# parttime: thinking about going part time

i haven't written for a while now even though i have plenty of topics queued up. i spend most of my free time secretly working on a small tool that would make some operations at work a bit easier. i think the industry term for this is "20% time project". i'm doing this in my personal time ("120% time project") because it's not that much related to my core work (it might end up nobody using it other than me) and i'm doing it just for the sake of achieving something useful for my own entertainment. it's not a big thing but has many edge cases and i need to integrate with quite a few internal services. i spend about 1h or less per day in the morning so it takes ages. after 18:00 and during the weekends family takes all my time so i don't really have time (or energy even) to work on it then. (it's quite interesting to see now that i have less leisure time, i'm more conscious about using it well and pretty much achieve more. it probably also means i do need the time pressure to achieve things. but that's a topic to explore sometime later.)

after spending time on that, i don't really have time for anything else. so then i have these fantasies about retiring and having all the free time. but then i realize i pretty much like my workplace, otherwise i wouldn't have the opportunity to work on tools like the one above. i just want to have more freedom next to work. so i'm considering going 80% and having one weekday just for myself. 4 day weeks is the hotness lately anyways.

then i would have time to catch on my personal todo and bucket list, read some books, watch tv, play games, maybe spend more time away from the computer without having too much guilt because i'm not spending my time on work. i could have a little taste of the retired life i so much yearn for without the drastic change that a full retirement would require. (i really don't want to sacrifice my evenings and weekends for this so that i can remain present for my family.)

it also means i could save significantly less money but in exchange i can have more leisure time now. i think that's a fair trade. world is changing all the time, i suspect there's not much point to having large savings or net worth anyways. having a large stash just makes you worry whenever there's turbulence in the financial world. you could see that worry big time in the fire community (financial independence, retire early) when the covid pandemic started. and what will all that money mean on my death bed anyways?

but there are some risks with this. for me i think the biggest is this: what will stop me from still checking emails all the time and slowly drifting back to 100% while still retaining only 80% of the paycheck? i guess i just need to be good at compartmentalizing (i.e. avoiding my work laptop entirely on my off days) and learn to not care about work even when things are going bad (although i'd probably still allow an occasional crunch). but i've read around and a lot of people went part time and i haven't found a single account where someone regretted their decision.

also, i don't really take much vacation in general so i could pretty much burn a vacation day per week for quite a few months to try this. i'm actually doing this right now: i took a day off even though my todo list at work is overflowing big time. my only concern with that is that the expectations don't really change accordingly. but maybe i should learn to really just stop caring about the expectations. it's hard because i don't like to break existing promises i made.

anyways, there's not much to this, either i do it or not. the reason i'm making this post publicly is to plant the idea into my mind in a stronger manner so that i'm more likely to make the plunge.

published on 2021-04-14

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