Sunday, July 18, 2010

So many hours in a day

A couple weeks ago I thought

"I spent 40 hours a week at work! Plus a one hour lunch every day. And an hour(ish) to get ready in the morning. And I only sleept 7ish hours a night. Plus I spent probably an hour a day on facebook. How much time does that leave me? Certainly not enough time to do all the things I wish I could get accomplished. I should look into that. I should start a spreadsheet and figure that out. Maybe that would motivate me somehow."

Well, I figured it out.

Color me disappointed.

A week has 168 hours in it. (24 hrs a day x 7)
I spent 40 hours a week working.
I spend about 35 hours during the weekdays sleeping.
I spent 7 hours getting ready.
and 7 hours of lunch time
Average 5 hrs during the weekdays on facebook
9 hours a week watching tv shows
2 hours a week watching a movie
2 hours volunteering to meet up with a student.
4 hours spent with my parents
3 hours, totally made up averaged number, a week in the bathroom
3 hours a week driving around to various places and things
Plus I figured about 16 hours of sleeping over the weekends.

This leaves me with 35 hours a week of free time.

That is 5 hours a day. Averaged.

Obviously the numbers are skewed. The weekends screw it up. I can't work 8 hours a day, sleep 7 hours a night, get a 1 hour lunch, take an hour getting ready in the morning, spent a half hour driving around, an hour on facebook and an hour to an hour and a half watching tv and STILL have 5 hours a night to accomplish other goals.

Stupid weekends.

So, let's take the weekends out entirely.

But when I do that I realize I screwed up my original math. Leaving me with even more time than I thought. We're not gonna go there.

If I take out the weekends. I am left with 16 hours of time and an average of 2.5 hours a day. But, wait, I just realized I didn't account for the blogs I read. Maybe an hour a day. So that leaves me with an hour and a half a day to "accomplish" something.

Like working out.
Or cooking well for myself.
Or writing
Or building my side business.
Cultivating my friendships
Fighting depression
Or taking pictures
Or figuring out how to make money off the pictures
Or figuring out how to make $1k a month freelancing something I do well.
Or paying bills
Or figuring out how to save some frickin money already
Or doing dishes
Or cleaning my place
Or grocery shopping
Or any other shopping

Or the nearly nonsense things
like turning the theater downtown into a dollar theater
like volunteering with a senior center or nursing home in town
like babysitting for friends who need/want a night out
like buying or starting any number of random business ventures I've considered over the years.

And an hour and a half just doesn't seem like enough.

When you factor in all those hours on a weekend I spend sleeping in and watching TV shows on DVD.

Not exercising.
Not cleaning.
Not doing the dishes.
Not cleaning the apartment.
Not building a business.
Not writing. anything.
Not learning something.
Not cooking.
Not cultivating my relationships.

It makes me feel a little like a loser.
Like what is wrong with me that I would rather sit here watching 3 episodes of Bones, or more, than getting outside and going for a short walk?
or doing my dishes?
or working on the short story I started a couple weeks ago?
or the novel I started last year?
or the short story that needs revising?
or the script that I started in April that I still think would be VERY funny!
or cleaning?
or reading?
or whatever else might actually show some worthwhile fruit in my life?

Clearly you reap what you sow. And for the last few years ...

my seeds have sucked.

3 comments:

  1. I know what you mean. I don't know how many times I come home from work with lots of time to get stuff done and suddenly it's an hour later than I wanted to be in bed and I've accomplished nothing. I use a kitchen timer with my middle schoolers. Maybe I need to use that on myself - set a timer for how long I can be online and then when it goes off it's time to go run. Or set a timer for how long I'm going to clean before I get to quit and watch TV. I'm not too proud to treat myself like a special needs middle schooler.

    Good for you for taking a look at your time and ways that you want to be using it. Sounds like a great first step. Be sure to let us know how it goes for you, sowing more productive seeds. It might help keep me on track.

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  2. Hey you! Spend some of that extra time with us this weekend! The girls and I will be at the fair Friday evening (do you have Bible study?) and I am playing cello at a couple nursing homes here in town on Saturday, and we are having H2H on Sunday. Let me know. Miss you! Kathy

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  3. Great post! (Blogging counts as writing!) I think I'll take an inventory too. Miss you! ~Sarah

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