Actually I managed to find a job where I’m doing what I love at a good pay rate but only 4 days/ 20 hours a week. So I have lots of time for my really big side projects and I still go hiking and see friends and family. If we’re talking life hacks in this thread then try to find a job that lets you work 20 or 30 hours a week.
Hmmm, just ask? Places that do timecards are probably more likely to say "yes".
My employer allows it. Benefits other than health insurance (which is fully paid w/o any paycheck deduction) will be pro-rated to whatever you sign up for, but you can still work the extra hours for more pay. So for example if you promise 30 hours but work 36 hours, you'd get 75% benefits and 90% pay. If you promise 32 hours and work 50 hours, you'd get 80% benefits and 125% pay.
Don't work salary, work hourly. I did it as a contractor at Google so the pay was still good, but I'm not "taking" anything from my employer if I leave early. Google also has the benefit of not needing to be as efficient as possible so they can absorb some amount of reduced output.
Bill in 15 minute increments, and always be working if you're billing. If a coworker asks you how your weekends was, engage and say hello, but keep it under 5 minutes. Longer than 5 minute breaks, clock out (even if just mentally keeping track or keeping track on paper). If you work a solid 6-7 hours a day 5 days a week, you'll probably be just as productive as your salaried coworkers, so managers will only notice when they approve your hours.
Be good at working alone. Its hard to work in a team if others work 40 hours a week and you work a lot less. Other team members think if you don't work as much you're not committed (IMO a spurious correlation).
Continue this schedule unless a manager demands you work more. If they are passive about it ("we'd prefer you work more, but we won't actually ask that of you"), then continue with your 30-35 hour weeks. If you can continue doing it, it forces the organization to decide if your schedule is a real problem (and fire you) or just something they think looks weird but they are willing to deal with.
Keep doing valuable work so the momentum of keeping you even at fewer hours is worth more than letting you go.
Find some other passion work outside of work. Open source, robots, sewing, hiking, family time, etc. Tell your managers and coworkers how much you love your projects so they know you won't just say okay if they were to push you to work more. Also, finding stuff to enjoy is the point.
Push to 30 hour weeks if you can. Five 5-6 hour days is 25-30 hours a week. I'd usually have one 3 hour day when I had to leave early for therapy appointments (and I would happily not come back in to work after!) and then one 8 hour day to balance it.
Surf this wave of staying useful while working less as long as you can. In my case the maximum allowed two year contract was coming to an end and my half-assed efforts did not warrant hiring me full time (I didn't try or want that anyway). Then when looking for new jobs, I realized the biggest thing to me was working fewer hours. I applied to several places and one place I found really didn't care how much I worked. They key stipulation for me was that I would work 4 days a week, about 30 hours a week. They said that was fine, they cared mostly about total project cost not time taken. In reality I've settled in to about 20 hours a week and we're still making great progress on the project.
So in summary: be pushy, prioritize yourself, accept some risk, and once you're used to that schedule make it a requirement for new jobs. It takes a lot of privilege to pull it off so not everyone can do it, but it's possible.
