I have a pretty chill job working at a large company where there are no deadlines and the bar for 'hard working' is pretty low. I try and get urgent things done as fast as possible but otherwise I take it pretty easy. I work in the evenings so I have my days free to ski/bike/ be with the kids in the hols, then i take some time off to pic them up from school and put them to bed, and i usually finish early to watch tv with my wife before bed.
I'm in a similar situation as you where I feel like I could work harder, but i wont get any more money for working harder where i am, and i think i'd need to be paid waay more to be persuaded to do 40 full hours a week.
That's my rough average for actual work, including meetings, which can vary a bit.
I've been at the company 5 years, when I first started I worked my ass off and got a lot done, but it was frustrating seeing how slowly everything worked and how little work people did, it felt like the company actively pushed back against trying to get anything done fast. Especially coming from a startup where id be doing everything.
After having kids and changing my priorities a bit I've learned to just embrace it. I try do the least amount of work possible to be average or slightly above average on productivity.
In my next life, I want this. I work 4x what you do but make double. It's very often not worth it. Your priorities are right. When my cost of living goes down, I'll join you.
Not sure if it fits here but I run an onlyfans account with my wife as a side project. We were already into taking arty/classy pictures and sharing them for fun, so we figured why not.
I wrote a simple UI where she can drop an imgur link, select tags specific to the pic/vid, and then it generates a list of subreddits to post to and suggests a time and a title.
I made another tool where you can drop in a bunch of pictures and select a date range and it will schedule them to onlyfans and fansly at the same times. We make 500-1.5k a month which just about covers lingerie and occasional weekends away. Could probably make more but neither of can be bothered with all the baiting tactics others use to try and keep/extort fans.
It's not something we talk to anyone about for obvious reasons.
I have a pretty chill job working at a large company where there are no deadlines and the bar for 'hard working' is pretty low. I try and get urgent things done as fast as possible but otherwise I take it pretty easy. I work in the evenings so I have my days free to ski/bike/ be with the kids in the hols, then i take some time off to pic them up from school and put them to bed, and i usually finish early to watch tv with my wife before bed.
I'm in a similar situation as you where I feel like I could work harder, but i wont get any more money for working harder where i am, and i think i'd need to be paid waay more to be persuaded to do 40 full hours a week.