Ask HN: What would you do with 6 months?

6 months is a good amount of time to become a world expert in a topic. If you're looking to make yourself more marketable, this can be an invaluable way to spend your time.

Personally, I've had a few papers that I'd like to spend several months understanding. There was a world changing paper in 2013 titled "Causal Entropic Forces" by Wiesner-Gross and Freer, that I only understand conceptually. I have a strong suspicion, that if I knew how to apply the knowledge it could lead to breakthroughs in many areas of applied computation and data modelling.

I also have a lot of interest in autonomous drone swarms, and could easily spend 6 months working on those.

Similarly, I could lose 6 months playing with the limits of nylon (twisted monofilament fiber) muscles.

This question is interesting because the answers depend on culture. For example in my country (on south Europe) I don't think that anybody (raised in our way of thinking of course) would have thought of taking such a long break from work and living off the extra money he earned.

Instead I can think of the following three possibilities:

- Use the money immediately to buy a car, fix his house, pay his loans, go a long trip etc

- Add the money to his saving account or use it as an investment (stocks, real estate etc)

- Change carreer (use the money to open a business)

I'm aware that people in the USA are able to stop working and live off money they have earned but this rarely (if at all) happens in my country.

However let's say that for some reason I would get a 6 months leave of absense from my work and wasn't allowed to work elsewhere in these months. Well then probably I'd spend the extra hours for self improvement (learning new techs, writing blog posts etc). That would have been the plan anyway because now that I think of it most of this time would probably have been spent playing Overwatch :D

If you've never travelled then I'd stick your apartment on airbnb, get a friend to manage it while you are away on travels. Give them a one-third cut of the income for their troubles.

Assuming you are from the US, find a cheap return flight to any major Asian hub (Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, ...). Don't bother with around the world ticket. You can fly to many other Asian countries once you are there via low cost airlines. I don't think I ever paid more than 100 usd for a one-way ticket within Asia.

Travel slow. Find places you like and hangout there for a few weeks. Go to local meetups, language exchanges, spend 25% time in coworking spaces doing a bit of work on a side project. Spend the remainder siteseeing and having fun.

I did this a couple of years ago. Total expense for 3 months (including all flights) was maybe 6000 usd.

How was it world-changing? Do you like to learn by discussion?

Just two things for me.

1. Get my sleep schedule back on track (retire 10 pm, wake up 6 am).

2. Get my body standing, running, lifting most of the time.