how well we could feel ourselves if…

When I was pushing through my corporate career feeling bored and burnt out, I often contemplated what I would choose in a hypothetical situation where:

A) I could work only 50% for my usual pay.

B) They doubled my salary.

I know there's an economic crisis; I read in the HAC private Facebook group that several individual entrepreneurs are forced to take full- or part-time regular jobs to ensure a predictable income. Meanwhile, risking burnout, they try to grow their businesses alongside. But in a financially comfortable situation, which option would you choose?

When I started my own business, I ended up with option C: working less and earning less than before. Even today, I don't earn as much as I would as a corporate leader, but the freedom is invaluable to me; it would be hard to put a price on it. How much would you pay monthly to manage your work time, not be held accountable, go swimming on a Wednesday morning, or work from abroad for a month if you had the chance?

Of course, I'm lucky to be able to do this; my wife supports me, and when I left the company, I received a nice severance package that helped to bridge the startup period financially.

Since then, in conversations with my employed friends, the question often arises: "But what do you do with all that free time?"

Many have become so accustomed to the 9-to-5 hamster wheel that they can't imagine what it's like to have significant free time. I won't dwell deeper on those constantly working overtime, who once accidentally work only 8 hours a day and then, at 6 p.m., stare blankly, wondering what to do with the endless stretch of their day.

In my previous newsletter (HH148), I wrote about not always needing to be useful; you are valuable in yourself, just as life is valuable in itself, even if it serves no purpose. And this thought terrifies many people.

What if suddenly we have time to contemplate the meaning of life?

I was just reading "Brave New World" by Huxley—foundational work, I don't know why I hadn't come across this wonderful dystopia, which predicted many horrors of our civilization almost a century ago. So the book talks about a future where everything revolves around conformity, comfort, consumption, and happiness, where free thinking and difficult emotions are anti-social. The protagonists at the top of the caste system ponder what life is like for the lower working class. I quote:

"They're better off than the higher caste. They don't find their work awful. On the contrary, they love their work. It's easy, really child's play for them. It doesn't strain their minds or bodies. Seven and a half hours of simple, undemanding work, then comes the soma ration (a drug), then come the various games, unlimited sexual pleasures, and sensory films (films that stimulate all senses). What more could they desire?"

"It's true," he added. "They could ask for shorter working hours. And of course, we could accommodate their request. There would be no technical obstacle to it; we could easily reduce the lower caste workers' working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any happier then?"

"No, they wouldn't be happier. They conducted experiments on this more than a century and a half ago. They introduced the four-hour workday throughout Ireland. And what was the result? Social unrest and a drastic increase in soma consumption, nothing else."

"The Inventions Office is full of descriptions of various methods for saving working hours," Mustapha Mond waved his hand generously.

"Want to know why we don't put them into practice? For the workers' sake. It would simply be cruel to burden them with excessive freedom."

This inadvertently reminds me of the recent Telekom Hungary HAC interview regarding the cancellation of the four-day workweek—have you heard it?

So, returning to having much more free time and the fears associated with it, let me quote a line from the book:

"How well we would feel if we didn't have to constantly think about happiness!"

I greatly value my above-average amount of free time; I never feel useless, even when I am (I look at you, PlayStation), and sometimes I pray to the god I don't believe in to continue granting me this luxury in the future!

So, dear reader, what would you do with more free time?