Value of Time

Per week, according to the numbers I'm finding so far, the average working adult American spends approximately:

• 41 hours working
• 56 hours sleeping
• 8 hours commuting/driving
• 10.5 hours buying, preparing, and eating food
• 28 hours watching television
• 6.5 hours getting ready for the day or getting ready for bed
• 4 hours per week doing household chores (remember, this is an average)

That's 154 hours.

There are 168 hours in a week.

So if you want more time than that, where do you shave it from? Eat faster? Sleep less? The glaring item on this list, to me, is the 1/6th of this average working American's life is spent watching television. Cut that to your absolute favorite shows, say... one hour a day worth of TV, and suddenly you have gone from 14 to 35 hours of your time freed up for other things in life (family, friends, exercise, church, reading, volunteering, etc).

An aside - it is amazing, actually, that with those numbers above we're still finding time as Americans to volunteer the number of hours we do each year to help others. The statistics on the amount of time and money we're giving each year give me a lot of hope when I'm looking around for reasons to.