February 3, 2016

The Math of Life

Where I live, men live an average of 79 years and women 84. That translates to almost 29,000 days for guys and 30,600 for ladies. Those are averages so we may not even get that much time. Each year the US Board of Labor publishes how we spend our time and though some activities overlap, the numbers are quite startling.

Here's the number of days (24 hour periods) we spend on each activity throughout our lives;

Sleeping: 9,490 - Working: 4,132 - Housework: 1,950 - Online/Computer: 1,825
Eating: 1,583 - On the phone: 1,460 - Doing laundry: 963 - On smartphones: 882
Being sick: 366 - Watching TV: 264 - Waiting in line: 182 - Complaining: 152
Waiting on hold: 140 - Being romantic/intimate: 27

We spend about 100,000 hours in our lives at work yet only 648 hours being romantic. Is that a typo? Could it be? If so, that's sad. We spend almost seven times more time waiting in line, five times more time on hold, and six times more time complaining than finding time to be tender to the one person in our lives that means so much.

We work to make a living yet how much living are doing? 

We certainly seem to be good at slicing up our limited time doing a lot of busy stuff that won't amount to much as we take our final breaths.

So, as we look at the math of life,  how do we make time for the things we want to do around the stuff we need to do? We could put our phones down a few more times each day, create companies where collaboration is more important than meetings, stop complaining and give someone a hug, and save the laundry for later while we take our significant other out for date night.

In my opinion, we get caught up in what we want while missing what we can have if we want it. And if we pay closer attention each time, we might be able to complain and wait in line less while getting off our computers more often to enjoy life for a change.

Or we could always answer another email.
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