What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

I would devote my time to building high quality, durable, and energy efficient 3bd 2ba homes in the rural areas surrounding major metropolitan areas, which I would then sell at material cost.

Buying my first home (mobile/manufactured) has been a combination of the best and worst thing I've ever done. The house cost nearly 3 times what my grandparents paid about ~30 years ago in the same neighborhood (on the same street!) while the construction and finish quality are sub-par at best, with a nearly endless list of things that are constantly in need of repair, multiple water intrusion issues, etc. To make matters worse, the housing market in the area I live has reached unreasonable levels, with my current home being 'valued' at 1.4x what I bought it for roughly 3 years ago.

Additionally, I keep seeing homes built that are on monolithic slabs and nearly everyone I know personally who is a homeowner is having issues with their home's foundation due to the high movement soil (clay) even in recently built homes. I would build homes that use pier and beam foundations with piles deep enough to resist soil movement, ensure site drainage was appropriate for each home, and generally put all the necessary care and work into ensuring that each home built would last for multiple generations.

I want to build homes that last and allow others to flourish without the litany of concerns I currently have to struggle with on-top of my day job.

This is me. Fortunate to be able to retire at 55, programming my whole life, I love my career even when particular jobs had their issues. So now I work on projects I want to work on, no commute, no 20-person meetings.

I'm currently working with a team that's recreating the Prodigy online service servers in Elixir. Having a blast, and I have my next project already in mind, also in Elixir or some other BEAM language.

On top of that I'm reading programming-adjacent books and papers, for example on Category Theory and lambda calculus. I'm going through my backlog of interesting papers I've printed off over the last 30 years.

So no, not saving the world but keeping my mind engaged and loving it.

I guess I'll find out on Friday, which is my last day. Poking around on computers has been good enough to me that I can call it quits at 60. What comes after this? First, a summer of being a bum (if I last that long). After that, more volunteering at the animal shelter, more volunteering with the local running club, and I half-jokingly say I'm going to be a professional trail runner (where I'll be paid in socks and cheap medals from my age group wins).

I'll buckle down on my mandolin playing, and it's time to pick up the fiddle and give it a good effort.

Read more.

Let's not let all that coding experience go to waste: I'll go hunt down an open source project that I could make some good contributions to, and then devote a good chunk of time to that. Or write something new that the world could use.

But beware: "if you didn't need money" is a pretty loaded phrase. As I stare down the firehose of money and realize it will soon produce only a trickle, if that, I still ask if we have enough even though we're probably better off than the majority of retirees (if various sources are to be believed). Because there's "don't need an income" and then there's "won the startup lottery, and my kids won't need an income", and we are firmly in the former category. :-)

I haven't worked in a decade, and my predictions about what I'd do were... bad.

I am not volunteering, or consulting for non-profits. It fulfilling or interesting, possibly because I wasn't invested in the cause(s).

I am not reading as much as I thought. It is lonely and boring to read for more than half a day, day after day.

I am not doubling down on family, as they are busy doing their own things.

I am not traveling constantly, because it is lonely traveling by myself (again, family is busy).

What am I doing?

I'm studying neuroscience at a local university (after working through chem/bio prerequisites). I had zero interest before, now it is all I care about. Surprise!

I spend a lot of time walking through town, aimlessly. No idea why.

I average 1.5 grocery stores every day, and cook needlessly elaborate meals for my family. Again, brand new interest.

I am quite surprized how few people are proposing to make art or music. Is this why artists/musicians can't make money, because so few people enjoy it? I always thought it was the digitization and easy access that allowed us to enjoy these things from our homes (instead of going out to clubs), but maybe not.

Anyway, for the record, I would be recording my lifetime backlog songs I've written. And probably re-recording in different styles. And perfecting every one, no more of this 'good-enough' demo stuff. I'd get all the needed gear and software, and have no more excuses. I've actually already started to do this, at the detriment of my actual career...sigh.

EDIT: now that I read the OP's question more closely, I guess the answers are skewed towards practical things that would make the world better...but impractical things like creative music and abstract art also make the world better, so I'm sticking with my plan!

General infrastructure that benefits humanity in a goal agnostic way, e.g., related to energy or compute seems like a meaningful thing to get behind. This could be novel technology or logistics and efficiency improvements, but these are things that can augment everyone's ability to do the things they want.

Socially, there are a lot of things that seem "silly" (euphemistically), and it's a blight on civilization that they are tolerated. That people in my country (USA, but can apply to many countries in the world) are homeless or starving is silly; if you were running a country, ensuring the citizenry have food and shelter might be an obvious top priority. The world can seem really complex at times and our systems become so convoluted that people rationalize why the things that seem obviously silly are too difficult to solve or worthwhile tradeoffs. I think it's generally a good heuristic to avoid doing things that seem obviously silly and fix the things that are (that is, it's often better to be naive about it!).

This portion of the comment is not a direct answer to the question but a related thought others may have further insights about. Practically, a situation in which you don't need money rarely materializes instantaneously; it usually arises from circumstances that have constituted a great deal of your life and identity. As a consequence of this, I think ego can become a real challenge that prevents people from pursuing possible "ideals". If you've been in a certain kind of position for a long time, there can be psychological barriers to pursuing something in a way in which, e.g., you are a true beginner or have less control. This tends to be something that can dissipate with age but can be especially difficult for people who've achieved financial success well before standard retirement age.

I would just create software. I love coding little programs that make life easier. It gives me joy of creation. In fact that's what I have been doing, in last few months I have created (1)a video GPS viewer, (2)Windows based authenticator and an (3)online clipboard. After my day job and on weekends, this is how I like to spend my time. I have stopped trying to create the next killer app. I am just going to create whatever I feel like creating. Links to my latest creations (1) https://yash.info/camgeoplayer/ (2) https://authwin.com/ (3) https://klipit.in/

Maybe a better question for me would be what I would stop spending time working on. I'd continue doing what I currently do, but I'd cut out some of the things that come with the job that no sane person would do other than for the pay. For instance, I would still be doing research, which I view as very important, but I'd do more research and wouldn't mess around with the peer review process. I'd be writing open source software that would help others do their research too. I'd write textbooks and give them away for free. I wouldn't be doing administrative work of any kind, and I wouldn't waste time on a lot of the stuff I do at home.

I'd spend my days painting miniatures and reading. Don't really care enough about the rest of the world, to be honest; I'd turn inward.

Family first, of course. I already dedicate a ton of my time to them - everything from just basic "hanging out" with my wife and kids, to all the basic maintenance of life - budgeting, housework, driving people around, scheduling appointments, and so on.

With my day job gone, I have a huge stack of side projects and hobbies that I'd love to put more time into. I think the hardest part, in a world where I've regained the time I spend on my job, would be deciding which of those things I actually want to dedicate my time to (there isn't enough time in my life for all of them, sadly).

I'd definitely spend more time on fitness, reading, and playing and listening to music. I have plenty of programming related projects I'd like to work on too. I like making videos and writing blog posts, and I'd continue doing that - probably at about the same rate that I currently do, creating a writeup or a video when I find something cool to share.

Honestly, I'd spend my time about the same way I do now - just "more so." I guess I'm fortunate to be able to say that!

I spent 15 amazing years as a firefighter, but the cost of living along with other factors forced me to switch gears and become a software developer. I've learned a lot, but every day I miss the fire service more than anything.

Working on legal software as an underpaid, overworked, and abused (not joking) dev has been a real drag and it's taken a toll on me mentally and physically.

I've also realized that firefighting is my true calling. So I've been trying to turn things around; Working out, finding classes to re-up my certs, and giving myself a lot of mental space.

I'd love to go back, my local station is mostly volunteer so I'd never make much money. But maybe I can use my new tech skills to create tools that help firefighters help people as a little side gig.

I stopped work at 55 after 40 years in tech, from being a developer right up to CTO. I do very little coding, mainly because there are so many other things I want to do. Having this time really makes you ask yourself what it is you really want to do and for me that means running, particularly in mountains. Like another poster I also watch a ton of stuff on YouTube about DIY and I’m learning how to do stuff on my own house and doing a van conversion (to take to the mountains). I see a lot more of family than I did and I consciously try to spend more time with and in particular give my time to help others. I’m helping my daughter a lot to break into software engineering. Like another poster I have so many things I want to do and just not enough time so I’m journaling a lot and making a lot of notes about ideas I have and these are starting to lead to some ideas about software that would be useful to me and so I expect others. I’m constantly learning what I like to do and I have so many non technical projects on the go.

I’d do absolutely nothing. I’d sit on a beach or in a pool/hot tub drinking beer and wine while reading or watching tv. I’d walk enough so that I don’t look like the future people from Wall-E. I’d make sure to do absolutely nothing productive though.

I would raise the bar on reading levels and open the world of books for every child that can visit the library.

The public library is free for everybody, but we aren't lining up to read the books because our system is broken. Ninety-five percent of kids can't access audiobook versions of the books they want to read.

We do have CD audiobooks for many classic titles, but these aren't always available, and many people don't have CD players or find it inconvenient to use one. Modern libraries are phasing these out. Another option is Vox books, but they are seriously limited, available in less than 0.01% of books, and cumbersome to carry around. The tiny speaker, among other issues, makes it impractical. There is a screen-time version of audiobooks called OverDrive, but its selection is slim, and these versions don't have embedded page signals—a deal-breaker for early readers and semi-literate children.

What we need now is a way to scan a book cover and instantly start playing the audiobook version, complete with page signals and a slew of other options to enhance engagement. It is widely known that active reading is magnitudes better than passive reading when it comes to developing our memory, thereby fostering better learning. What does this mean? When we read out loud, at the end of the page or book, we ask the users a few questions to check if they've understood what they just read.

This would be a non-profit organization. Contributing to society starts with literacy. Literacy begins with engagement and accessibility. This is my contribution to making a society more rational, health, and well-coordinated.

UPDATE: We have applied to the Amazon Small Business Grant, and this vision is soon to become a reality! interested in joining our mission, or following along? we need readers! we need testers! join us on discord!

https://bit.ly/join-ichatbook-discord

I’d love to help universal basic education become true.

There are some people who are extremely qualified and specialized in their fields, but many more would really benefit from additional formal education. Even tech literacy is taken for granted sometimes, even though it shouldn’t. It’s the kind of thing that makes an actual difference in the lives of people.

In an ideal world I would go back to chemistry.

Since the option in the world we have is working 60 hours sub minimum wage trying to get through a PhD followed by bouncing round on 2 year short term contracts as a postdoc (still barely on minimum wage) while University administrators make your life hell I took the only rational route.

I switched to software and make people's lives and the climate worse for a paycheck that still isn't enough to live where I want to live.

But ideally I'd use my brain to research some of the fundamental challenges we face, battery chemistry, plastic recycling, industrial catalysts, etc, etc.

I don't think there is really one answer to this. I'd be surprised if people's hobbies and interests are really this stable across a lifetime. If you'd have asked me five years ago, all my hobbies were very close to my actual job and I'd have been building compute labs and writing infrastructure orchestration software for fun. Ten years ago, I was more into amateur data analytics and I'd have at least wanted to try setting up my own BCS computer ranking for NCAA football. 20 years ago, it would have been photography and travel writing. Right now, I'd be all-in on personal athletics, trying to continue lifting and rehab my old fledgling habits of climbing and swimming, but mostly doubling down on running since it's what I'm best at and it consumes a lot of time anyway. I'd also love to get involved in big cat rescue, but with the success pumas are already having in the Americas, the need is probably mostly in Eurasia and Africa and I don't think I'd want to leave the only continent I've ever called home. Family still matters. I'd move closer to them, not farther.

Given all this history, I'm definitely not going to pretend I have any idea what I'm going to want to do when I actually retire. I'm also not alone. What I really end up doing is contingent on not disupting whatever my wife wants to do.

A few days back "Where are the builders?" was asked and I was going to chime in there but then today this comes up which correlates, good timing. I too was a Nintendo and Lego kid that took it to extremes, I still play with Legos today as they are great for mock ideas and concepts.

My lifestyle and past choices now afford me all my time as I made great sacrifices for many years saving prolifically while others accrued more and more debt chasing the Jones. Apparently this is called FIRE now but I was doing it long before the acronym.

I have been a problem solver my entire life and have both reverse engineered many things but more importantly I have built a vast variety of personal and professional solutions using mechanics, electronics, technology, automation, and more. I am now building and patenting an energy storage device of my own design given the problem that I personally have which one can likely deduce. I am in absolutely no hurry as all my time is mine to invest where I see fit and as such I am my own boss with ONLY the goal of solving my problem.

For those with the entrepreneurial mindset, exactly like my own, I’ll answer your implicit question from the above reading: "Yes". Once I have my device functioning and it performs as I designed it to the satisfaction of my requirements then a business opportunity unfolds. Given my past choices I am referred to professionally as a serial entrepreneur so I may as well apply my time to my interests and keep solving problems. The difference now however is that I have zero anxiety in my pursuit of my problem since the goal is the objective, not money.

Stay Healthy!

I feel like my answer should be something reliable like "educating the next generation", but instead I think what I'd actually do is some kind of "shoot for the moon" / "hail mary" ultra ambitious project (hopefully with a bunch of similarly motivated and smart people).

Check out the book From Strength To Strength by Arthur Brooks. It’s a bit of a mid-life crisis book that addresses this. In short: develop hobbies, invest in friends/community, explore spiritually.

Fortunately, I have reached that stage.

OTOH, still figuring out what to do next.

I keep reminding myself of what PG had to say: By compressing the dull but necessary task of making a living into the smallest possible time, you show respect for life, and there is something grand about that.

Trying to improve the drop in sex & reproduction. Or make Japanese style game shows in the US.

Woodworking/Carpentry. As much as I like writing code and working in Product, it'd be nice to work on something tangible. It's so much easier to give someone a physical product that (for the most part) is 'done' when it's handed over, and there's also the knowledge base that remains mostly intact and isn't continuously iterated like it does in programming.

Not a silly question, worth revisiting periodically.

I'd spend part of the time doing some sort of weight-lifting or low-stress cardio, part of the time working on independent B2B/B2C software ventures, and part of the time training as a musician.

Eventually I'd like to add some component of service to others there, but I haven't really felt a pull to that yet.

I'd focus on becoming more spiritual, spending more time in nature, reducing my waste footprint and disconnecting from the world.

I don't believe that "making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated" is a contribution; this sounds like those who have private jets and go to global conventions to about saving the environment. It sounds to me like you are a narcissist as well, to think that you are more rational than others or know better just because you have money.

The world is pretty rational, if they aren't healthy, it's because people are building the Coke's and Kraft Heinz around the world, companies that are predatory and exploit weaknesses of others.

Try to live a life that you no longer need to exploit others, or animals, or the environment you live in, and of course, document it so others can do it as well.

There are way too many rich folks already trying to change the world and making it worse because they are only looking at the bright side, not the side-effects of what they do, much less on how they live.

Rich people don't try to do this because they know it's really hard. Living sustainably is harder than having a job or making money.

If cash wasn't a thing, I'd be all in on creating a system that lets you transfer your memories and brainpower into another body or a robot.

I'll let you laugh at this like others, but I'm serious.

I wouldn’t work towards anything.

I’d shitpost online, read books, go to the coffeeshop, watch movies, go on walks, etc.

Took 3 years off in my 20s to do exactly that and it was incredible. Best years of my life. Would drop everything and do it again in heartbeat if I could swing it financially.

I would have a nut tree orchard and nursery. I love gardening and being outside. If I didn't need to work to support my family I would risk starting a nursery.

That's easy. Writing books and researching curiosities.

I have dozens of book ideas, from novels to reference volumes. My research would at least partially focus on energy/power generation/storage, and partially on current scientific mysteries in our reality.

Ideally, such work could help enrich humanity. Make the world better in some way. Sadly, unless I win a lottery tomorrow or a wealthy person issues me a grant, some of this work won't get done.

At this point I’m kind of bored of programming and I’d probably leave if it didn’t pay so well.

If I had enough money I’d probably take up sewing full time and make furry cosplay stuff. Seems much more rewarding than building corporate tech junk.

I would like to make my DevOps colleagues more productive and less frustrated. I'm actually already doing it, it's just way slower when you can't do it as a full time job.

I started working on Next Generation Shell in 2013. I have the programming language in quite a good shape and we use it at work.

I'm working on the UI now. The main idea of the UI is to get rid of telegraph-style communication paradigm of sending text and receiving text. We can actually use the whole screen now. We have text editing using full screen since 1976 (vi) but classical shells are ignoring this capability till this day. It's time to stop treating outputs of programs as if they are still printed on paper, allowing zero interactivity.

https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs/wiki/UI-Design

https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs/wiki/UI-Chain-Design

Have a nice day!

I’d build handcrafted furniture, millwork, etc. give it away. Help others in the community / area with projects. Sail, grow more food, spend more time reflecting, staring at clouds, watching the ecosystem in the grass etc.

I would continue to (re)build my decentralized Web Browser network, which aimed to combat fake propaganda, fake news, shit storms etc by creating evidence trails and by correlating articles with similar or opposing entries.

That, and a lot of nice things you can do when you have trust ratios of local/global peers, more efficient bandwidth usage etc.

Anyways, long story short, needs lots of time and money to build something like this. But seeing how messed up Mozilla's future plans are, I really think someone should do it.

After I got doxxed by kiwifarms, /pol/ and others I decided that I have to fix the cybersecurity problem first before I can go back to this.

[1] (prototype) https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth

[2] (privacy focussed fork of webkit) https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit

Health. I'm in lower 40ties and in two and a half years had two surgeries to fix a herniated disc. After the first surgery a part of my recovery were exercises on pilates reformer and it worked wonders. Unfortunately I needed a second surgery and now I'm slowly getting back on the reformer.

My original plan was just to get back to normal and continue living as normal. This recently changed, and I don't want to get back to normal. I want to be healthier than I ever was. I want to be stronger and much more flexible. You don't know what you have until you lose it.

So without much money I'll work on myself by doing pilates and other resistance training, and if I had more money I would probably open up pilates studio so I could share the joy which I'm having.

When you're not healthy, the only thing you want above all is health. If I were asked the same question 3 years ago I would say: riding bikes all day long. This still might be the answer, but long and toned muscles come first.

I won’t tell the whole story but the other day a 1st grader who came over to hang out with my kids punched me in the stomach with “wow you have so much food.”

The breakfast program at school is largely funded by Canada’s largest, exceptionally profitable grocery chain. But this year they’re radio silence on renewing the funding.

So I’d probably be working on making sure children are fed.

Probably making LLVM compile times not suck or something.

I'd probably jump between service based positions gear towards helping others/community even if they resemble a job.

Cobbler, Librarian, Prepare food in a school, stage crew, idc just something relatively physical and with an end product/objective and for the support of others/something. It would probably change every 3 - 6 months or so.

I wouldn't work. I would play with my kids, travel and have fun.

Math. I'd do math and let my curiosity take me wherever it goes in this vast field

A free, open-source, federated platform for scientific/technical collaboration & publishing.

I used to be a data scientist, I'm now a grad student researching personality development. There are easier ways to make a lot more money, but I feel like I'm doing the deepest possible work, given my interests and skillset.

Stopping climate change, and helping homeless would be at the top of my list, and if those are not up your alley space exploration and AGI seem fun.

For bonus points, you could work on not making us poor folk feel bad for having to work a 9-5! ;)

I'm not sure, and that slightly concerning to me. I'm on the path to be financially independent within the decade, but I'm not really sure what I'd do in that case. I'd probably keep writing software (since that's my first love) and just have the complete freedom to quit a job or take time off if I want.

I'd like to get into some more hobbies, since I really went 100% in on software once I started working full time and I'd really hate to burn out on this. Working a shorter week or with more half days would be great too. We'll see. Life changes.

Put more energy into this movement: `walk, talk, meditate`[0]

[0]: https://github.com/momentmaker/walk-talk-meditate

If I won the lottery (I don't buy lottery tickets, but roll with me here), I'd go to graduate school. Multiple graduate schools, in multiple subjects. There's so much to learn, and so many beautiful places in the world in which to do it. European two-year masters degrees are perfect: lots of depth, without a vast time commitment. I'd do an anthropology degree; archeology; something in history; art history. Urban planning is fascinating. Experimental economics. Do one at Oxford; another at Trinity College, Dublin. I'm sure there's something worth studying in Wellington, NZ. I'd improve my Spanish to the point that I can read Spanish poetry at Madrid University, then find something else interesting to dive into somewhere in South America. I'd endow a chair or something everywhere, so no one looks too hard at my pre-reqs, and I wouldn't worry about grades, but I'd still work damn hard, because everything about it would be a joy.

If you're just talking about a normal retirement? I'd go back to doing theatre, which was my first love, and the thing I was better at than anything else I've ever done. Acting, directing, teaching, writing. Theatre people are my people. Making theatre was my passion, and I could do with some passion back in my life.

I don’t have enough to retire on, but spent my last decade working on what I wanted. I worked on Formal Proof, until I realized the problem wasn’t the tech but the math-proof business model. (Academic mathematicians aren’t incentivized to write formal proofs.). I got an Econ degree. I’ve studied housing in Austin and advocated to loosen restrictive regulation that causes high rents. And I designed version 3 of Parchive. (You may know the previous version by its file extension “.par2”)

In the tech realm: I'd spend my time doing optimization work for open-source projects. It's fun, and you get to show some objective results. I'd probably do that until I had some sort of concrete idea for a cool project or some kind of project that might benefit the world somehow.

Or maybe I'd just leave tech behind entirely and do volunteer work.

But I feel like that's a one-way street. If I walked away from tech for a few years, and decided I wanted to go back... it feels like it would be very difficult.

Probably Christian apologetics. It is clear to me that science is incompatible with atheism and supports the Christian worldview, but this does not seem to be widely understood.

I retired in my late 30s and had kids. So I’m a full time parent as is my partner. I guess that’s my revealed choice for what my ideal job would be? Sometimes I’m not completely happy with my choice, but mostly I am.

If I had more time, or more energy, I’d program for fun more often.

I don’t especially believe in “changing the world.” Not that you can’t (though really, you can’t, to 3 sig figs) just I don’t care to.

Buying some old and big land, renovating the buildings on it and than building a mix of park and permaculture garden

Then researching and building open source farming robot.

I have almost always done what I want and that is writing software. I like writing development tools, formal theories and low level stuff (databases, OS, editors).

And, since about two years, I am working with some friends on Common Lisp software again; far more enjoyable than anything else imho. I regret going for some of the new fads in the 90s while I could’ve been working with CL all that time. But he, regrets are useless and I did learn a lot.

Some voluntary work and care giving to others who need help. I would do some social projects supporting the teens finding orientation. That's what I would do.

> basically what would your ideal job be

Easy. A nonexistent one. If you didn't need money, why would you be seeking a job?

> would you contribute towards making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated?

How does a job contribute to 'society'? Who works to contribute to society? What company exists to 'contribute to society'?

Has 'hacker' news become so cynical to believe one's existence is about finding a job?

I would work on making education more enjoyable and more effective in a scalable way, so that young people start liking it intrinsically and can get more out of it.

I would study to get as much as possible formal education myself in economics, law, marketing / psychology and politics and I would try to improve peoples' lives through politics.

I would develop the most useful side projects I put on hold.

Same old scientific research like I've been doing for over 40 years.

Back then if you wanted to do something where you actually "needed money" you might as well give up right away.

I guess it's a little bit like it is now that inflation has pushed anything like that out of reach for so many people who were closing in on leveraging those type abilities just a few years ago. Fortunately it's not as bad yet as it was in the 1970's.

There was no other option but to get more progress accomplished using less resources.

Especially monetary resources, this can be some of the hardest to come by, even well-heeled people can just sometimes be so greedy.

One cost that was skyrocketing so badly was energy, and it doesn't even move the needle if you can't get your consumption down to about 10% of what average consumers use. It's not easy and it takes years living within your means, working within your means, even when you do not have the cash flow of an average consumer, you can end up quite early not feeling at all like you need more money to make maximum progress compared to some very well-financed operations.

Of course some money is essential but it's good over the long term not to have an ongoing perceived feeling of shortage over what you don't have, that can be the more limiting factor.

I would say questions like this "Ask HN" are something that comes up often for more mainstream technical operators. So many are mainly working for a paycheck and money is always on their mind.

It's been so many decades and times of less-than-average money have not been a limitation on my rate of progress, operating within my means.

At the other end of the spectrum, for those who might be interested in energy projects that people would love, no matter how much money you have, I've got something you can't afford ;)

I already love what I'm doing for a living as a CTO for a small start-up, and probably wouldn't quit, but if money absolutely wasn't an object and my current mission were fullfilled, then I'd probably spend more hours on gardening, and more hours on "technoetic" art/research projects: exploring consciousness through technological means.

Let's say by "didn't need money" you mean I have an income that is enough to fully support my family and keep my home in good repair and even make home improvements (we need some big repairs to gutters and fascia, deck, HVAC, etc.) That's not a small number especially factoring in health care... but let's assume it's taken care of and all our needs are taken care of, and I even have a little disposable income for IT, music stuff, books, etc. I could continue with the things I've done in my limited free time for decades:

- writing non-fiction and fiction - making original music and podcasts - developing educational hardware/software projects - developing my own programming languages - continuing to refine and catalog our large home library - gardening and transitioning towards growing more of our own food.

I'd spend much more time involved with my kids since my wife and I already homeschool, but I can't put very much time into it now.

I'd work on whatever my current hobby is. The actual hobby changes over time. Currently, my hobby is maintaining/repairing cars. If I had more time (and space), I'd restore old cars and/or build a track car (and of course use it on track).

Unfortunately the time and space limits means I don't even have the time to finish my very long TODO list on my own car.

I would love to do research in Foundation Models and Philosophy of Mind.

I'd open a bakery and make fresh sourdough bread, pizzas, focaccia and pasta every single day, and give it away for cost.

I have a few ideas:

Would spend my time building an organization that helps people get dev roles, kind of like a recruiter agency, but if the person isn't getting jobs because of their experience, we give them the platform to gain the experience they need to be successful in the job market.

Would work on helping eSports athletes to make a living playing the game they love. Dunno how that'd even work yet but that'd be something I'd like to work on.

Staying with eSports, trying to 'Moneyball' FGC games. How do we track stats & data for fighting games and extract meaningful metrics we can use to improve players skills. Would want to do this for other games but there seems to be work going on there so it'd probably be best to start with fighting games where that work might not be happening.

> What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

What an interesting question; thank you for asking it!

What I would spend my time working on...I guess I would continue with what I have been doing the past 15 years.

  - continue working on improving my character
  - fixing my past mistakes and learn from them
  - enrich my knowledge with topics I may find interesting at any time
  - learn to forgive and put myself in others' shoes to see their own POV
  - embrace life
  - appreciate little things; such as a smile, a hug, a kiss

This whole process I have aforementioned can impact anyone's job towards the best, because people will notice (eventually) that something is different with you and how you approach things in your life, let alone in your job, and they will appreciate it; well, at least I hope!

I think I would want to work on an open source video game engine or a CPU.

In a world where nobody had to worry about money, I think we’d have trouble getting enough people together to work on a very good CPU. And I don’t know enough to do it on my own. But I think I’d enjoy tinkering with it, even if I got a very poor result.

In addition to taking care of myself and my family, I'm working on:

- Polishing my personal website[1], and going back to blogging.

- Figuring out trading signals[2] and algorithms, testing via paper trading.

- An API[3] to verify YC company and founders.

- Monitoring my investment portfolio, re-balance once or twice a year.

- Mentoring AI/ML engineers and leaders. Free 30-min intro call[4].

- Various indie projects that are under research or haven't been launched... :)

[1]: https://ivylee.github.io/

[2]: https://www.signalstalk.com/

[3]: https://www.ycverify.com/

[4]: https://cal.com/studioxolo/intro

I'd fix every outstanding bug I've reported but not had the time to fix myself.

I’d love to teach math/science to kids. I think I would be very good at it and enjoy it. But the pay really sucks.

At home id setup a shop with a 3d printer, laser cutter, cnc machine, power tools, etc. And I’d spend my free time just making all sorts of fun stuff.

Currently working toward this at 38, but my goal is to start building a team of individuals to create a research / design firm that studies symbiotic relationships in nature in order to discover and pair natural additive processes (think spider producing webs as one of these additive process) starting with bespoke pieces such as a spider woven glove.

This would help create buzz and intrigue with the objective to attract top talent and essentially the seed money to self funded a hybrid medusa that is studying "organic 3D printers" with the objective of being the "Manhattan project" size of integrating nature into the manufacturing process.

Gardening and either a small farm or animal rescue.

1. Spending more time with my family. My mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma live in another city. I seldom have the chance to visit them — typically only five or six times a year. 2. Travel more. There are so many places I want to visit—the sea, snow mountains, etc. Maybe it is because I stay at home too long. 3. Create software for fun, not for pay. Programming is my first love. 4. learn some new skills - painting, calligraphy, Spanish, etc. Mastering skills I didn't have before excites me.

I am rather inward and only care about myself and my family.

> basically what would your ideal job be, in an ideal world?

But that's a completely different question from the one in the title. My ideal job and what I'd do if I didn't need money are two very different things.

If I didn't need money, I'd have more time to do the things I already do when I'm not "on the clock", so I'd do more of them.

> would you contribute towards making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated?

Yes, absolutely. I already do. But I'd also be able to spend more time expanding my knowledge and skillset, having fun, and other such stuff with no direct connection with improving the world.

I would develop a production-ready Datalog database system.

I am convinced a better alternative to the execrable SQL would significantly raise developer productivity.

http://frest.substack.com

I'd need capital as well as financial independence, but I'd work on free / at-cost daycare, including for shift workers. Working in infosec, I've often thought that one of the reasons (not the only one of course) that we have so few women at the senior levels is that so few women can take the typical entry route (night shift SOC) for family reasons. I'm sure there are many other similar professions.

If that didn't work out I'd lie on the couch, get fat(ter) and read philosophy and history. Less meaningful but still a pretty good life.

You ask one thing in the title and something else in your text. I'm answering only the question in the title.

As of now, I'd split my time between a couple of things:

(1) In winter and autumn, become a part-time psychologist to help reduce some of the mental pain that people go through.

(2) In spring and summers, go for weeks-long hikes in nature, become a part-time hiking guide in the mountains. Help maintain the trails, mountain-hut infrastructure, and take people on hikes. Simply, be more in nature.

Luckily, today I can still enjoy some of these: study cognitive science as a hobby, and hike in nature in my free time.

I have loved programming for 30+ years and still do the occasional project to scrape/automate things I find frustrating, but I also have afk aspirations such as thru-hiking around the world starting with the tour du mont blanc and moving on to the pacific crest trail and the te araroa trail. Also giving back as a volunteer https://www.justserve.org/ seems a lot more appealing to me than spending my golden years behind a computer screen.

Mostly just do whatever I find fun. Maybe contribute to the communities of those hobbies a bit while I still enjoy them. Thinking I'd do anything grander than that would be lying to myself.

A depressing reality to this question is to just look at the current crop of billionaires. None of them need money, yet many of them spend their time pursuing more.

I know all of us have these quaint answers about all the noble or fulfilling things we would do, but the data doesn't seem to support that.

I have some specific ideas on high school maths education that I’d like to develop into a book or two for self-publishing. Working is currently one serious obstacle to that.

I would spend my time working on music. This entire universe was created from nothing to everything, and there has always been sound. I believe sound can be used to solve many problems, from healing people of sickness to moving heavy objects, as the ancient Egyptians did. So I would want to decode the mystery of music. The music I like to listen to and want to create more of is similar, so that I can derive great pleasure from listening to it.

I would help WikiHouse (https://www.wikihouse.cc/) project. It is a DIY-able CNC-machined plywood- or OSB-based house. I would like to make it more parametric and smart.

My pet project these days is "nothing to WikiHouse": DIY a minimally viable 3D printer, print a bigger 3D printer on it (e.g. Voron), print a CNC machine (LowRider CNC V3), and use it to cut the house sheets.

I'd probably just own some kind of cycling adjacent coffee/bicycle shop where I barely do anything but nod towards my workers and talk with everyone who visits.

There's two different ways of answering this question: What would I do if I didn't need money for myself, and what would I do if I didn't need money for myself but had money for others.

In the first, I would keep working and enjoy life. In the latter, I would use it to help others. Specifically investing in technologies, companies, and public policy that helps people with disabilities and make their lives easier; better jobs, housing, everyday life, etc.

Writing software that makes all other software more efficient, reliable, and easier to run/read.

I really dislike how most software in large corporations degrades over time and increases in complexity. Some pockets are better than others, and there are momentary improvements to bad software, but entropy eventually sets in.

I would build org-wide ratchet mechanisms that make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing.

Work on problems that interest me.

Try to make some progress on arthritis, cancer and dementia

Definitely full time on all of my open source scrabble tools - a new AI, a lichess-like app to play online, and a word study tool - probably turn it all into one big platform. My github has more info - github.com/domino14 if you’re interested in submitting some code :D

In the downtime I would go hard on learning a bunch of instruments well - piano, violin, and hopefully voice.

I am 46 and hope to retire at 50.

Been active most of my life and plan to do more of it - mountain-biking, racquet sports, skiing, etc.

My kids will be in their teens, and I hope to focus more on them and prepare them for life.

Get involved in the local community, and help less fortunate people. I do this mainly by contributing money but I hope to give time.

Travel - Not as a tourist which I've done for most of my life, but as a true explorer of cultures.

1. Science 2. Philosophy 3. Art

I am currently factually volunteering to a project in CERN that needs full-time attention, but unfortunately I need to feed myself and my family so I work at daytime as a full-time Software(Data) Engineer. I spent whatever time I find (mostly nights) doing science. I do hope I will manage to deliver new NN method I experiment now. This has a lifelong meaning for me.

I’d work on my app BeatScratch full time. (https://beatscratch.io)

Farming, beekeeping and moving around on a horse.

I don't need to make money anymore. But the type of person you become to earn a lot of money, and the type of systems you surround yourself with to make that happen becomes increasingly difficult to break free from. So the only thing to do is to make even more money. Only you are strong enough to break the shackles.

Same stuff I do now, probably. Contribute to Fedora/Ansible.

I'd like to think I'd take better care of myself, but given I know this should be the priority now... I'm being realistic.

I'll forever be angry how I had to min/max skills like this to break out of poverty. Making things accessible to others is my dream.

Working on myself, my relationships, and my family. Exercising more, but doing more of the types of exercise I'd prefer (hiking and mountain biking) than I can really handle right now with work and young children. Gardening, canning and preserving food. Reading and writing. I'd spend more time with my parents and brother, who live very far away.

I'd work on house projects, too. I'd redo our flooring right out of the gate if I had more time. I did it in my previous home and enjoyed both the process and the outcome.

I still love programming, I started when I was single digits and am now in my 40s. I've been doing it professionally for just about 20 years now. But I'm frankly tired of digital everything at this point in my life. I have been filling my personal life with offline and analog hobbies and with every passing year I wish I could spend even less time in front of a computer.

This is me. 36. I’m building the startup lab I always wanted to build now that I’ve been around the block a few times, and writing lots of open source.

Once self sustaining will branch into angel investing as well but trying to focus in one big thing at a time.

I just absolutely love startups and helping people bring their ideas to life.

I've been making scented candles. Its easy enough to get started but there's enough complexity to it to keep things interesting. If I didn't need money I'd just do that all the time and build it into a small business (that didn't need to make money, since I'm sure it wouldn't haha)

As many have noted there are two different scenarios.

In the lottery jackpot/UBI scenario where money is no concern at all I'd camp, fish, read books, and drink whisky.

In the need a job, but every job will pay my asking salary scenario, I'd make software like I do now, but probably for a smaller, less bureaucratic company.

I'd ask the same question, but with a sinister twist:

What would you do if you don't worry about money AND law enforcement?

I am very slowly working on a non-profit community management / RSVP collection platform. Think of this as an alternative of the websites you tend to think of if you want to collect RSVPs for a social club or meetup group, but run and maintained by a Wikimedia Foundation-style non-profit.

I would work on a Computer Algebra System. Maybe one day, who is to say.

That being said I'm pretty close to my dream job

I'll work on these:

(1) Convince car manufacturers to add a battery port in the trunk. They can make smaller cars with 100 mile range which covers >98%[2] of the trips and anyone who needs more can rent extra batteries from their nearest retailers. Fast chargers don't work, queueing theory explains why: What happens when you add a new teller? [0]. Fast chargers won't work because we have to solve for the peak case, which is a third of US population driving during Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Spring break, etc. Cars with smaller batteries will be cheaper, lighter and far more importantly we can make 3X the cars from the same battery materials. There will be a lone commenter who will complain that EV doesn't work for him, because he commutes every week from Miami to Seattle, but EVs work for most people's driving habits.

(2) Convince retailers to build battery banks, they can charge for free (or get paid for charging when electricity prices go negative!) and (a) rent fully charge batteries (b) participate in virtual power plants replacing natural gas, they can make bank[1]. This also increases their foot traffic, most of the big retail chains operate gas stations anyways as loss leaders. Batteries for rent will be extremely profitable, in addition to adding foot traffic.

(3) Change residential building codes to require 240V outlets in the garage, heat pump water heater, heat pump furnace, induction stove, solar panels, or better yet solar shingles. Solar shingles are coming up, may not be cost effective today, but probably soon? Also make the main panel and circuitry future proof -- home can be powered by vehicle (V2H - no need to generator for emergencies) and also V2G so everyone can participate in VPP.[2] I've already started working on this.

(4) Change commercial (anything non-residential) building code to require conduit before paving parking lot. Doesn't need to add EV chargers, but that makes the parking lot future proof, can make 10%, 20% or 100% of it EV ready whenever.

With (3) and (4) all new construction is energy efficient, future proof. People who buy these homes can have zero energy bills as well as make money from VPP.

(5) Everyone complains about high home prices. We see spirited discussions on HN once or twice a week. Convince builders to build homes to standards (#3 above) that make the old homes entirely undesirable to most people. There can be a huge building boom (builders benefit from this), very low sales of old homes, stopping the growth of home prices. Convince people to stop buying old homes.

(6) Work with cities on providing free charging at schools, parks, libraries and all city owned infrastructure.

(7) Work with HOAs/communities to build chargers in HOA managed parks, these are 10 - 100x more than city parks.

(8) Put shareholder resolutions to make companies either offer (a) fully remote (b) free charging.

(9) Put shareholder resolutions at Restaurants and Retailers to offer free charging. This is a win-win, they get high quality foot traffic, traffic that stays at least 30 mins.

I'm in my 40s, I think these are important and solvable problems, nothing more I'd love than working on these. Better yet, teach the younger generation on how to work on these. We can't change the world by thinking about fossil fuel led COP summits, Govts, but we can change by making decisions on where we live, work and shop. Gradually, then suddenly, everything will change for the better.

[0] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/10/21/what-happens-when-... [1] https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo... [2] 98 percent of all single-trip journeys were under 50 miles in length: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/03/more-than-half-of-a...

I’d build race cars.

Making even more money, of course.

Just look to your VC darlings, how many of them "don't need money"? By definition, all of them, and yet, what are they spending their time on? Making even more money, of course.

HN really is a cesspit of financial pillaging apologists...

Based on what I’ve been passing the time doing post-layoff? Cooking and making music.

I wouldn’t contribute much on a greater scale, I’d just be happy making art in my immediate community, and making food for my family and friends.

Farming. Live on a small farm and WFH. Too often I don't even leave the house and even in better work/balance times I seem to get an hour or 2 a day in the shed/paddocks maximum.

When/if I get to FIRE I'll be farm focused.

There’s brutal war two countries over, and if one falls, the war is coming here. I can’t stop taking care of my family, but not a day passes without me wondering if bread on the table today is more important than preparing to stop Russia tomorrow.

I would work on improving HaikuOS.

I'd do something with dogs. I'd pay people to dig up the best info about how dogs communicate their needs. Then I'd pay marketers to popularize that info so people and dogs get along better.

If money wasn't a concern, I would strive to fill my time with pursuits that challenge me, help me grow, allow me to contribute something of value, and bring me a deep sense of purpose and fulfillment.

I've been FI for around 18 months now. I don't work on anything.

I would spend my time creating automation to hold public CAs accountable.

Some of my work is visible in https://WebPKI.substack.com

Researching new ways to apply spaced repetition and LLMs to second language acquisition. Reach out to me via my blog, LinkedIn, Reddit, GitHub etc.. if you feel the same way.

Honestly? I'd just keep working on whatever I already thought was profitable. I'd probably take higher-risk, higher-reward swings with that work, but I like working.

I have a pretty steadfast confidence by this point in my life that free markets usually converge over the long term to the best outcomes for all. So I have no real plans to stop reaping the fruits of my own increasingly-specialized labor, until medical reasons or something force me out of it.

im in this situation, i live off of steady income, all bills paid perfectly every month. and im wishing i had something to keep me preoccupied, the problem is that after 7 years of living like this, its really difficult to find stuff to do, when money is somewhat tight, but youre able to pay all your bills. i spend alot of time playing video games, and working with AI projects, wishing i could work, but health issues get in the way.

Probably my farm. Or promoting small scale farming.

For good food and fun.

https://hedgerider.substack.com

I'd create open-source software for hosting. Something like CapRover. Or take a big sum of money and do algorithmic trading. Or build something in crypto.

I'd like to work on an open-source Email software that did as well with contacts and scheduling as MS Outlook before the o365-ification.

One of the things on my wishlist is creating a game in which I have to build a railway and manage the timetable

Kinda simcity meets train scheduling

I would love to build side scrolling platformer games. I have grown up playing them and would love to build a game every 6 months or so :)

I love gaming!

I am in this situation and I focus on friends, family, hobbies.

I think that most problems in "society" stem from people losing track of these things.

I'd read and relax and take care of myself more

I don't think I would work. I would pour myself full time into a few creative pursuits like woodworking. I would also travel a lot.

I’d learn how to play drums, join a punk band, shave my head and get a tattoo. You don’t need talent, just sing out of tune.

I've really been enjoying designing and 3d printing crochet tools for my partner and releasing them for free on printables.

Go back to uni, get that degree in Mathematics, earn that PhD, go back to uni, get that degree in Physics, earn the PhD, die?

Id probably just sit and play guitar all day.

Working on building my yacht and working on open source for fun (probably Debian developer)

Maybe doing something with biogas, CO2 capture

I'm a programmer. I've reached this stage. I still write code.

My life goal is to make enough money in tech to semi-retire around 40 and teach CS to underprivileged kids.

Spending time with my kids, and guitar.

Honestly, I'd keep doing what I'm doing now, I'm a research engineer. I kind of stumbled into this career path and it turns out to be just exactly the thing I was built to do.

I'd likely go work for someplace better with more resources and a goal I find more interesting than my current work. Or I'd be a crazy inventor type building new machines and technologies in the garage.

I actually think about this question a lot. Thinking about all of the inventions that I or innumerable other engineers might have built, might have changed the world with, if only they had the resources to pursue mad science. It's pretty sad.

I have a real passion for the "Long Now". Understanding how to preserve knowledge for the 10,000 year timeframe. Inspired by everything from Anatheum by Neal Stephenson and subsequently finding the Long Now Foundation and even stupid games like Horizon: Zero Dawn.

I would probably do more on that front than I currently am on the side. It's some balance of actually persisting knowledge in super-durable formats, and persisted knowledge in computer systems (Internet Archive, Arctic Code Vault, LibGen/Anna's Archive)

I would (I will?) become a politician. We gotta have a few honest ones after all.

As a CTO coach helping others having a better life, probably the same thing :-)

Native desktop Mac software

I would learn how to grow and harvest kava kava (psychoactive plant).

I would not touch another computer for a very long time.

i don't know, but something would come to me after a few weeks of sitting around enjoying the lack of stress from having a job

In an ideal world I obviously wouldn’t have a job.

Gardening and Dog training. You can get pretty deep into gardening, it's quite a rabbit hole, when you go into hydroponics and scientific approach.

For dog training, most people have no idea how to treat their animals (lots of shitty "folk wisdom" and pseudoscience in that area), so I would be doing both them and their owners a service.

Would probably run a dog-retreat and charge enough for some beer money, but that's it.

> would you contribute towards making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated?

Can't really do that, unless society is willing to do so themselves. It's hard enough to change 1 person's mind on an issue, and nearly impossible to help someone who doesn't want the help.

Linux on Mobile

NixOS, digital archiving and curation

Oil painting.

Volunteer full time at my church.

Teaching kids how to educate themselves and use computers to do so. I would do it by setting up a all you can play video game arcade not with cabinets but with consoles and computers.

The currency to play video games would be some sort of educational math and reading rabbit type games. After doing some lessons they d be able to go back and play video games for a set amount of time.

my stand up routine and perhaps more intentional writing

I'd make my vegetable / fruit garden 10x bigger, put more money and effort into becoming completely off grid (power & water), I'd lean back and watch the world burn while techbros fail to save anyone.

making games maybe '__')

Open source projects.

Gardening.

An ideal job is different than if you didn’t need money. I have a bit more of a lived experience with this than most. I’m planning to fatFIRE when I have kids going to college.

Currently, I’ve been on a sabbatical for two years. In that time, I’ve spent a good amount traveling and living in other areas. I’m living in NYC mostly rather than SF.

I’m interested in having a family and have been single for a few years. So, that’s why I moved to NYC. I simply couldn’t meet enough single women back in SF. The ratio is really bad in SF. In NYC it’s tolerable. (Check out census data - table b12002)

That’s what I would do because it’s what I’ve done. I’d spend all my free time looksmaxxing and looking for a partner. It’s not a trivial task. I offered my closest friends in SF over $500k if they introduced me to my future wife but no one could even think of a single woman they knew who was single. I wasn’t being facetious - I was 100% willing to offer that matchmaker fee but they knew there was no one. Thus, I had to move and here I am.

It’s better but hard to find someone who is marriage material here. Also, the standards women have here are outlandish given what they bring to the table. I’ve met several women who don’t even make $100k who demand a millionaire husband - lol. That level of delusion is just commonplace.

Teach school

Learn new things

Help peiple

Teaching kids computers. Old computers, not new ones. Giving them the tools they need to be really, really good hackers.