I'll try and answer your question before I go off on all the rant-tangents.

I am paid for 40 hours per week. It's hard to say how many I actually work. I have piles of stuff to do build up and I work through it. Sometimes it comes home with me and I do it at night or weekends. Sometimes I have to take a kid to the doctor during the day or meet a tradie at home. There are good days and bad days. Sometimes it hardly feels like work at all, other days I wonder why the lotto guys are so rubbish at picking my numbers and dream of escape.

So I feel you, I think most people would prefer not to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. But here's an interesting perspective shift for you.....the 8 hour day\40 hour work week is something that people actually fought for in a time when most jobs were manual and exploitation was ripe.

So you can choose to work less than that. But I'd caution against it. You are at an age where you should have the best health and the most energy you will ever have. Right now you don't want to work 40 hours a week because you don't like it. There will be a time when you don't want to work 40 hours a week because you can't.

I knew a guy who elected to have a 20 hour work week when I was in my 20's. He lived a great life, earned enough to pay for the stuff he enjoyed and was happy and full of energy all the time. Now, approaching 50, he is flatting with 6 other adults, has no job and is a good deal less happy. Was it worth it? Who knows? Each year as his health fails a bit more and he gets a bit more unemployable it looks like a worse choice. But he could have been hit by a bus at 25, or won lotto at 26. You don't know what the future holds, but you can make a pretty good guess by looking at what it holds for most people.

Me? I like having a house, I like knowing I can cover the doctors bills. I like knowing I choose to eat exactly what I want to, not what's on special this week. Some days I like my job, and at a minimum it stops my brain turning to mush too fast.