I left a full-time job and did freelance work for 2017 and most of 2018 (at about a 50% pay cut, once you account for lower tax rates vs. the loss of benefits).
I had been donating 10% at the job, but noticed after I left that my savings were a bit lower than would have been really comfortable, which led to my doing more freelance work than would have been optimal (I had to pick up a few jobs at suboptimal rates, or do work that had a pretty high energy/ādistraction cost). Being able to reliably āpay myself to thinkā for a couple of months would have been nice; I technically had enough money to do so, but it would have cut my savings by a lot and worried my family members (especially since I hadnāt been saving money with a framing of āthis is money I intend to use to buy thinking timeā).
Being able to āpay myselfā in this way would also have helped with akrasia; for me, thereās a big difference between āIām living off my savings and need to be productiveā and āIām getting by on freelance work, and doing what Iām supposed to do to support myself; I guess I can take the day off of unpaid laborā.
I left a full-time job and did freelance work for 2017 and most of 2018 (at about a 50% pay cut, once you account for lower tax rates vs. the loss of benefits).
I had been donating 10% at the job, but noticed after I left that my savings were a bit lower than would have been really comfortable, which led to my doing more freelance work than would have been optimal (I had to pick up a few jobs at suboptimal rates, or do work that had a pretty high energy/ādistraction cost). Being able to reliably āpay myself to thinkā for a couple of months would have been nice; I technically had enough money to do so, but it would have cut my savings by a lot and worried my family members (especially since I hadnāt been saving money with a framing of āthis is money I intend to use to buy thinking timeā).
Being able to āpay myselfā in this way would also have helped with akrasia; for me, thereās a big difference between āIām living off my savings and need to be productiveā and āIām getting by on freelance work, and doing what Iām supposed to do to support myself; I guess I can take the day off of unpaid laborā.