I will work how much?!

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that you spend more than half of your adult waking life getting ready for work, commuting to work, and yes, working. People who work at a standard full-time job spend eight hours per day, five days per week, or 2,080 hours per year at work. If a person begins working at the age of 18 and works until they are 65 (47 years in total), that is 97,760 hours of work in a lifetime. In other words, 24 percent of your life is spent at work. According to a 2018 U.S. Census Bureau report, U.S. citizens’ one-way commute to work is 27.1 minutes (where do these people live?!?!), which is 54.2 minutes per day, 271 minutes week, 14,092 minutes/234.9 hours per year, which is 11,039 hours of commuting to work in a lifetime of work. If you are lucky enough to not suffer from insomnia and get eight hours of sleep every night, in this same span of 47 years you will sleep 136,864 hours, 33 percent of the time. This leaves 40 percent of your life remaining to do other things such as preparing meals, eating three times per day, exercising/self-care, personal hygiene, getting ready for work, shopping for groceries, running errands, going to the bathroom, doing housework, etc. Astonishing to think about it this way, isn’t it?

Because this is the way it goes and we have decided to be willing participants in our careers, work should at least be enjoyable, or not annoying, right? Do you enjoy your work, or at the very least not find your workplace annoying? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to that question, ask yourself what you do on a regular basis to increase the likelihood you will one day be able answer ‘yes’ to that question. Afterall, if you are 40 years old, you only have to commute 5,873 more hours to work where you will put in 52,000 more hours until your final shift with, so you better make the most of it or find a different path.