

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

If you divided your life into, lets say, four areas:
1. Work
2. Health
3. Relationships
4. Personal growth<p>In all honesty, what percentage of your life would each receive?
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GiraffeNecktie
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).

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rjurney
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.

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Zarathu
Before financial independence: 95%.

After financial independence: 20%.

~~~
dkokelley
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.

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fburnaby
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!

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patio11
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.)

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truebosko
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.

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amalcon
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.

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maketheearth
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.

