Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about work. And fortunately, not about what I have to do at work, but rather about work in general. I’m in the very privileged position where I feel accomplished at the company I’m currently in and also that I’m being compensated well. I’ve saved up quite a bit and continue to save a decent amount every year. I follow the conventional wisdom of investing my money in ETFs. But what should you do with your hard earned paper in the end?

Money

I’ve talked with a few people who are in the same privileged position as I am, and it seems like most of them haven’t given money much thought either (except that it’s good to accumulate it). Of course there’s comfort and security in knowing that you have a large nest egg. Of course you can use extra money to treat yourself, to go on nice vacations, eat in your favorite sushi more often or buying yourself the latest gadget. However I don’t have the impression this would be a significant change for your lifestyle, nor that it would make you much happier.

Maybe one of the major uses of money is buying property. The average apartment listing price in the city of Zurich is 1.49M swiss francs. In Switzerland you need a 20% deposit to finance the rest with a mortage. Half of it can come from your pension fund and the rest must be cash, so you must have 150k to finance this property. Even ignoring the fact that rationally buying property is currently not a wise decision (renting is estimated to be 35% cheaper than buying), let’s assume you have already accumulated more than that. And your egg continues to grow. What do you with money? Buy a bigger house?

Time

Spoiler alert: I think maybe a better use of money is to buy time. I’ve read quite a few articles which I found to be thought-provoking on the topic of time. My favorite is Life is not short. I’m going to be quoting it generously.

In your mind, you genuinely think you’re going to live forever. You think you have an infinite supply of time, and you keep spending it on the first thing that pops up without giving it much thought.

You can’t touch or feel time, so it’s hard for you to really grasp it. If your doctor told you that you had a deadly illness, you’d spend every cent you have to try to stay alive. That’s how much your time is actually worth to you. But on a day to day basis, you treat it like it’s completely worthless, just because you can’t see it.

The first paragraph rings true to me. It’s a bit morbid to think about death, so it becomes quite pleasant to avoid thinking about it. During the week there’s barely any time left as you spend the majority of your non-sleeping time working. Usually after a full day of work there’s not much energy left to work on a side project or anything else too ambitious. I definitely don’t want to sit again in front of a computer and do something that reminds me of work. I’d much rather meet friends or do something else to relax. Finally it’s Friday and you look forward to your plans for the weekend. Maybe hiking on the mountains, chilling by a lake or simply recharging at home. It goes by fast and when you notice it’s already Sunday evening. The usual Monday dread sets in. The cycle restarts.

It’s even worse when people come up with deferred life plans. They’ll say something like “When I’m forty, I’m going to retire and write a book” or “I’ll do this thing I hate right now so I can make money, then in ten years I’ll do what I really love”.

Putting things off for the future is the biggest waste of a life. You deny yourself the present by promising the future. You’re relying on the future, which is outside of your control, and abandoning the present, which is the only thing you can control.

I actually like the work that I do, so I don’t think I’m the situation of “hating right now”. However I can absolutely see myself deferring life plans. I started thinking about working 80% about 3 years ago. But then I put it off because I thought I was still too young to do such a thing, plus I should get promoted one more time before doing such a thing. But why? Should you achieve a certain arbritary seniority at work or age before you can work less?

It seems like work is a virtue in our society. Being a hard-worker is seem as commendable and it feels lazy to work less. However I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone regretting not having worked more. In fact, on a book by a palliative carer, the top 5 regrets of the dying are:

• “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
• “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
• “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
• “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
• “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

You should live your life intentionally, instead of having your time stolen from you little by little. You should organize each day as if it were your last, so that you neither need to long for nor fear the next day. You should avoid spending time on people and things that don’t really matter to you.

I love this paragraph. I don’t think the author is actually making an argument for #YOLO, but rather that having it in the back of your mind that there is an end can help you focus on what really matters for you.

I’m not sure I’ve quite figured out what really matters to me, but I think I’ve figured out that I don’t see myself working 100% for too long anymore either. I plan on trying a small experiment taking unpaid time off more often and seeing how it goes. Maybe it will help me have the energy to work on side projects. Maybe I’ll get bored. I don’t know. But that’s OK.