About ten years ago I was working like a madman, 60 hours a week. workaholics, seek the adrenaline offered by their job. As for me, I had not wanted this situation at all. I was enduring it. At one point I began to feel various increasingly worrying physical and psychological symptoms. Not to mention that my private and family life was becoming almost non-existent. Before it was too late, I fortunately reacted by taking measures to reduce my working hours. This did not happen overnight, but through changes of employer and negotiations regarding my hours I initially managed to return to more "normal" working conditions, around 40 hours per week.
This positive path, combined with the increasingly significant income I was receiving from my investments, led me to further reduce the time I devoted to my professional activity. Last year, I was thus below the psychological threshold of 30 hours per week, which is half of what prevailed when I was close to professional burnout.
Reduce your working hours and keep a foot in real life
As I specify in my e-book, my ultimate goal was never to stop working completely, but rather to keep a small activity (of the order of 10 to 20 hours per week), just to
- to maintain social ties,
- to ensure diversification of income,
- to keep one foot in "real" life,
- to further ensure physical and psychological well-being.
From there, starting from the observation that I could now afford it financially speaking, I had decided this spring to start training in order to reorient myself towards a small independent secondary activity. However, it didn't go as planned. So I had to revise my copy by lowering the time of my lucrative activity a little more. This is now done. I am therefore no longer very far from the next psychological milestone of 20 hours per week. This is the upper range of my final objective and also a third of my catastrophic starting situation.
I would certainly have preferred to follow the path of a small independent sideline activity. Nevertheless, I now measure with delight the progress made in reducing my working time. I tell myself that at this rate I am no longer very far from my final objective.
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Congratulations on all this progress. At this rate you are slowly getting closer to the famous 4-hour week 😉
https://www.amazon.fr/semaine-heures-Travaillez-moins-gagnez/dp/2744064173
I read this book quite some time ago. It sucks! 🙂
What do you want, this kind of book with a catchy title is used to make money, not to bring something to its readers...
If my wife and children weren't here, I would think about my post-work life very differently. Like dropping everything, moving further south and finding a little activity to keep me busy and earn a few pennies.
For example, there is a small island in the south of France with just a few hundred inhabitants and heavenly beaches. You buy a small modest roof there, enjoy this generous nature and work just a few hours in the summer when the tourists are there (like renting pedal boats or bicycles, ice cream stands, etc.)
Family, I love you, but it's true that sometimes you are also a hindrance!!!
It's funny that you say that because about fifteen years ago I went to Latin America several times with the aim of starting a new life there. I was single, I had already started investing and even if I obviously had much less capital than I do now, I would have already been able to become a total rentier at that time, as the cost of living is so different from here. So I would have been able to be financially independent in my thirties, which would have been an achievement.
That being said, as a good INTJ cautious and calculating, before giving up everything, I went there during a series of trips to see if my research on the web and my hopes were well-founded. The first trips went very well. I even met a beautiful chica there with whom I stayed in touch, which motivated me even more to change my life. When I went back to see my beautiful Latina the second time it was already different. I was beginning to open my eyes to the reality of life there and the cultural differences. I was no longer there as a tourist, but I lived like her and with her. As much as I loved her matte complexion, her curves and the sensuality of the way she expressed herself in Spanish, my brain kept telling me: DANGER. The more it went on, the more I got to know her (and at the same time the local mentality), the more the gap between my "angelic" vision of life there and reality became enormous.
This was until the day when things ended up clashing quite violently between us, to the point that I had to bring forward my return flight and go back home, both sad that I couldn't realize my dream, but also happy that it didn't turn into a nightmare for the rest of my life. This step made me realize that it was risky to seek happiness outside our borders, even if a priori financial independence can be obtained much more quickly there. I'm not saying it's impossible, some have managed to do it while being happy, I'm just saying that you have to be aware that there are risks that it won't go as well as expected.
Coincidence or not, a few months later I met the woman who would become my wife and with whom I would start a family. And I am obviously very happy today that it happened this way. From a certain point of view, this step allowed me to realize that sometimes there is no point in looking too far for happiness, you just have to open your eyes and look around you.
Thank you for this testimony that brings us back down to earth and reminds us of the gap that can exist between our dreams and real life. The more we idealize elsewhere, the more painful waking up can be.
It reminds me of those documentaries in which a couple decides to drop everything and start a new life in the tropics. Sometimes it goes quite well, but more often than not they find themselves (once the euphoria of departure has passed) crushed by the weight of cultural differences: language barrier, diametrically opposed mentalities, corruption, poverty on every street corner, ...
Afterwards I think that many of these failures are also due to economic pressure. It is certainly easier to flourish if our passive income covers our basic expenses than for those who, for example, start a restaurant business abroad and absolutely have to succeed to avoid ending up on the street.
Still, France has often seemed to me to be an interesting alternative, perhaps not all year round but for a few months each year. It's not too far and the cultural differences are still less marked than in your example. In a few hours' drive (or 1 hour's plane ride) you can already find yourself in another universe, with your feet in the sea and your ears filled with cicadas...
As I said, the main "problem" remains the family. I know that my wife does not want to leave Switzerland and find herself too far from the children.
Yes, I came to the same conclusions as you: less far and especially not for the whole year. That's how I see it when I've completely retired from the professional world and especially when the children are a little older. On this point, my wife is up for it, so that's already something gained 😉
In terms of cultural differences, be careful, France is not without its worms either... even within the territory itself there are some big ones, especially between the north and the south...
Having been born and lived in the south (Montpellier) and then having gone up to Paris to work, I can assure you that it can be very difficult to integrate (well of course it depends on each person's character). The south is very attached to its "territory", its local culture etc. and is not very open to "foreigners", the worst city for that being Marseille...
So yes, it's true that France has the enormous advantage of being able to go skiing in the Alps, then go swimming on the Côte d'Azur, then surf on the Atlantic coast and finish the trip in Champagne, but as someone else said: France's problem is the French...
And I rather agree with that, even if I am French myself ^^