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

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Personal well‑being and relationships

  • Many would prioritize health, fitness, and recovery from past injuries.
  • A large group would spend more time with partners, kids, and aging parents.
  • Some would lean into spirituality, nature, meditation, and lower‑impact lifestyles.
  • Several would simply rest, read, travel slowly, or “do nothing productive” for a while.

Crafts, analog work, and “real world” activities

  • Strong pull toward woodworking, carpentry, furniture making, van/RV conversions, gardening, small farming, beekeeping, and permaculture.
  • Others imagine bakeries, coffee/bike shops, race‑car building, cosplay/sewing, painting, music, theater, and comedy.
  • A recurring theme is wanting tangible work with clear end products, versus endless digital iteration.

Tech, open source, and research

  • Many say they’d keep programming: open source tools, new languages, shells, game engines, OSes, HaikuOS, NixOS, PureDarwin, Linux on mobile, infrastructure/DevOps tooling, performance optimization, debuggers, compilers.
  • Some would pursue “deep work”: math, physics, chemistry, climate tech, battery/storage, neurosci, AGI, philosophy of mind, formal methods, personality development.
  • A few are already FIRE or semi‑retired and still code or do research for fun.

Education, kids, and literacy

  • Strong interest in teaching CS, math, science, and “how to learn” to underprivileged kids.
  • Ideas include hacker spaces with old computers, game‑powered learning arcades, better math curricula, universal basic education, and tech to make library books more accessible via audio and active‑reading tools.

Social impact and policy ideas

  • Proposed work on homelessness, feeding children, disability access, climate change, sustainable living, housing quality, and cheap/liveable homes.
  • System‑level schemes: EV battery‑swap ecosystems, building codes for electrification, free/at‑cost daycare, open scientific collaboration platforms, long‑term knowledge preservation.

Grand/speculative visions

  • Some want to tackle memory transfer into new bodies, rationalist/scientist‑led world governance, massive “Manhattan project” style bio‑manufacturing, or large‑scale infrastructure for energy and compute.
  • Others are explicitly skeptical of “change the world” rhetoric, pointing to billionaire behavior, selection bias, and unintended harm.

Attitudes toward work and money

  • Several note that identity, ego, and habit make it hard to leave high‑paying paths even after “enough.”
  • Others reject the premise entirely, saying if money truly didn’t matter they’d have no job, just life projects and play.