122)

I have a very simple one: a bookmark to a web page that calculates the number of weeks until my 80th birthday.

GF does not like it at all, but it works very well for me.

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by vakili on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @07:15PM (#25587975)

  echo $(expr '(' $(date -d 2070-01-01 +%s) - $(date +%s) + 86399 ')' / 604800) " weeks until I turn 80"

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Re:Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores' by hnuser123456 on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @06:19PM (#25587504)

I like it.

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