You’ve heard it before: we all have the same 24 hours in a day. 1,440 minutes. 86,400 seconds. The difference is how we spend that time.
Of course, while it is technically true that we all have the same amount of time, not all of that time is our own—many of us work eight hours per day, five days per week, sometimes more. For many of us, other people control most of our waking hours.
It reminds me of a line in “It’s Tricky” by Run DMC:
“When I wake up people take up mostly all of my time.”
And there are big chunks of time that we don’t really have much control over. We all should be sleeping eight hours per night, for instance, whether we actually do that or not. So, right off the bat, 57% of our time is spoken for—40 hours for work and 56 hours for sleep. 96 of the 168 hours we have each week.
But there are other tasks that we all have to do that also take time:
- A daily shower
- Getting ready for work and getting ready for bed
- Eating
- Commuting
- Shopping for groceries
- Paying bills
- Washing clothes
- Cleaning house
You get the idea. There’s a lot to do, and it all eats away at the remaining 72 hours after accounting for work and sleep.
There’s no way to reduce the time spent on these tasks to zero, but there are big opportunities to save time in these areas and many others.