This was a guest post written by Corey at Passive Income to Retire, where he keeps track of his progress to retire by the age of 27.

It was just a little while back that Daniel published an article about why he thought it was important NOT to do what you love for your career. He made some very great points about why someone shouldn’t blog full-time. You can imagine the internal conflict that I faced after just announcing my early retirement plan – part of this goal is to have a full-time income from blogging part-time. Thoughts immediately flooded in: Did I make a mistake in announcing my goal to quit my day job for blogging income? Is Daniel right in the sense that blogging will take over my life?

These concerns are not something that I have completely resolved, to be quite honest. But, I am still going after my goal to replace my income and sustain that by working 3 days a week.

Why I want to “Retire” in 2-3 Years

I first started thinking about creating passive income streams and getting out of the rat race when I realized how my retirement plan was quite limiting. Like any other person (who actually plans for retirement), I figured I would save throughout my entire career (10-20%) and have enough money to retire on. Retirement always seemed nice. Financial security meant that I wouldn’t have to work and more importantly, that I could travel! My wife and I love to travel, but we limit ourselves to a 1 week vacation each year (not only because we want to save for the future, but also because we only have so many days off and are obligated to spend some of those days with family).

When I stopped to think about it, I really didn’t like this idea of retirement at all. There were two aspects that made me hate it actually. First, the fact that I have to wait 35-40 more years to really travel places sounded horrible. Plus, who can say that I will be healthy enough to travel the world at age 60? Secondly, I realized that sitting around all day (like I had normally envisioned retirement) sounded boring. I am the type of person that likes to keep busy. Heck, I’m currently working full-time, going to grad school, and blogging. How could I manage to just sit around all day? The short answer is that I couldn’t!

When I realized that I didn’t want to wait to live my life and that I still plan to remain busy in retirement, I asked myself why I couldn’t do that sooner. Why can’t I live life to the fullest right now? I decided to shoot for the stars and go after my new goal of working 3 days a week to sustain a decent income. With that, I can not only travel more, but contribute to the community – instead of being entirely focused on moving up in the corporate world or making as much money as possible.

How I Plan to Manage It

After reading Daniel’s post about the difficulty of setting boundaries from blogging, I knew that I related. I spend my early mornings and late evenings frequently checking my email for any news related to my blog. I find that I check my blogging email more than my personal email. Blogging is becoming more than just a hobby, but not in a bad way.

While I haven’t made the transition to blogging as my career, I want to take what Daniel said seriously and set boundaries. I can’t imagine staying up through the night and responding to emails. Refusing to do that is an obvious and easy boundary, but what else can one do to keep blogging from taking over your life? Here are some ways I will keep it enjoyable (and from controlling my life):

• Use an action plan to accomplish tasks – Instead of constantly checking my stats, sitting on twitter all day, or doing other unproductive things, I will use an action plan. I know a few other bloggers that use this idea and it keeps them involved in the parts of running a blog that is important for growth. This keeps you working on the areas where your blog needs it and makes your time pay off more.
• Keep a large queue of posts - While I know that some bloggers stay up late the night before a post is due, I cannot operate that way. In fact, I currently have a large queue for my primary blog (through the end of 2011) and a few weeks on my secondary blog. Keeping a large queue is important to me because it allows me to write when I am inspired, instead of under pressure to produce something. This also helps me keep the quality high, because I have lots of time to revise. It also ensures that if I get sick for a week, everything continues without any major hiccups.
• Be Satisfied with progress – Instead of pouring my life into my blogs in order to be a big name blogger, I am going to be satisfied with making enough to replace my day job. Considering that not very many bloggers make that much money, this will still be a feat in and of itself. You can fall into the danger of always trying to do more (and that isn’t the best mentality to take).

Overall, I’m sure there’s a lot more that could be done to ensure that blogging as my career remains enjoyable, but these three things will be a great start.

What other tips should I consider to keep it enjoyable?

The job I started this summer comes with a lot of perks. In addition to the standard insurance options that most jobs have, there are a few things that are unique. We have a fridge full of Red Bull, Tropicana orange juice, and Snapple. I also have my own office, which is more of a coincidence than anything else. There are three desks in the room and the other two are vacant (one person left the company the day before I started).

But the one perk that stands tall is half-day Fridays. Each week on Friday at 1pm, everyone packs up for the weekend and goes home. It’s definitely the perk that I appreciate most. It lets me start my weekend early and gives me half a day to do anything I want. I’ve used that time to run errands, and for those who run a side business, half a day a week makes a world of difference.

A typical day runs from 9am to 6pm, but based on the hours my friends work, this is totally reasonable as rarely do people work from 9-5 anyway. So while I’m still putting in my 40 hours a week, I think it’s an easy trade-off that most people would take.

Mike from The Financial Blogger works 4 days a week and it pays huge dividends as he has built a blogging empire as well as a budding advertising company with his spare time. When work gets in the way of a side business or vice versa, it creates a big problem. Two incomes are extremely valuable, and risking one for the other is not a good idea.

It’s really hard to put a value on the half-day Friday. It means I don’t have to take vacation if I am going out of town for a mini-vacation and it reduces the number of personal days I might have to take to run my business. I’d definitely rather have that time than another $5,000 in salary, but at what point would I be willing to work those extra 4 hours a week? $10,000? More?

I’m trying to think of a perk that rivals this one. Being able to work from home is another great one that saves the time it takes to commute each day plus lots of other costs depending on the family situation. Not needing another car could mean huge savings for a family.

Readers, is my perk the best ever? What great perk does your work offer?