That&#x27;s why I refuse to do a single minute of overtime even if it is paid. I&#x27;ve told employers to fire me if they feel like I should be staying longer and none of them have yet. If I ever need to make up time or do extra work, it&#x27;s usually because of mismanagement and crappy deadlines as 8 hours of solid work a day is <i>a lot</i>, nothing should be &quot;late&quot;.<p>Free time is absolutely the most valuable currency. If you can practice an instigative hobby and augment that hobby with the good money you make, then you&#x27;ve got it made. I have a bloody ton of hobbies and I can&#x27;t wait to get out of work to work on my own stuff.<p>Seeing my days&#x2F;life in two parts as stability (day job) being fuel for my hobby has helped me deal with my identity crisis when I got completely turned off from coding. It was also my hobby so I was always coding, but once I lost that I didn&#x27;t know what to do and I hated my job. Once I saw it as fuel, no matter what day job I have, is now in context of a hobby.