Ask HN: How much time do you spend on the work vs. the rest of your life?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=614169

by zeedotme • 17 years ago

14 11 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If you divided your life into, lets say, four areas: 1. Work 2. Health 3. Relationships 4. Personal growth

In all honesty, what percentage of your life would each receive?

fburnaby• 17 years ago

I'm working on a master's degree, play squash with profs, try to teach my research to my (ever so patient) girlfriend, and consider watching lectures on MIT OCW to be "personal growth". It's all blended together!

rjurney• 17 years ago

My equation is to achieve fulfillment in personal growth (area 4) through work (area 1) without messing up my marriage (area 3) and still having time to keep up my health (area 2).

The overwhelming majority of my time goes towards work (area 1) since I'm usually bootstrapping a startup while also consulting to pay the bills. Since I have to maintain my marriage as well (area 3), my health (area 2) usually suffers because there's just not enough time in the day. The end result of this situation will probably be the loss of a decade or two (hopefully not 3) of lifespan. C'est la vie.

If I could cure myself of being a degenerate entrepreneur, or make/raise enough money from a startup that it can be my full-time job and limit myself to 60 hour work-weeks, I could achieve some kind of balance. But its never really happened so far. It is the goal. I think I might achieve it next time.

GiraffeNecktie• 17 years ago

The question is meaningless for me. There's no dividing my life up into this area or that area. It's all one big rolling ball of string. Ok, maybe I could split it up into "job" and "not job" but health, relationships, personal growth are all blended together (along with entertainment, home maintenance, chores, walking the dog, and goofing off). I could tell you how many hours I bill a month but work still flits in and out through every waking hour (and maybe some dreaming hours).

patio11• 17 years ago

In terms of waking hours, let's see...

1. Work/commute: 62.5% 2. Health (gym): 1.4% 3. Relationships (romantic & otherwise): 12.5% 4. Personal growth: meh. I don't itemize downtime, and I need downtime. Building the business quite obviously helps me prepare for the future -- spending time on my non-renumerative hobbies does, too, by preserving my sanity.

(Someday I'm moving the business from downtime to Work and will recover the rest of Work for my own uses. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future.)

Zarathu• 17 years ago

Before financial independence: 95%.

After financial independence: 20%.

dkokelley• 17 years ago

Is that a planned breakdown of your time once you reach financial independence, or actual data from your life? If so, congrats on the independence.

spkthed• 17 years ago

Dave Ramsey plan?

themanual• 17 years ago

thanks. but how do you define "financial independence"??

amalcon• 17 years ago

Counting waking hours only, work (incl. commute) 65%, relationships (marriage and others) 35%, health 10%, personal growth 100%. Yes, that adds up to 210%. I don't see why these tasks should be mutually exclusive.

I live in the city, so I either walk or cycle to work, so my commute can double-count as health. Some of the "other" relationships involve "health" activities as well, and whatever I'm doing, I try to somehow aim for personal growth.

maketheearth• 17 years ago

maybe 10%. even with the 10%, i might not enjoy too much about work and would love to find work that seems to blend in seamlessly with the rest of my life.

truebosko• 17 years ago

This is currently the hardest thing I'm battling in my life (As sad as that may sound)

On one hand I want to work hard after my fulltime job and read more programming books, write more open source software and write more to my programming blog

On the flip side I want to spend more time on my other passion (Cooking), more with my girlfriend, more time growing myself.

I'm working towards a half/half setup by so far cutting out freelance work from my life, but I think I still need to balance it out more.

Ask HN: How much time do you spend on the work vs. the rest of your life?

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