I imagine this site to be populated with a lot of coders, independents, and desk-job types of gentleman/ladies. I'm wondering about your daily routine. How do you manage work/family life? What's your schedule like?
Wake up, make coffee, chop some wood, start the fire, work on Lightning projects, chop more wood, keep fire alive... This has been my life over the winter.
Over the summer it will involve more time outdoors, for sure! Finishing the outdoor kitchen and the workshop. Making fire still, but for barbecues.
We often visit cities or friends or have friends visiting on weekends.
No children yet, but we are planning to get some sheep and chicken soon and hoping for children also.
Rural Romania is where I have been living since 2013. Done with the big cities. Building up my citadel basically. Back in 2019 I was planning to set up a winter base in a tropical country, but then 2020 hit, I got stuck in Bali for 1.5 years and decided that long distance commute is too much of a hassle and I better stay in one compact area (although not necessarily limited to one country, but easily reachable overland).
Contrary to popular belief, a citadel is not something you can buy with a lot of coins! It's a rather very proof-of-work kind of activity. I started 9 years ago and I am far from done. But I achieved quite a lot of independence. I have plenty of land, including forest and fresh water. I live in a beautiful rural area but not far from a town where I can get everything done. I restored an old farm house and turned it into an art space, where I host exhibitions with local artists. I love collecting art from living artists because I think it is more valuable than Bitcoin (and yes, I am a toxic maxi). As an experiment, I opened my house on AirBnB and it worked really well, so I know I could make a living off this if I had to. In the long run I will probably want to host people more often, but currently it is too much of a distraction plus I am trying to attract a different crowd, not necessarily the AirBnB types. Also I am looking into buying more rural houses and slowly restoring them and eventually building a network of citadels filled with art. If I manage to do that, I can always rent out the ones I am not living in. But again, this is a ton of work - from finding the good locations, to setting them up, and most importantly to having people that help you. You can definitely scale, but it is a very slow process.
What I wish I had more? Time to create my own music. But you can't have it all, I guess.
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Wow. This is awesome. An inspiration. I live in a rural area, but do not own yet (it's a rather expensive area of the USA). What do sort of barbecue do you do?
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Where are you based out of? I build live edge/rustic furniture and was told by a friend who restores old barns that my skills would transfer perfectly to that line of work.
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Romania. Yes, it would probably translate well. Also you could buy old barns, disassemble them and use the old wood to build furniture or even bigger structures.
I guess the difference is that the furniture you can build on your own, but for bigger structures like homes or barns you usually need more people involved and that may complicate things. In my case, I was at the opposite end of the spectrum, I did very little myself and hired people to do most things. But even that was a major challenge. I would have loved to do it myself, but then it would have taken much longer and I would have run out of money.
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I am the sole income for our family working from home. My wife homeschools our 4 young kids, and we raise chickens and manage a substantial garden (wouldn't call it a farm).
So, we are very busy, but we keep our life pretty simple so we keep our stress down best we can. We live in a 2 bedroom home on 5 acres, so we maximize our space inside, and spend lots of time outside. We try to make sure we are together the majority of every day, and time apart from each other is always for something special.
Here is my general schedule:
  • work from home 6am-3pm-ish
  • workout outside (for 30-60 minutes)
  • play with the kids, gather eggs, run errands until bed time
  • Monday nights (small group/bible study at our home after the kids go down)
  • Wednesday nights (run games at church for kids at a church program)
  • Tuesday and Thursday take the kids to jujitsu in the afternoon
At nights, I talk with my wife and either read a book, do some programming or research, or write. And every week or two, me, or my wife, go out with friends.
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Very powerful life! 🤝
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Thanks! It's a good life. Couldn't ask for more. Except maybe getting more disciplined on focusing energy toward bitcoin/lightning development skills/knowledge. But, I'll get there!
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Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Go to work, immediately after work I lift weights, spend the rest of the night doing errands, updating my budget, etc.
Tuesday, Thurday: Go to work, Work on personal projects after work
Saturday: Work on personal projects, run errands, etc.
Sunday: Cook for the week, write to my blog (recent addition to my schedule), read, etc.
Friday, Saturday, and Sundays are the day where I have the most time to spend with friends and family. Sometimes on Monday and Wednesdays if I don't have any errands or anything.
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I've been trying to figure this out. People have enough problems with work/life balance outside of bitcoin. When you add bitcoin into the mix, and you're far past the event horizon, it's inescapable that you'll be spending a massive amount of time working on it, leaving you much less time to simply relax and/or spend time with family.
I think a low time preference mindset when it comes to your physical and mental well-being is key. Could I spend all day and late into the night working on bitcoin stuff? Yes. Should I? No. (But I want to) Instead of redlining yourself all the time, which is almost guaranteed to reduce your productivity in the long run, one should take a break from time to time ;)
-take a walk outside, even if just for 5-10 minutes -yoga or gym time -create some sort of work cutoff time (working on this) -maintain a sleep schedule. For me, early bedtime and early wake time works best. -take at least one day a week to NOT focus on work -check stacker news from time to time ;)
Stress kills. The work will still be there after you take some time for yourself.
Shout out to Thomas Johns from Pleb Lab for helping work through some of this. The struggle is real in the bitcoin startup space!
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Go to work. Write boring emails and excels all day. Earn way too much for what I do and way too little for what I want. Go home. Stare at YouTube for 4 hours. Sleep. Repeat.
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you forgot "stack sats"
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My family life is pretty simple. We don't have kids yet so it's just the two of us, but even with kids I don't think the structure of my days would change much - I would just likely get less sleep and the work hours might be more chaotic.
My wife doesn't have a 9-5 job - she's an improvisational clown (think Andy Kaufman) - so she handles all the domestic stuff and I handle the financial. This kind of specialization helps a lot.
My days:
  • walk to yoga (30 min)
  • yoga 3 days/week (1 hour)
  • walk to Pleb Lab (5 min)
  • work (8-10 hours)
  • walk home (30 min)
I also usually work half days on weekend days.
The main constraint on my work right now is keeping my wife happy tbh. I'd be super content working 12-16 hours/day like I used to - but having a functional family is important to me.
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wake up. coffee. day-job. stack.
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I imagine this site to be populated with a lot of coders, independents, and desk-job types of gentleman/ladies.
Yes, look at these distinguished gentleman. Look at the way they are shitposting high quality memes. Yes very distinguished 🧐
(jk of course i love yall)
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morning: memes, LN nodes, helping noobs, writing guides, testing solutions midday: memes, LN nodes, helping noobs, writing guides, testing solutions evening: memes, LN nodes, helping noobs, writing guides, testing solutions nightly: memes, LN nodes, helping noobs, writing guides, testing solutions ONLY BITCOIN All the rest is noise.
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Writing guides? Can I see? I love guides.
I take steps towards my goal daily/family life friend life has shifted to just family and bitcoiners love em all :) and just grind it out as I stack and build. 🔥 is lit after Miami so I continue to fall down the rabbit hole
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wake up, shower, make a strong ass coffee, check SN, go to work, Stack, hit the gym after work, stack some more
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While there are many great answers already, I'd love to add my 2 sats.
If you're looking for a silver bullet, I'm afraid there is none. Consistency is key; having a clearly defined goal helps; having a plan helps. But there will be days where you are not as productive as you'd like to be, and that's okay too.
Personally, I've found that when coding and writing, my productivity diminishes drastically after 3-4 hours. So I try to structure my days around that productivity time. Having a good breakfast is usually good, but I sometimes skip it. I use tools to fight off distractions (LeechBlock, app timers, distraction-free editors for both code and words) and use a Pomodoro timer if I feel like taking brakes. (Sometimes I'm obsessed and not in the mood for brakes.)
I try to do as much work outside as I can, going on walks or for a run to listen to podcasts and articles (Read Aloud is okay, Pocket's TTS engine is okay too, Guy Swann is best), or going to the gym - preferably outdoors too.
I spend time with the family when taking breaks or when braindead, usually a couple of hours in the evenings. At night I try to read or do stuff that doesn't need too much brain power, e.g. shitposting, answering DMs and emails and the like.
One day a week is 100% family time, sometimes two. Again, consistency is key. Make plans and stick to them, even if it is just "we will go to park XY on Saturday to take a walk for an hour."
If I could only pass on one piece of advice it would be this: make peace with the fact that your TODO list will never be empty, that it will probably grow faster than you can ever tick items off. In other words: the work will never end, no matter if it's self-imposed, consisting of things you really want to do, or imposed by others, i.e. things you have to do for your job. Once you make peace with that fact you will realize that all you can do is prioritize and execute.
Chop wood, carry water. Be present. Do your best every day and don't forget to enjoy it.
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So many great answers here. Glad I asked this.
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