I wrote about how I’m done with work for the year, and @keni asked: 

Sounds beautiful Jason. I would love to trade places with you. I hope you will write about how to get a years work done in 6 months.

Tl;dr - Freelance + an ‘enough’ financial target would do the trick. 

I do design consulting for governments, so in practice it is like being a freelancer. I can pack in lots of work within a month to be crazy busy, or I can be slack. This degree of autonomy is the benefit of working for yourself. And packing in work means you can earn more for the same time you spend in a typical job where you’re employed by someone else. The funny thing is, when I was employed, I always thought we should work through the year, bar our annual leave. That’s the way life is. I never questioned that idea before. But about 2 years ago, after I had been freelancing for some time, it occurred to me that this work-all-year rule was invented by others. It doesn’t have to be so. At least not for everyone.    

Because what are we working for? If it’s to make a living, then what is enough? Often, we take a job that pays us a predetermined amount of money, and that job dictates that we give our whole year to it. We have not much choice to say, I don’t need so much this year, so can I work less and take the rest of the year off? It’s possible, but not likely that the employer will let you work only 6 months, every year. But what if you could have the flexibility to determine your own level of ‘enough’? After you had earned enough, you can then be free to go do anything you want. Everything you want. Or nothing you want.

But ultimately, it depends on what work means to you. In this case, it means revenue-generating work, work that gets paid. Because in the broader sense of the word, I’ll still continue to work even though I’m ‘done’ with the year. I’ll be working on my own side hustles and passion projects, that’s all. If your day job IS your passion project, maybe you feel that you don’t need to ask how to get a year’s work done in 6 months. The thing is, my consulting gigs are my passion too. But I recognise that my interests are varied and complex, and I don’t need my day job to provide everything, nor should it. It doesn’t need to be my one true love, forever and ever more.  

I’d come to realise that I enjoy working in seasons, to the cadence of months, peaking in some quarters, slacking in others, instead of day in, day out the same thing for the whole year. There’s a sense of groundedness to being able to work in seasons, like circadian rhythms but for work, and longer. I imagine this connects me way back to the past, when our farming ancestors seeded fields in the spring, toiled in summer, harvested in autumn, and rested in the winter.

There’s a deep satisfaction and contentedness, to feel this connection, all the way back in time, from my city-born disposition, to the nature-attuned hands of my ancestors, all the way to Mother Nature’s embrace through the seasons.