What would you do with 52 hours a week of discretionary time?
Make your time count.
Tim Urban has a good article describing how we have 100 10-minute "blocks" per day when we aren't sleeping. It's a great article, but I want to reframe it a little. I just filled out his graph for my weekdays:
So after a typical weekday I only have 30 blocks = 300 minutes left of discretionary time after completing the "essentials"[1]? Come on! Thankfully things look better on the weekend:
That's better! On weekends I get 83 blocks = 830 minutes left of discretionary time. Let's calculate the amount of discretionary time that I get per week:
5 * 300 + 2 * 830 = 3160 minutes = 52.66 hours
For sake of argument let's say 52 hours. That's a lot of time.
there's no way 52 discretionary hours/week is true
It's not unreasonable!
- 40 hours/week of either school or work is reasonable.
- 2 hours for meals per day (40 minutes each for 3 meals/day) is reasonable.
- A 50 minute weekday commute is reasonable.
- 50 minutes daily for self-care is reasonable.
"BUT NATHAN you actually forgot that I have to do 2 hours/day of extra stuff!!!! Like laundry/part-time-job/petcare/whatever."
Fine. Subtract 14 hours from 52 and you still get 38 hours.
If someone sat you down and said "ok this week you get to spend 52 (38) hours on whatever you want to do", what would you do?
how to spend your time
I'm not a huge hustler. I'm not necessarily advocating that you spend your 52 hours/week building a startup or working an extra job. But I'm also an advocate for not being super lazy and sitting around and watching TikTok/YouTube all day.
I guess my point is to be intentional with how you spend your time, and to realize you actually have a surprising amount of it, once you account for all the essentials. What percentage of your discretionary time do you want to spend on...
- hanging out with friends
- bettering yourself
- outdoor activities
- volunteering
- creative expression (art, writing, etc.)
- entertainment
You choose—seriously. Not trying to guilt-trip you into anything.[2] But I will be damned if I go through my life spending 10 of my discretionary hours/week watching Instagram Reels and then my gravestone says:
"Nathan was a kind, loving soul. His greatest achievement was watching 7,000,000 Instagram Reels."
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