Ask HN: What would you do if you didn't have to work?

Me personally: I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexico-California border to the Washington-Canada border in 2022. While I missed work on trail, it definitely made me realize that once I'm financially independent, I'm mostly going to be living a life outdoors, with occasional indoor time to play music.

Your situation is a bit different from my goals, but honestly if I had that opportunity, I'd be doing my best to explore the woods/mountains nearby in whatever way I can.

I also kind of agree with the "Learn German" comment - learning a non engineering skill that's also either practical or brings you joy is a great way to eat up time. I'm speak a few languages, but as I only regularly use English in my day-to-day life, just maintaining the other ones at a high skill level is a time consumer, though one I enjoy doing.

Personally: I'd buy a house in Venice beach (on the beach). Purchase the top of the line Mac Studio + their best monitor...and I'd spend a full year sabbatical meditating and learning how to do proper software reverse engineering alternating with more and more problem sets from Project Euler. With my significantly improved programming and reversing skills, I'd then join a bunch of teams reversing all the classic games so that the code is preserved for all of eternity maybe even try my luck at improving the abysmal desktop experience on Linux(a tall order I know). After that, i'd probably spend as much time as possible meeting people in order to find someone i'd like to spend the rest of my life with.

I know its not exactly your scenario OP but if the 2-6 hrs a week are all on one day, then you could spend the other days on something that really benefits you long term. We don't know what your personal situation is like but for me(as a person in their mid 30s) I feel like focusing on personal development while also understanding how quickly youth and youth health disappears would be my top priority. That could be in the form of really mastering a skill that you will use for the rest of your life, or building personal relationships that will be with you for the long haul. Either will allow you to look back and be proud of the time you spent.

You will always have to work - you need to feed yourself, clothe yourself, shelter yourself, etc. How you go about doing all of that is what matters. With that in mind, I think you;re asking "What would I do if I didn't have to have a job," which is a more interesting question.

I would find people in my community to band together to help us build and maintain our community - helping maintain each other's home, build new homes for expanding families and new comers, produce as much of our own food as possible, and adopt various technologies to make it all easier on us so we could also enjoy abundant free time for art, play, relationship, and joy.

This could be us now, but too many people sell their lives at a discount to rich narcissists. If we, instead, turn away from those useless assholes and turn, instead, to each other and form cooperative work environments where the work is equally shared - as are the proceeds - we can start building a better, more freer world where you can answer this question in real time for yourself.

I don't have to work. Or more accurately, I can avoid work for a long time without any consequences. Think of a balloon that deflates slowly. I have to blow air into it sometimes, but rarely right now.

The weather ends up being a lot more consequential. Sunny days rarely get wasted. I ride my bicycle a lot in the summer.

I can spend more time on projects with zero economical incentive. That's most of my work these days. I can write better tools for my readers without thinking about how they'll pay for themselves. I get to work on what feels right.

I have the time to do things slowly. I can walk two hours to get somewhere, and stop for coffee along the way. I can overengineer things.

I am a lot more available and I am more generous with my time. I don't need to invest my free time so judiciously. People told me that I've become far more relaxed and easygoing.

However I'm very careful about gaming and mindless browsing. I still have an alarm and some structure in my life. I try not to waste my years aboard the gravy train.

I still don't make time to practice an instrument. I didn't join any clubs or rebuild any old motorcycle. I learned that I don't really care about some of those things. The lack of time was just an excuse.

To sum it up as actionable advice: do more of the things you love. Treat it like two hundred Saturdays. Don't turn this into a job, and don't spend them on the couch either.

Context: 40s male who has $wifie and $son. Has some programming skills, half education and half self-taught.

I'll probably do the following if I only need to work 2-6 hours per week:

- Take nap to balance chronic sleep deprivation since $son is allocated;

- Go back to exercise routine to pick up my two 30m of rowing machine every day;

- Spend one more hour with $son every day;

- Plan more gift purchase for $wifie. It actually requires a lot of thoughts;

- Complete my Dragonlance game which is a Ultima-I/II spinoff;

- Complete my CHIP-8 emulator;

- Get serious about designing a series of lab similar to the CPU project of UTokyo, but tailored to my incompetence and steadily increase difficulty with each one. I probably need 3 labs;

- Visit my friends more often. I only spoke to them once per quarter.

6-7 months of 1 day workweeks is not a lot of time. They'll be over before you realize they started.

Definitely invest time in either/or generating recurring income, learning how to do so, getting other contracts, finding new customers, learning new skills that you think you might need in the near future, etc.

If you want to have a bit of a holiday for some of the time, fine, but try to keep some sort of rhythm to your activities; and don't slouch. This is not an indefinite time period.

You'd be surprised how many people don't mind that you're on call at times (if anything, knowing that you're busy somehow makes you more desirable? ). Just don't overload yourself with additional tasks, make sure you're doing your primary task well.

If you do do a good job doing the on-call, you might be able to negotiate an extension.

Whatever you do, make sure you have new/extra profitable things lined up for when this contract finally does peter out.

I quit my development job to drive from Alaska to Argentina - an adventure that changed my life. I poked lava with a stick, climbed a 5,897m active volcano, watched kids ride llamas to school, learned Spanish, vastly improved my photography, got into writing (and later published books).

Now it's my life, and I've since driven right around Africa, and right around Australia. I'm saving and planning for then next one now.

Take time to do the things you love, and discover the joy of slowing down to the pace of life that makes you happiest. You really don't need much money to live happily, what you really need is time to do what you want.

I see an emerging theme of "exercise and spend time with my kids" which is funny because I currently work 32 hours a week and I spend the "extra" time on that. I don't have to work. I do because my project pursues a worthy goal and has its own fulfillment, smart coworkers. If something more worthy came along, that I could actually be good at, I suppose I'd do that instead, whether it made money or not. I'm mostly concerned that I am the problem if I become too cynical, jaded, or depressed to see an opportunity to make the world a better place and go for it. Cutting out social media and reading the book of John, looking at Jesus helps inspire me and keep me focused on what really matters.

Besides getting myself into good shape. I would get a whole bunch of certifications that are related to your industry. HN doesn't like certifications, but boy, defense industry loves that stuff.

Build a computer from scratch, both hardware and software. Build a wood house in the bush. Get better at extreme mountain biking. Build a very athletic body. Travel the world, explore their nature (deserts, saharas, mountains, safaris, etc) and eat their food. Learn to play Rock music. Learn to drift. Live as a farmer in Scotland for 1 year. Own a ranch in Texas. Hunt in North Africa. Too many things mate.

Personally Synthetic biology startup, possible getting a PhD first. Visit Central/South America and east Asia.

For you: Live the most life you possibly can. figure out what you want to have done 6 months from now, translate those into "first steps," and set weekly goals. That way, you'll actually do the things you want to.

For me (mid 40s): Focus on getting in excellent physical shape. Spend time with my kids. Fix up my Garden.

If I was younger and in the military? Learn Chinese. Learn Cyber Security.

I have a backlog of about 30 board game prototypes to refine, make sell sheets, playthrough videos, Tabletop Simulator versions, and pitch to publishers. Maybe self-release a couple of them.

I have about 7 novel manuscripts from past Nanowrimos that need editing and released. I also wouldn't mind taking a stab at writing serials or smaller books.

I have 6 different video games in various stages of completion (most either small games or very early, only one game that's pretty far along right now), and a backlog of a half dozen ideas to work on besides that, and/or porting my board game designs to a playable web version.

I have been meaning to rebuild my personal website since forever, and include links to all of the above once they get done, as well as past games I have released.

I wouldn't mind playing around with making my music loops for my games again, and getting better at drawing (I know A.I. art is a thing now, but I'd like to be able to get some of the images out of my head better).

I'd also try to drop about 30lbs and train to extend my hiking endurance from about 3 miles at a time to about 6 miles.

Wouldn't mind learning some of the new advances in A.I.

I wouldn't run out of things to do if I had the time off. I've wanted to take a sabbatical for quite some time now, but can't, unfortunately. I did get two weeks over the holidays, made some progress on my main project, but then the basement flooded and took away almost half of my break, a hunk out of our emergency savings, and a good chunk of time this month so far, so that sucked.

Surf every day.

I’m not sure if you can do this job remotely, but you say you’re coastal … military … San Diego perhaps?

Anyway, the thing to do is the thing everybody else at every other stage of life wishes they could do.

There are billionaires who wish they could just surf every day.

I only work a few hours a week at the moment (by choice)

The real challenge is staying off your phone. Be disciplined about addictive screen use. Then you'll get bored and think of good things to do. Allowing yourself to get bored is the important thing.

I'm building a tycoon-style game and I would love to be able to work on it full-time. I realize the slim odds of success for an indie game, but I just know in my heart this game could be successful if executed properly. I feel like one of the biggest things holding me back is the fact that I spend my most productive hours earning my salary. I would love nothing more than to give this idea the time it deserves.

Read good books, get to know people. Don't forget to live. Think about the end of your life and you're looking back, what are you going to wish you had done?

Pretty much all the things I've scheduled otherwise, but at a much faster pace:

- Read textbooks cover-to-cover, which is difficult to prioritize otherwise.

- Catch up on my videogame backlog, do re-runs on my favorite games + aim for 100% completion

- Finish my reading list

- Clean my browser bookmarks + make a plan of action for those worth keeping

- Start my own content pipelines: Youtube, Twitter, blog, etc

- Brush-up my coding skills - solve problems, revisit theory

- Dig up the project ideas I jotted down casually - build one

- Practice silence, calm down the chaos in my mind

- Reduce my internet footprint: delete past data, update privacy settings

- Reduce cloud data - either consume+delete, or self-host on a home server

- Make conscious efforts to socialize - move out often, talk to strangers

- Setup a fitness regime, build the momentum at home followed by a gym schedule

Make music, improve at weightlifting and try new sports. Also write useful free software, as in beer (no ads) and freedom.

Honestly, watch the kids all damn day. Maybe enroll in a couple classes or hack on a couple things here and there.

Now, if I 'won the lottery', I'd have more resources and hire a nanny, giving me more time to take classes, hack on things, and do expensive stuff like build racecars.

Buy and live in a houseboat and sail up and down the Pacific coast from the top of North America all the way down to Mexico, Central and South America stopping and living at various ports along the way.

In my entire life, I've never run out of side projects that tickle my curiosity. If I didn't have to do it for money, I'd probably be doing pretty similar coding projects anyway ^_^

6-7 months is a good amount of time to bone up on a new mathematical topic, and is probably better for your mind than banging out code, unless you have a program inside of you that is bursting to get out. E.g. I'd like to be clueful about AI, which to me I think means studying stuff like high dimensional analysis, rather than "How to use ChatGPT". Blum, Hopcroft, and Kannan's book "Foundations of Data Science" looks really good for that:

https://www.cs.cornell.edu/jeh/book%20no%20so;utions%20March...

I got a page or two into it and had to put it aside, but someday. The book is officially published now ( https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/foundations-of-data-sci... ) but I'm satisfied with the PDF.

There is an HN thread about similar books:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34312248

Added: I would also like to know how homomorphic encryption works, and I think that would be less of a commitment, but it's only because I'm into crypto.

I’d find your community nonprofit/mutual aid/… group of choice, and spend 6 months there. whatever i’d leave behind in terms of infra i would design to be self-sufficient: you’re going to find the usual unholy mess of google docs and stuff that you’ll want to clean up, but do it humanely.

otherwise, wire yourself into your neighbors. be up front about your time allotment.

IBM used to do this all the time in the 80s; as a child i don’t think i appreciated what that gave my town but i do now.

I think if I didn't have to work but also didn't have to worry about affording my needs, I'd really like to meet new people and work on indie games.

I try now and then to get an evenings and weekends project off the ground but I genuinely don't understand how people have the energy for it. I'm exhausted.

Write and create educational content.

I would do the same thing I do now... program computers. The things that would change is that I'd be more flexible and my kids would play with me all day, instead of me having to kick them out of my office for meetings and the like.

If I didn’t have to work I’d be breeding rare pigeon and growing rare plants. Possibly take up watch making as a hobby. But that’s not the question you really asked haha.. I have too many side project ideas, but not many that really mean a lot to me on a personal level. If the latter doesn’t matter much, just look at what tools you use and think on how you could do a better job. What is your real goal? To make money? If so, building alone won’t get you far. There are a lot of “boring” tasks you need to do or outsource to achieve that. If making money isn’t that important it makes it a lot easier. Stick to what you enjoy.

Personally, If I was in your situation I would probably exercise a lot more and just spend time with my hobbies until I really get bored. I have been burning the candle at both ends for over a decade and see no way out, so it is kind of the dream for me at this point to just relax until I can’t take it anymore.

Once I got good a thoroughly bored I have always wanted to get into making pixel art, but have never had the time or energy to learn.

If I didn’t have any responsibilities at all I would do as others have said and do a thru hike or maybe try road tripping and camping out of my car.

> What would you do if you didn't have to work?

Probably do more deep dives into archiving internet data. The web suffers Library of Alexandria[0] type events every day and there's an excess of bit-rot that doesn't need to happen if people dedicated more time to scraping and archiving data. Maybe joining the Internet Archive is a good bet here. Since it's volunteer-only, not having a job would be a good fit.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

I'm still young and don't have a lot of work-years under my belt, but I would first finish my CS degree and then maybe go to Med School and into medical research, sounds the most appealing to me right now. Education here is free but I don't know if I could keep up working fulltime and studying for so long, besides research probably doesn't pay decently at all.

Also I would try creating a startup, maybe a small gamedev company with friends or something, but I don't have any ideas atm and I'd probably need extra funding for that, so it's more unlikely.

I would catch on some meaningful activities for the community and did some interesting physical activity, as in hiking in great locations, surfing, etc. When I work 60 hr work week, it doesn't leave much space for doing something beyond bare necessities in terms of exercise.

I would spend a lot more time outdoors and doing sports. I would also have more energy for my kids when they are at home. I’m such a better dad when I’m not burned out.

My philosophy has always been to study up on my next job while I am working my current job. Using that logic, if I were you I would be going full tilt studying some thing challenging and high paying so that I could level up for the next gig. This was extremely successful for me financially, but I will cheerfully admit I am much more paranoid than most people.

Spend more time with friends and loved ones. Work on a video game. Work on a board game. Record music. Start drawing again. Build side projects that don't seem monetizeable. Cook more ambitious meals.

There are so many things I want to do, and so little time. Whenever someone tells me that UBI would be bad because people would feel meaningless without work, I just cannot relate at all.

I’d build a workshop, explore some interesting scientific advances that haven’t yet been productized, build a cabin, take up fly fishing, launch three companies I have ideas for, hire the half dozen Capable people I know who want work. Wait that’s more than six months. I suppose I just planned out my next five to ten years. Thanks!

- Travel and meet all my old friends/family that I haven't for years or even decades even though we are all on "social media" and "like" each other's posts.

- Setup 100% free Quality Private Primary education in developing countries like India and actually be on the ground for the most part doing it initially myself.

Be an engineering mentor for your local high school robotics club. From personal experience, I can guarantee that you will come upon aspects of engineering where you are a rank newbie, yet wish you had even a little competence. It's exhilarating when external and internal motivations coincide to push you to develop new skills.

If you are able to, I would consider getting a second job that is remote for those 6-7 months. It's a good opportunity for you to stuff your mattress and having a small trove of extra cash on hand (or 6 months worth of income of bills paid off, if you're in a decent amount of debt) could do wonders for your future.

I was in the very same situation a while ago and have a similar skillset. The pool sucks but I think I made the best of it. Happy to connect with you if you're interested. You can email me at: pompano-patella.01@icloud.com (iCloud forwarding email because god knows how many bots are scraping this website).

Play piano, write music and learn more musical instruments. As a side effect, I would actually get 8 hours of sleep per night as I wouldn't have to fit my unprofitable interests in after 8 hours of work.

I would probably continue to develop, but only to scratch my own itches. Most likely musical tools that don't currently exist.

Learn a foreign language (probably Spanish), learn to draw (well), learn to play an instrument (piano then guitar), go to the gym (train for a triathlon), learn a new tech stack (android and ios for me), learn wood carving, learn Inkscape and Blender, build a social media presence, build a home workshop/maker-space.

I started multiple python open source projects which were useful to my employer. I did some blogging, newsletters. Low on the self-education side of things :(

The one thing I've been considering for retirement is a videogame. Godot engine most likely. I have a few ideas I'd love to put together.

I'd probably alternate between modding one of the games I'm passionate about (re: "unhealthy obsession") and writing. I love doing both, but between career and family time constraints, I usually only have time to make small steps towards one or the other each week.

Oh, so many things. Learn more about CS-y topics, play games, figure out how to write gooder, read books, bike more (I want to get to a century before I'm too old), learn to cook better, relax, probably do a couple short contracts a year to try to keep up with the industry, exercise more, volunteer.

Exercise more. Spend more time with my family. Hike the back country of a few more national parks. Hunt more. Fish more. Get a PhD in CS. Find an open source project to be passionate about and work on that.

Not necessarily things that can fit in 8 months, but my short list of things I'd do if I had the time.

I would like to say that I would work on contributing to open source.

I would probably just play a lot of video games though.

Probably work on quality of life stuff. I would work on under prioritized job related automation. Essentially invest in personal, at work, projects that make work less annoying, but which dont get buy in from anyone else.

If I was gonna slack off and not work, then I would just play golf

Sport! Hiking, mountain biking, running, weight lifting.

Trail maintenance in my region. I'd probably camp overnight a lot.

Catching up on all the books I havbe left behind.

I always wanted to pick up woodworking and I'd like to learn how to sew with a sewing machine. Practical stuff keeps me engaged.

Drinking beers? :)

1. Woodworking. I'd like to timber frame a cabin or workshop and fill it out with my own furniture.

2. open source programming. I wish i had more time to give back to some of the ecosystems i enjoy using and there are many problems i'd love to work on in them.

Make video games and write books

Spend more time with kids, study language, exercise, watch movies and tv shows I don't have time for, listen to podcasts, cook more sophisticated meals, maybe translate movie/tv shows subtitles for others.

Probably an unpopular opinion given that most suggestions here are "take it easy": Start a business. Ideally web-based service that can scale without you - except for marketing focus. Try to monetize it.

I have been writing lot of small libraries as a way to flex technical muscles. Small as in “finished in a day” small. It might be worth considering. Also, learning a new language or tool is always a good idea.

I’d form an online vigilante group like Perverted-Justice, but focused on disrupting the operations of financial scammers who prey on people who are gullible, technologically unsophisticated, or demented.

> beside the obvious of relaxing, hobbies, etc, what would you do

If I didn’t have to work? That’s it! That’s all I’d do. Hobbies and relaxing.

Build robots of different sorts to help people around the house/farm.

Quick list, because noone has time to read anyway:

- I'd build entirely DIY smart home - I'd do a lot of woodworking - I'd make an awesome garden

Oh... and one more thing: I'd finally make Linux desktop be useable

I would do interviews with interesting people and publish them in written form.

I like the ability to go on/off record during an interview.

I have done a few interviews with local business owners and they’re always a good time.

If it was a temporary situtation like that, I'd probably spend more time practicing my banjo and guitar, and also scanning and archiving the 50 years-worth backlog of film on my shelf.

Oil paint. It’s SO very good for my mental health. But alas - I cannot afford to do it as much as I’d like. Nor have I sold a painting, to help the process. (Though that’s not my goal.)

https://aia.mit.edu/about/ has programs for volunteers from active duty.

The most important thing would be to find some kind of community. Find a cause that I could engage with together with others. Be that non profit or for profit, doesn’t matter.

Volunteer at the local public library for 8 hours a day. Spend the rest of the time meditating, drinking tea, and taking my dog out for walks as a part time monk.

Develop a new side project each month until something sticks

Personally, I would probably try to teach in some capacity. I have this pipe dream of retiring from FT SWE and teaching high school CS sometime in the future.

Be a part of a community that teaches kids or adults. I would also learn Physics. And music. Spend time with friends. Make some simple and dumb software.

Two general things: Build cabins and teach woodworking/welding/electronics/aviation. I would also like to learn another language or two.

Write. I would investigate things that interest me, especially historical/little/less known things, and bring them to a wider audience.

Build things that will make the world better but wouldn't get built because the financial incentive is too small or too far in the future.

Catch up on sleep you missed from those 60-80 hour work weeks. Then maybe find a new hobby that could potentially spark a new project idea.

I'd basically do nothing. Just walk around, ride my bike, read books and work on a few software projects for fun.

Work.

Definitely get your daily exercise in. Bonus points for a home gym or calisthenics routine since you're somewhat on-call.

Gentleman scientist, inventor, explorer, and artist. Oh wait. That’s the list of I win a billion dollars.

Farm vegetables in my garden during summer and woodwork in the winter. Travel to all the small towns in America.

Write programming guides and ride my dual sport making maps for other riders.

Would be good times.

I would do things people usually call work, the way I want them to be done, in my own schedule.

I was in a similar position a few years ago and I used the opportunity to learn how to fly.

Gardening. You're going to want that veggie garden producing real soon now.

Do you have a spouse or family?

Spend time w them and travel?

Other than that, finishing side-projects.

I'll probably program for myself (as I often do). I do like to program a lot.

I would have more time for exercise and I would probably spend more time sailing.

I'd build things. Big things. Furniture, cars, motorcycles, trebuchets, etc.

Workout, watch a ton of old movies and TV shows, and build Legos.

Publish my book. Buy a sailing boat and cross the Atlantic in it.

I would ride my bike around the countryside and enjoy nature.

Teach my kids. Take them on field trips. Make the future.

Definitely still work

Ski and write music.

I’d be in the garage working on my car (big project)

Build a boat, sail around the world, write about it.

Argue with strangers on the Internet more.

Get more education and travel world on land

Continue to pursue a career in sculpture

Learn German.

Volunteer in the community.

Research in deep learning.

Watch a lot of YouTube.

Make art.

Besides two chicks at the same time? Nothing. I would sit on my ass all day. I would do nothing. -- P. Gibbons.