I wonder if there is some kind of correct formula when it comes to splitting the hours in a day that are available amongst everything that you need to, or want to get done. There are after all, only 24 hours in a day, and with todays lifestyle of basically having access to almost anything you want, almost any time you want, means that this balancing act is getting more and more difficult with each passing year.
We know that certain hours are non-negotiable. A person needs to sleep. I get about five and a half hours of sleep on a week night, so that means I have 18.5 hours left (Work with me, I’m using a 24 hour wraparound day here). Unfortunately the reality is that we all must work, most of us 8 hours a day, leaving me with 10.5 available hours now. Throw in 2 hours of commuting (more or less) and that number gets whittled down to 8.5 hours. Of course, a person must shower, shave, brush teeth, dress, etc. so Ill say that part of life takes up probably about an hour of your time (obviously I’m doing a breakdown for men women need to allot way more time to this segment). So 7.5 hours remain. We need to eat breakfast and supper obviously, and if you don’t really cook then I can safely estimate around 0.5 hours spent on this enjoyable activity giving me a nice round number of 7 unused hours to play with.
Stepping away from the general and looking specifically at my life, I like to exercise at least once a day. So lets throw in a 1 of gym, which leaves me with 6 hours left. Now thats not a whole lot of time when you consider I’ve factored in no social interaction (outside of work) or any hobby time. I enjoy my hobbies (which nowadays consist mainly of game playing anyway) which tends to easily suck up and hour or two of your time if you arent paying much attention. And seeing as I try to squeeze a bit in every day, lets subtract 2 hours from the total giving me 4 hours left.
4 hours in which to spend on family and friends, leaving you to decide just how much youre going to spend on them when you still haven’t made provision for your partner! (And remember, theyre allocating a couple of hours to the whole look after yourself segment, meaning they have a limited time frame of availability anyway).
Hmm, tricky isnt it? So I guess this means that they can sometimes legitimately complain that you arent spending enough time with them after all ;)
Note: I think this breakdown also neatly explains why I never seem to have time to clean my flat properly either!