I compared my own hours to the ones in the article. I end up with 40 spare hours a week. That feels correct: I have a lot of spare time.
I work 40 hours a week (arrive at 9, leave at 6, with 1 hour for cooking/eating). I am married and it seems that my wife and I evenly split the work between cooking (me) and cleaning (mostly her). We buy groceries together every second day and take about 30 minutes to do so. I spend absolutely no time managing my bills as they are automated and nobody has credit card debt in Europe. I have very few errands. I bike to work for a grand total of 1.7 hours a week which I count as fitness. I go to the gym 3 times a week for a total of about 4.5 hours. We have no children and that is a life decision. I don't spend more than an hour each day grooming/dressing, nor does my wife, what is the author doing? Yes, I sleep 8 hours a day and spend about 10.5 hours eating.
Now, where does the difference come? Well if I worked 60 hours a week I would lose half of my free time, but overworking is really silly. The difference in commute alone gives me nearly an hour a day of extra time to myself compared to the author. Also, if you can enjoy cooking, that is time that is productively spent. So learn to enjoy cooking. You should be enjoying your meals too, so thinking of those hours as cost is a bit sad.
Hours in a weekday: 24
- Sleep: 7
- Work: 8
- Commute: 1
- Personal maintenance (grooming/eating/etc): 2
- Be a good dad: 2
- Put kids to bed: 1
- Household maintenance (dishes/laundry/etc): 1
What's left: 2 hours. If I spend 30 minutes exercising, that's 25% of my discretionary time every day. That feels pretty time-consuming, even though I do think it's worth it.
The numbers seemed very high to me so I created a list on my own and thought I'd share it (single, no kids, full time job).
1. Work: 40 hours
2. Cooking: 3 h (who the hell cooks three times a day?)
3. Laundry: 0.5 h (once a week)
4. Cleaning: 1 h (and I am very clean, I just avoid producing dirt)
5. Buying stuff: .5 h (I try to avoid buying too much stuff I don't really need)
6. Bills: 0 h (they a are paid automatically from my account)
7. Small errands: 1 h
8. Transport: 4 h (I ride my bicycle to work, so one could count that as exercise)
9. Staying healthy: 4 h (in addition to the bicycling to and from work)
10. Finances: 0 h (I have no idea how anyone can spend so much time on this. I just live by the simple rule: don't get into debt and move some of your income automatically on a saving account)
11. Taxes: 0 h (automated in Germany)
12. Responsibility for Yourself: 0 h (weird point)
13. Responsibility for your dependents: 0 h (I'm not responsible for anyone and visiting my family is fun)
14. Being sick: 0 h
15. One time errands: 2 h (I have to do some irregular stuff)
16. Long term planning: 1h (because I'm actively thinking about it at the moment)
1. Attire and Grooming: 3.5 h (half an hour every morning, 3 minutes in the evening)
2. Sleep: 49 h
3. Eating: 1.5 h (breakfast and lunch is included in work time)
Overall: 109 h
Free time: 49 h
I think it all comes down to priorities and you current life situation. But one can influence most of these things and you have to decide what is really important in your life. For me, it's free time.
I work around 55ish hours a week on average. I have a very short commute (<10 min walk) and I pay for services that reduce the amount of time I spend running errands (I use a cleaning service, I get my groceries delivered, etc.), so I probably have around the same amount or almost as much free time as the average person who works 40 hours a week.
Basic math. 168 hours in a week. -100 for work, -49 for sleeping 7 hours. That leaves 2.7h per day. Probably lose at least an hour of that for basic human body related activities and general inefficiency. So 1.7h for being a family man and hobbies per day? Plus time spent driving to and from said hobbies? Plus the hundred small things we don’t track? Yeah it’s BS
To add to that - 5.75h free time might seem like a decent amount (although you didn’t account for things like washing, cooking, shopping which eat up much of the remaining time) but much of that time is after work when I’m normally fried from ~12 hours working/commuting/doing chores, leaving me incapable of anything that’s even moderately mentally taxing
Almost certainly by choice. I've had a few jobs with terrible commutes (5-6 hours a day), which only leaves the weekend as free time. Losing most of one day to chores still leaves at least 16 hours a week of free time. I've also gone to school while working full-time, which leaves a similar schedule. And I've worked two jobs, which again leaves a similar schedule. I have a hard time picturing a single, childless person having only 4.5 hours of free time. What sort of obligatory schedule are you thinking of? Three jobs and a lot of commuting?
I guess if you take into account commute, cooking, cleaning and other household tasks and errands it seems possible to only have 4 hours of true free time.
I spend an hour a day getting in and out of bed (including feeding the cat etc), about two hours cooking/eating/cleaning the kitchen and then there is stuff like shopping, cleaning the rest of the apartment, and various other chores. I also try to get at least half an hour of exercise a day. On typical weekdays I have at best three hours of actual free time. Weekends are of course a little better.
Something's not adding up for me...even if you are working 10 hours a day, that means you are spending 5 hours commuting, exercising and eating? 1 hour commute each way, 2 hours exercise and 1 hour for eating?
Another 2 get taken for eating/commuting if you live close to work, let's say you spend another 1-2 per day taking care of your school-aged children, so now you're down to 20-30 hours a week. Let's say you spend another 5 of those doing social things, that's 15-25 hours a week. Subtract another 5 to deal with errands... 10-20. Some more of that will likely go towards your spouse.
That means you get something closer to 500-1000 hours a year. Perhaps you can get more if you carefully prune.
That's enough to do stuff, not enough to accomplish a second career.
Why impossible? I sleep about 6 hours a night (I can stay in bed longer than that, but I wake up after 6 max), work for about 8 hours, live near-ish the office or work remotely (call it 1 hour total commute, but since I can work remotely my average is lower), 30 minutes for lunch and 30 minutes to get ready before heading to work. That's only 16 hours total, leaving me with 8 more hours in the day. That's a lot of time if I'm not wasting it on HN like right now.
A good workout can be done in 30 minutes, though I prefer about 90 total (core/weights, rowing, running in the non-winter seasons, about 30 minutes of each). Dinner, about 30 minutes to cook and 30 minutes to eat, another 15 max to clean (mostly done while I'm cooking so really usually just 1 minute to put plates in the dishwasher). So that's 2.75, leaving me with 5.25 hours for spending time with my wife, wasting time on HN, reading, or working on side projects.
And that's just the weekdays. Weekends I get 9 hours back since I'm not commuting and working, though some of that goes to yard and house work so realistically call it 7 extra free hours as an average.
1) I don't work 10 hours every day, 8 hours twice a week at least. Like this I'm saving a couple hours every week to have some time off later. Year ago I was at -50 hours but now I'm at over +50 already. A small reserve is good. I never work overtime for money.
4 x 10 might be nice to have a longer weekend. Have to think about it since now 5 days are mostly spent working, exercising, eating and sleeping :)
2) Well that was an example day. Instead of the shopping it might be cleaning, cooking or other housework that takes half an hour to an hour. I shop two or three times a week. I also don't cook every day but cook for two or three days at a time.
I don't own a car, bike or skis because the maintenance would take time :)
3) I keep a rest day once a week and on weekends I might do two kinds of exercise in a day. Still 6-7 times a week is fine counting the occasional extra walk back from shop. That totals it to 6-10 hours a week on physical activity.
I don't spend any time going to exercise since all the equipment is either at work (gym, pool), at home (cross-trainer, weights) or I go running.
how much truly free time does one have on a work day?
Work, sleep, commute, eat, keep yourself fed, keep you and the house clean, maybe do some exercise and a bit of whatever out of the ordinary needs to be done (shopping for new shoes, fixing stuff in the house, doing the taxes).
Leaves maybe 4h and it's fair to have to rest 1 of it with some no-brain activity.
So 3h for family, romance, hobbies, learning non-job related stuff, politics, culture, reading, friends, side projects, building things, helping someone, etc...
Freelance developer, based in Europe. In my 30s, two kids and working from home.
I do work 4 days a week (+ 1 or 2 days a week working on my farm). Working from 8:30 till 4pm and having 1.5 hours break to cook for my familly and we eat together.
I guess my business hours looks short, but it consist of focused time only: no browsing web, no facebook, twitter or other social network, no calls and definitely no meetings.
Rest of my time is generaly spent with my family. I dont really do any exercise but I still manage to walk 10 a 15 kms a day + manual work on my farm.
I get 8h of sleep each day and work 40h a week. I commute 30m each way: 5h a week. Basic daily routines (grooming, dressing, cooking, eating) are 2h a day. I try to do at least 30m of exercise a day.
49.5hrs remain in my week.
Reduce that by another 39.55h. I have fewer than 1h30m available a day now.
I have not done any errands, have no food for the coming week, my clothes are dirty, and I have not seen or called any of my friends or family.
Imagine living that lifestyle for 1,046 days in a row.
(Truth be told, I'm positive sacrifices were made. Cut the exercise, order delivery, eat while playing, don't shower, etc)
I think it is safe to say that most of us have pretty busy schedules. The average American works 8 hours per day. If you are sleeping the suggested 7 - 8 hours a night that only leaves 8 additional hours a day to do what we please. In reality, a majority of that time is consumed with driving in the car, running errands, paying bills, and just trying to stay on top of our everyday lives.
I work 40 hours a week (arrive at 9, leave at 6, with 1 hour for cooking/eating). I am married and it seems that my wife and I evenly split the work between cooking (me) and cleaning (mostly her). We buy groceries together every second day and take about 30 minutes to do so. I spend absolutely no time managing my bills as they are automated and nobody has credit card debt in Europe. I have very few errands. I bike to work for a grand total of 1.7 hours a week which I count as fitness. I go to the gym 3 times a week for a total of about 4.5 hours. We have no children and that is a life decision. I don't spend more than an hour each day grooming/dressing, nor does my wife, what is the author doing? Yes, I sleep 8 hours a day and spend about 10.5 hours eating.
Now, where does the difference come? Well if I worked 60 hours a week I would lose half of my free time, but overworking is really silly. The difference in commute alone gives me nearly an hour a day of extra time to myself compared to the author. Also, if you can enjoy cooking, that is time that is productively spent. So learn to enjoy cooking. You should be enjoying your meals too, so thinking of those hours as cost is a bit sad.
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