Many people have chosen to do voluntary work in hard circumstances. I’m talking about Doctors without borders, Amnesty International. Some of them live in very hard circumstances and just live and help people. But I think they find it worth their while as saving people’s lifes, changing societies to become better have more humanity value.

So I think I would love to have a job that I can call life at the same time, then maybe 2-3 weeks vacation in a year might already be enough

For each person the desired ration of work/life could be different, this is very subjective. Maybe we humans are not that simple to measure everything by ratios and Martin is right in suggesting that “live to work” and “work to live” are not the only choices…

Personally me, if considering work/life ratio, would like to tend always to have it Decreasing. You tell you are happy with having 30 days of vacation, what about 60? and what about 100?

In the Netherlands it is still considered strange when you handle some personal stuff during work time. This makes it harder for employees to manage their life. If instead we’d be able to mix personal life and work more then we can now life would be easier.

I try to do more work on a terrace in the sun when I can, but I also don’t mind working on an interesting document during the weekend. I hope this mixing will work better then keeping a strict separation.

I wish you both the best and happiest of all marriages!

Your brother.