By: Benjamin Bielert
Every day, it ticks away. We waste more of it than we care to talk about. We spend an inordinate amount of it on jobs, on relationships, and in situations that don’t serve us. We have a finite amount, and although certain habits can increase it, they also often spend it. I’m talking about time.
Name me a commodity more precious than time, I’ll wait, but not for long. Any other thing in this universe, no matter how rare, can be bartered and bargained for. If I wanted chicken, for instance, I could go to the store and buy some chicken. If I wanted weapons-grade plutonium, it would be much harder to get than chicken, but for the right price, I could potentially buy it. Most goods are purchasable, transferrable, and even though perhaps rare, you can acquire them if so motivated and having enough resources. Curiously, in the entirety of the universe I can assure you that chicken is far rarer than plutonium. But whether we’re talking about, plutonium or chicken, both pale in comparison to the true value of time. You have an allotment which is non-transferrable, what you have is what you get.
The average human lifespan globally as of 2021 was 73.4 years. 68.9 years for men, and 73.9 years for women. Here in Canada, my country of residence and origin, the averages are a bit better, with 81.75 being the average overall, 80.6 years for men, and 84.7 years for women. To put this in another light, for a man in Canada such as myself, I only get about 29,420 days. Sadly, I’ve already spent about half of those.
But that’s still a lot of time, right? Well, it is, and it isn’t. We have certain things in our lives that eat up the limited store of time we have, and it is eaten up by many things we have no control over.
Sleep accounts for 227,760 hours of our lives on average, or in another light, 9460 days, or 26 years.
The average person spends 90,000 hours working throughout their life. That’s 3750 days solid of working, or over 10 years.
Eating and drinking are necessary, we can all agree. Unless, of course, you want to decrease your lifespan drastically. 67 minutes daily over the course of a life, that’s a lot of time. For myself, with the supposed 29,420 days that I have to live, I will spend 32,850 hours eating and drinking. That is 1369 days, or 3.75 years give or take.
So far, we’ve just been talking about the most basic necessities of life, and we have already spent about half of it.
But we’re not done with necessary time sinks yet. Chores, cooking, general household tasks and maintenance? The women edge out the men here, which is unfair, but again remember that you ladies do get to live for an extra 4-5 years. On average, in a lifetime, a man can expect to spend about 1990 days on these sorts of tasks, and for women it’s 2670. That’s about 5.5 years for the men and around 7.3 for women. That’s a lot of lost time to make sure the dishes are done, the garbage is out, and the walk is shoveled.
Are you a parent? I am. How much time daily do you spend with your kids? Well, the numbers vary greatly, and women spend on average twice as much, but let’s not get into that debacle right now. We can save that topic for another post. The average man spends about 6.5 hours on childcare per child per week, and the average mom about 12. This should be noted that here we are talking about primary care, not just time spent around the kids. This is focused time spent on child-rearing and what we may consider “quality time”. In that case, I would spend 338 hours a year with my kid. Of course, these numbers are going to dramatically decrease once he’s out on his own in the world, so let’s just say for those first 18 years we’ll tally it up. In that case, we are looking at 6084 hours, or 253 days. For my wife, by contrast, it’s closer to 468 days. Really, these numbers come out relatively low; however, these numbers are based on having one child, have more kids and you’ll spend more time.
This leads me to my next thought. We could look at the previous example as a use of time, or even a waste of time, or we could view it as a choice in how to spend this precious and limited resource. For many of us, having children is an important part of our overall life goals, and for others, it is not a priority or a desire. For some parents, we could look at these numbers and think they are startlingly low, and for others, they might be imagining already how they could reduce them. It all comes down to a matter of priorities and what matters to the individual. We could look at other uses of our time such as playing video games, being on our phones, watching TV, or engaging in a hobby as wastes of time, or they could be viewed as much-needed escapism and downtime. That’s the beauty of time and how we spend it. Aside from those necessary uses, much of how we spend it is up to us, or so it should be. I’m here to tell you that there is no objectively right or wrong answer here. Throw away your preconceived notions of what makes a good use of time or a bad use.
Many people would like to tell you that there are more virtuous uses of our time, and perhaps we could make an argument for that. What I am going to argue is that ultimately it comes down to the satisfaction the user gets both long term and short term that determines how they should spend their time. For the most part, the idea that some uses of time have inherently more value is bullshit made up to get you to sell your time. We’ve already established the value of time, so of course those who can get you to spend it on what they want you to are at a tremendous advantage. Placing a value judgment on how we choose to or have to spend our time is intrinsically elitist and part of a larger ploy to get the general populace to spend their time on what those in power would have us spend it on and not what we would desire to. Ultimately, I think that we all have a choice on how to use our free days, and we should exercise that power regularly.
There’s nothing saying that reading the works of Shakespeare is any more laudable than watching a sitcom, other than value judgments we place place on that use of time. We tend to venerate things that would be more challenging for a wider cross-section of people, and so as a society we often place a higher value on activities we perceive as requiring more discipline, and there is some value to these things. Long-term gratification and short-term is always a balancing act, but I think its important when picking things to dedicate ourselves and our time to that we pick things we value, and not things that we are told to value. I mean really think about it, isn’t it all kind of messed up? We literally aren’t even free to spend our time as we choose when we’re free to spend our time. We constantly impose these imaginary requirements on our time and behaviour so that we can fit into a socially accepted paradigm. It’s like people who pretend like they love caviar, or dark chocolate. You enjoy your salty ass fish tapioca and dirt, if it’s really what you love, but I think that most of these people are full of shit and just want to seem deep. Same with how many people spend their time, there are really other things you would rather be doing, but for whatever reason you feel bound and like you can’t. It’s madness.
We’re all a little worried about what others are going to think and it keeps us in some sort of check. In today’s society so many people strive for acceptance and approval, and I’m no exception to this rule. I think though, through being aware of this bias we can be truer to our own desires and less influenced by societal pressures. For instance, if I eat a bag of chips, nobody is going to praise me for that. But if I go for a run, likewise most people won’t give a shit, but the odds that someone will say “good for you” are much higher. Here, one of these things is perceived as bad for my health and the other as good, so we often place a higher value judgement on one over the other based on that. With that said, if both bring me enjoyment, then what does it matter? And the pathology of one over the other is actually a matter of context. If I am drastically underweight, the potato chips may be better for my health than a run, if I’m some sort of exercise nut and have ran three ultramarathons in the last few days then maybe running is actually a detriment. In reality, I know that a run would be better than potato chips in my personal case.
To give another example, if I learn a new language then that’s amazing, but if I build a wicked farm on Stardew Valley then that’s meh. It’s just pleasure seeking and we as a society tend to look down on that, and for somewhat of a good reason. Hedonism isn’t really something to aspire to, but there is a value to allowing yourself some pleasure and enjoyment, and ultimately it should be your choice what you do and what you prioritize. Most people would think of the language learning as more admirable not just because of the challenge, but because it could more easily translate into the opportunity to increase my earning potential. Time spent engaging in activities that aren’t directly earning is often thought of as a “waste of time”. This is where things like Twitch streaming are wonderful because they turn these notions on their head and show that unconventional means can be complete game changers. Unfortunately, this only accentuates the point I’m making. We’ve taken a pleasurable and potentially stress-reducing activity and managed to turn it into a money-making venture with Twitch streaming, and only then do the majority of people see it as a worthwhile activity because now it has value and isn’t just “idling”.
If we can’t commodify our time, then it’s time wasted. If we can’t sell it, then we better be saving money by using it wisely, or improving our health and thus giving us more time, or if we aren’t selling our time , saving money with our time, extending our time with our time, then it better be laying down prospects to earn from our time in the future, or building relationships. Really, as a society, we have forgotten how to simply take our time. This has resulted in a lack of presence, in a decrease in quality, and in weaker connections. Time is ours; we should be able to claim it and not have to justify that claim.
It’s not even completely in our control anymore when we do have it. In this modern age we live in, our attention has value. This isn’t entirely new; advertisers have paid good money to capture our attention for brief snatches of time for years. However, in the past those who commercialized our attention spans wanted brief captures at regular intervals, now they want it all the time and for as long as they can hold it for. This is actually killing our attention spans. Think of the multitude of algorithms built into much of our social media and many of the platforms we use today that are designed to capture your interest and keep it, often by presenting short, easily digestible snippets one after another. Like spoon feeding us bites of dessert. These tasty little bites get our brains to release all the happy chemicals, but lack any real substance. Shinier and shinier distractions are designed and so we have found ourselves caught in an arms race for our awareness.
This leads me to some of my final points. I’m not going to tell you exactly how to spend your time because truly, and I want you to remember this, it’s your time. Don’t devalue it, don’t spend it doing things you don’t want to do because somebody else tells you to. Find things that are meaningful to you, and if that goes against societal norms so long as it isn’t smoking crack or murdering puppies, then do it. A lot of the world now is geared towards us trying to impress one another with how we use our time. Much of humanity admires the grind, but we as a species are grinding and grinding and we’ve built a machine that continues to get away from us. We keep working but have forgotten what we are working for. I know, we want security, we want to leave a legacy, we want to set an example, and are all admirable things. But when we work 90,000 hours over a lifetime and spend 6,000 with our kids, maybe something is wrong.
We live in an age where the very real possibility exists that our lives may be extended as medicine advances. Without a doubt, these numbers are trending upward, but even still it seems we’ve hit a sort of ceiling that won’t be overcome without the implementation of techniques and procedures generally relegated to science fiction: gene therapies, replacement of organs with artificial or lab-generated substitutes, stem cell therapy. For a myriad of reasons, largely cultural, societal, and political we have avoided implementing many of these advancements. I fear that when they do become available, they will for the most part be prohibitively expensive. This means that only the extremely wealthy will have access which will further divide the classes and increase the power disparity that is already prevalent in our society. This is just one of the dilemmas we face with implementing these time-extending measures. Further, as nice as they would be, we can’t count on them. For all intents and purposes, you know about how many years you can count on.
So don’t wait. Don’t treat your happiness and your interests and your life like it’s something you can put on hold. Don’t think that you will get the time you need to do the things you truly desire down the road. Just like you can’t save up the 26 years of sleeping you need to do and pay them all at once, don’t save up the few scant years you might spend on your true passions and try to spend them at the end. Weave these things into you life, make it a part of today. Reach out right now and claim some time for yourself. Do whatever it is you really want to do, and don’t feel shame about it, don’t explain it, and don’t post it.
Don’t delay, you’re running out of time.
Bloody Well Write 