It's Sunday night and I'm contemplating the upcoming work week. None of it really seems appealing right now. So, I thought about the overall ration of work versus leisure time in my life. Let's review.
If you are fortunate enough to have a highly-compensated professional position where you get four weeks off a year for vacation, ten paid holidays, and (more or less) ten sick days, that means that 60% of your waking life is non-work time. This assumes a nine and a half hour work day (which includes a lunch hour and an AVERAGE commute of 30 minutes, and a theoretically eight hours of sleep). On the flip side, that means that only 40% of your waking, not-ill, time is spent at the bigging of an employer. Why does it seem like more than half your life is spent working?
I am not sure that I have the definitive answer. However, I offer this. Maybe if you looked forward to your work time more than you do, than it wouldn't seem to take up more time than it actually does.
I know I need to work on that one myself.
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5 comments:
Your math is a little off. You are assuming that because you get 4 weeks of leave and 10 sick days, you actually take them. I get 4 weeks of leave, 12 sick days, and 2 floating holidays, in addition to all the main holidays that everyone else gets. And I take usually take 10-14 days off a year of all of those. Typically, if you are lucky enough to be a highly compensated employee, they pay you for a reason. And your job eats much more of your time than a standard 50 hour week.
Alas, I know the situation you speak of. It really is pretty common (I used to have that one myself). I guess I was trying to look at it from the best possible scenario. Right now, I work at an organization where most people have that 'best possible scenario' and they all seem to feel that work takes up the majority of their lives.
Maybe part of the perception has to do with constancy. The days off that we are gifted with are usually not evenly peppered throughout the year. Except for a week or two of planned vacation time, most of our non-work time is typically in those two day increments known as 'the weekend'.
As I've heard dozens of times from various sources, perception IS reality. For those lucky folks who really are only spending 60 hours per week dedicated to their work lives, those hours take precedent and regulate the rest of the 'real life' that you have on the fringes of your 'work life'. They are inescapable, if only in perception.
Not sure of the answer here either. However, my math does not match with yours.
If I figure 5 work days per week out of 52 weeks, there are roughly 260 work days. Subtracting out the vacation, sick, and holiday in your example gives 220 work days out of 365 or ~60%.
Since you are only counting 9.5 hours of work related time, 9.5/24 = 39.58% of those days accounts for work or 87 days.
Assuming 8 hours of sleep, we'll use roughly 1/3 of our days just sleeping, or 122.
That leaves 156 days of not working or sleeping, which is around 65%.
So, you have even more free time than you thought. ;-)
That said, you have a great many other things to deduct. How about the time getting ready for work? Cooking? Getting ready for bed? Cleaning the house? Maintaining the yard? Managing the finances?
Uplifting, no? With all of that, I think the only way to get through it is to look forward to as many things in your life as you can. Not just work.
It seems like when you work full time you spend more time with your co-workers than people you love. Plus you can't choose your co-workers like you can your loved ones. Fortunatly for me I absolutly love my job. Time flies all day and I'm surprised when the day is over. I wish everyone could have a job they loved.
Bri - Any way you slice it, it always feels like you spend way more time doing what you're supposed to do and almost no time doing what you want to do.
Summer - Most days I like my job. I'm a long way from loving it. It's a rare thing to be able to do something that you love. Congratulations!
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