ivan ottinger For several years I’ve been thinking about reducing my working days. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I realized how hard it can be to force myself to work less. Even though by doing so, a person buys time, which has a much higher value than money.
I came across an older article The Tail End that clearly shows how limited the time we have in this world is. But that wasn’t quite enough to make me take action.
Finally It Happened
In September, after three months off, I’m returning to work, but now only four days a week. The decision was helped not only by the birth of my daughter, but also by the absurdly set conditions of stepped corporate taxation in Slovakia. These guarantee that in the end, even if my company invoices less, I’ll make more in net dividends1. 🤷🏼♂️
In any case, I’m looking forward to the extra day off, and I’d love it if all of us who want to could work less.
After all, the standard ratio of 2 days off to 5 days of work isn’t very balanced.
All my friends and acquaintances who switched to a shorter workweek some time ago told me that you get used to it very quickly and it’s hard to imagine working a full week again. We’ll see how it goes.
Translated from the Slovak original.
Notes
Footnotes
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Politicians setting taxation policy in Slovakia could do their math a bit better so that tax rules don’t incentivize companies toward lower economic activity (see perverse incentive). ↩