I’ve been reading The Childfree Guide to Life and Money. Great book so far. It mentioned you spend 1/3 of your day at work. Others, not me, because I’m FIREd.

I was thinking this should be more like HALF your week-LIFE is consumed by work stuff.

I decided to do my own calculation on the time percentage by day that work takes up.

Let’s start with the position that health-forward people target: 7-8 hours of SLEEP.  This amount of sleep often requires additional time in bed to get that much life-enhancing “sleep.”  I’ll say 9 hours in bed for me (10p-7a).  That leaves 15 hours in a normal weekday.

If my normal-folk math is correct, that leaves us awake from 7a-10p.

BAM!  The alarm goes off at 7a for a morning rush hour of showering, dressing, fooding, rushing, and commuting to be at work by 8a (if you have a short commute).  You then work until 5p and commute home, arriving around 6p for what is now “your time.”

Assuming you have no To Do activities or life things, you get–all to yourself(?)–from 6p to 10p.

How does the math work that from 7a-10p, you get FOUR hours to yourself out of 15 hours of awake time?  That doesn’t equal “half.”

Oh, let’s add in the 30 hours of the weekend awake time, plus 20 hours of evening, and we have 50 hours of the week for yourself.  I’m not counting the Sunday afternoon and evening time when you are thinking about having to go to work in the morning.  Nor the weekday evenings, you may stress over the following workday.

So, seven times 15 hours equals 105 hours awake each week.  50 of those hours are yours.  I guess I was wrong, the math works out to almost “half” of your week.  HALF of your waking life is set up for work.

I know what you’re thinking, “farmers work every day from sunrise to sunset and later on the business of the farm.”  Yes, you are correct.  I’m not capable of that, no way at all.

Stop wasting your time reading this post and go do things/something you love, something that makes your soul happy.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice. This post is not a piece of literary mastery, just a random thought I had.