If all your basic needs were met and you didn't have to work to get by, what would you do with your life?

Get high and scroll Lemmy, apparently

Work to solve problems. Not on a fixed schedule, but my choosing.
Also, long walks and visiting people I like.

Work on Free Open Source Software. Seriously, I fucking love software engineering and I can't really imagine doing anything else with my life. In fact, that's kinda my current plan - work towards financial independence and then work on things that matter to me, on my own terms. I really hope I won't get burned out somewhere in the process.
- Same here. I wanna study compsci, do some research into things I pick up as being interesting along the way, then work on FOSS for as much as I can (without burning myself out, or anything like that). The world doesn't appreciate FOSS enough, but it could very well be the future of computing, as our capitalistic society quickly gets fucked up :')

I'm a licensed electrician. I do construction for my job.
If I didn't need to work to support myself and my family, I'd offer my services as a licensed electrician to my community at-cost. I'd charge for materials, but not my own labor. Basically, just use the skills I have to support others in my community who could benefit from those skills.
But I also wouldn't work anything close to 40 hours/week.
- It's really satisfying. I've done this a few times, fixing someone's home when they couldn't otherwise afford it is one of the biggest ways to make an impact on someone.
  
  Done this in IT for folks, even back when I was charging for it. No one has the skills and knowledge to do everything in the modern world, and not everyone can pay a pro.
- Same here but fixing bikes, mowers, cars etc. I do a little when I can now, but finding the time isn’t trivial.
  
  but finding the time isn’t trivial
  Preach it! I work 40+ hours plus have a 3yo and 5yo. There's no such thing as free time except when I'm supposed to be sleeping.

I’d start with gardening, fishing, road tripping, camping, hiking, but I think that might eventually not be stimulating enough. I’d probably pickup a hobby that would enable artistic expression. Maybe pottery, or stained glass?

Get on my bike and see how far it could take me. And when I was done with that I would go build bike trails for my community.

Get a proper sleep.

Painting, drawing. General arts. Travel. Eating adventures. Fitness. Electronics and automation. Programming. Health focus.
And I'd make my point and click adventure game. Finally.
The dream

I would do nothing while also not stressing out about doing nothing.
- "Know what I did yesterday? Nothing. I did nothing. And it was everything I thought it would be."
- I think you wouldn't stress if you know you have no restriction on the free time.
  For me I stress that I want to maximise the use of out of my very limited free time and can't decide what I want to do, only to completely squander it.

Make music, write terrible sci-fi, and publish economics research (assuming we haven’t reached post-scarcity yet).
Basically I’d have time to actually dedicate myself to my hobbies.

All the things I do for fun and hobbies I would do a lot more. Which would likely be the following:
Exercise (running in the warm months and skiing in the cold)
TTRPGs (I might move from 1 day of the week into two, and assuming everyone else has the same deal play in-person instead of digitally)
Reading (books and more books)
But mostly I would work on living the permaculture / herbalism fantasy.
Do a lot more herbal formulation and
Maybe open the small apothecary to sell things at Art fairs and other makers markets.
Turn my urban yard into a full food forest to help grow some of my own food, and herbs. (I want to have an urban oasis of edible trees, bushes and other useful plants)
Volunteer more a local prairie restoration group that I have worked with in the past
Finally spend some time gorilla gardening on open lots and sides of alleyways around my neighborhood to spread the plant love.
- Damn, you really have a plan up your sleeve. Good for you!
  
  Well I have a long term plan to become a Slash worker. I want to be a day job / Herbalist. So have some ideas about how to the last part in a much slower timeline. Need to keep the day job but don't want it to be my only thing but its mostly talk at this point.

Travel, camp, travel. Play with dog

do you want a list?! I have adhd and 1.324 different hobbies and projects in different stages of completeness. If I had free time I would get 200 more hobies and start 200 more project without finishing the ones before lol

I'm a software engineer so I'd probably seek a way to use my skills in a way that benefits people, possibly something tied to volunteering work I already do. And also contribute to some open source project.
I'd try to maintain a somewhat regular working schedule but with fewer hours per day than I currently spend at my job. Maybe I'd travel and work from different places.

Harass minorities.
- only correct answer

Volunteer at various non-profits. I am (sadly) one of those people that "need" to work in some capacity in order to fill fulfilled. I also need structure, which I'm not very good at building for myself. I need to be held accountable (such as being expected to show up to work at a certain time), and work has always helped me do that.
I'm about to leave my current job with no back-up plan, and while my savings and partner will provide for me for the rest of the year, I'm kinda dreading not having structure. I'll probably volunteer somewhere.

I would work on open-source software and play games, which is what I already do, I'd just have more free time to do it.

I'd like to think I'd actually do all the art I'm too fucking stressed to sit down and focus on. Maybe make a video game or two.
My long term wish has always been to fuck off to somewhere not-too-warm and tropical, and write stories from a place where I can see the sea.

So many hobbies

Play video games. Bake bread. Learn to code. Create music. Maybe create a game of my own some day. Release it 100% for free because all my needs are met.
... oh, and sex. Lots of sex. But I think that goes without saying
- Weird tangent. For a busy bread lover, have you considered a bread maker? I still make loaves by hand time to time, but with a bread maker my place regularly smells like a lovely cottage and im eating delicious fluffy bread a few times a week. It's one of those purchases I didnt know I would love and I end up using so regularly. It really changed my life for the better.
  
  I had a bread maker and it drove me batty, it was like Schrodinger's bread box. Put ingredients in, and then no control over what happens. Maybe bread, maybe brick, no way to adjust it. I gave it to the neighbor because it was causing anxiety.
  Now, for quite a few years I do make sourdough.(long enough my high school age kids can't remember before I did) . That is bread making. A long runway to adjust the timing, and really at any point you can throw it in the fridge and go to work, start again when you have time. And plenty of opportunity to touch the dough to understand what it needs. Near 100% success with this, vs. about 60% with yeasted dough and bread maker.
  
  I haven't, but I could maybe see myself doing that

I'd love to keep working and volunteering. I'd still contribute to society and the social network that comes with it, but with none of the burden of having to earn money to survive.

House in the middle of the woods, with internet connection. It's the weird eremite techno wizard life for me.

You're describing retirement. And, boy have I spent a LOT of time thinking about what that looks like.
A lot of people have lists of things they'd do, see, learn, or be. I had one too, but it kept fucking changing depending on where I was in life and what my interests were.
Any list I had always felt restrictive. Here's where I ended up instead...
I would put my energy and attention only on the things that I want to put them on at any given time.
I guess some call that living in the moment, but I call it retirement.
- What is retirement? A time when you will have enough money to just exist in whatever way you desire? Sounds fake.
  
  Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
  Robert Browning

Work so that others can also have their needs met.

Ride my Motorcycle and brew beer. Then go work out. Hang with friends. Hike, swim, explore the world.

DM or GM tabletop games for groups

I'm terrified because I don't really have an answer.
- I think that's okay, because that just means your answer is something like "take some time to breathe and introspect about what I care about when I am given the space to care about stuff", or "try out a bunch of stuff I didn't have time or money for before, to see what seizes my passions".
  I mean, it's not okay — it's a fucking injustice that so many of us are deprived of the opportunity to explore what we would do if we were free to live as we chose, but it's okay in the sense that it's not your fault, in case that's what you were feeling

I have ADHD and my hobby is collecting hobbies. I don’t typically get bored. I would likely need to do some side gig to supplement buying things for new hobbies.

I think the saying “if more money wouldn’t change the way you live your life, then you’re already rich” applies to me pretty well. I don’t think my life would be all that different. Maybe I’d spend more time working on my own projects instead of customers’, but generally speaking, there’s nothing I’m not doing because of financial limitations.
My ultimate goal, though, would be to buy a small old farm with some land and spend the rest of my adult life working on that.

I'd work on cars. And my house. It feels like I'm fighting entropy, I fix one thing and find 2 more problems in the process. But I know some of that is just the previous home owner doing a bunch of diy.
Learn to wood work and build furniture. I have a deep, deep loathing for flat pack furniture.
Garden. I'd love to have a proper garden.
Honestly. I'd just like to be rid of my anxiety over finances.

That's my current situation after retiring a few years ago. I stay busy with personal software projects, running a weekly in-person D&D campaign and playing in others, cooking, 3d design and printing, Arduino/ESP and electronics, woodworking, reading, TV & movies, and random crafting and other stuff that comes up.

I would spend a lot of time tending my garden, growing rare produce to share with the community, and crafting.

Work out, do DIY at home, volunteer at my local cat shelter and dedicate more time to making music, gaming and general computer fiddlin'. If it was literally just basic needs with no cash maybe host some services for people on a small scale or teach about self hosting for money to afford luxuries.

Making music, and building guitars. That's all.

Pick up learning new languages and how to draw and make music. Create the things i think would be awesome but nobody else wants to and i cant because i dont have the money to learn efficently the skills required. Live in a nice little house in the woods with someone who loves me for who i am. Eat healthy and exercise.

This depends. But based on how much I have, one of these:
Open a small bar/tapas place in my neighborhood.
Travel
Do what I do when not working - garden, read, exercise, take care of the land & the animals, go see live music.

Art and music.
Science research.

Judging by what I've seen lately: crime and opression to maintain my status because I only understand the world through the lenses of artficial scarcity and zero sum game theory.

Someone asked me this question recently and I had a minor existential crisis.

Create art. Writing screenplays and books. Painting, gardening, working out, traveling, seeing live music, volunteer with whatever great organization I happen to be into at the time. Spend more time in my community. Have children.

I achieved this 2 years ago. I spend my time rock climbing, travelling to rock climbing, hanging with friends, lifting, running, tackling little diy projects, working part time in a fun job to get some extra spending money, and trying to sleep with as many hot women as possible.
This is a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it.
- Does Lemmy have a FI/RE community?
  
  I haven't seen one...?
  Edit: Yes, but it seems dead.
  https://lemmy.world/c/fire

Nothing.

Work on myself for a good long while, then live a quiet happy life with some cats and, should i be so lucky, a partner i have mutual love and respect with.
See how deep the ADHD-hobby-collection rabbit hole can go 😁

Be a librarian. I always felt like being a custodian to knowledge was a noble pursuit, and I respect librarians alot for it. I never went into the field myself because I couldn't afford the schooling just to get a job that in my area, doesn’t pay very well. If pay wasn't a problem? Hoo boy!
- That sounds fun, might do that part time in this scenario while getting through the backlog of media that's piled up over the years.
- Apparently it requires a masters!
- I parttimed it as a teenager and in my early 20. It was really great and I enjoyed it a lot, but it's not a fulltime carreer if you don't have a degree in it.

Continue to work for extra shit probably. Sure basic needs are met, but I don't think basic needs count for computer parts, drones, supplies for home improvements. My life would be easier on bills but would still need funds for projects and hobbies.

Would finally make my dream game.

Chill on the couch. Watch Youtube. Go for bike rides. Learn the ukulele and go busking for fun. Do papercraft. I was able to do this for about 5 years, and then I had to go back to work, just as I was really getting my creative juices going.

2 chicks at the same time
- ...and I thought I'm the only man with dreams.

Define basic needs.
Is that just food water shelter utilities Healthcare clothing?
Does it include entertainment?
Travel?
- I would say: food, clothing, shelter, healthcare
  Entertainment isn't a basic need.
  
  I beg to differ. Entertainment is very much absolutely necessary for having a healthy mind.

Read, learn, create, and explore.

I'd love to go back to school, not for better grades, but purely for learning. There are some interesting af fields out there!

You know that guy that makes videos about how to live with Neolithic technology? That.
- "Primitive Technology." My favorite YouTube channel. This guy invented an entirely new video genre that has been heavily copied, but he is still the best by far. I could spend all day just watching him start fires by rolling a stick between his palms.
  
  That's the one. Truly the goat.

Gardening, fishing, skiing, hunting, making furniture, building boats, long road trips with the family.
Basically typical retirement shit.

make art
- and garden. make art and garden.
  
  So many garden projects indoor and outdoor I want to do.. never find the time.
  
  I loathe gardening. But i'll gladly build you your gardening stuff! Teamwork, yeah!

I would make handcrafted furniture, work on my garden, and contribute to open source software that supports both farming and woodcrafts.