Wasting Away our Lives

Economics is the study of distributing scarce resources.  If there truly were no scarce resources, there would be no need for supply and demand as the supply would always be infinite. In some aspects we have the ability to produce, create, or design infinite amount of, well, anything.  However, there is one such item in which we cannot reproduce.  The cliché riddle goes something like this: “I am something that you lose, but can never get back.”  The answer is, undoubtedly: time.

The impetus for this post comes from two sources: The New York Times and reflections from my own life.  Being a statistician and disliking a sample of one (my life), I will start with the New York Times (article referenced located here).  Laura Vanderkam spent a year logging her day in 30 minute intervals; then, she analyzed all of the data.  She found, that even though she lived an incredibly busy life, she found that her complaints of “lacking time” were truly unwarranted.  During her 8,784 hours that she logged, she found 232.75 went to exercising, 327 to reading (though she noted it was less than academic material), she worked around 37.4 hours per week and slept about 7.5 hours per night.  Suddenly, the time was not adding up.

Considering life broken into three parts: work, sleep, and “other,” Laura was dedicating 89 hours to the first two, left with nearly 79 hours left to “other.”  I have already listed reading and exercising as two “other” activities, but what else constitutes our day.  Surely there were chores, errands, and driving time.  But also, there was time with her kid, time on the beach, and times with friends.

In 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a study that estimated that people overestimated their work week by 5-10 percent.  Laura over estimated by between 20% and 33% (her low estimate was 45 hours per week and her high estimate was 50 hours per week; however, the average, as noted above, was only 37.4).

So where does our time go?  How do we squander it?

In my senior year of undergrad, I was the busiest I have ever been in my life.  I was taking 5 classes (two at the graduate level), the president of three campus organizations that totaled over 450 people with an operating budget of nearly $20,000 (that’s big for college) and I managed to have a social life.

Let me explain how I managed during one of the roughest weeks. One of my organizations was the Aruna 5k that helped raise money and awareness of the global sex slave trade, but specifically focusing on the sex trade of young girls in Mumbai, India.  With race day looming, I knew that there was still tons that could be done; thus, I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning as I chugged coffee, then I would top off a glass of wine or bottle of beer (or two) and allow the depressant to take the effect of the caffeine out of me.  This craziness lasted for five days leading up to the philanthropic event, and was followed by a 16 hour marathon of sleep.  Basically, I worked hard one week and called it quits.  But what about the stress of the rest of the weeks? What was I doing then? (It should be noted that my lack of sleep was due to marketing the race more and more and not due to laziness during the early planning stages.  The team that I worked with had the planning locked down, I just wanted more runners.)

As I remember the more academically focused period of graduate school, I remember plenty of basketball games, a couple dates here and there, a jazz fest in Detroit, multiple trips across the country including California, New York City, Chicago, and Cleveland.  I somehow made time for the Sunday New York Times every single week (even when traveling). I watched movies, had incredible friendships, plenty of great dinners out at restaurants and an hour or so of cooking to entertain guests. Thus, I find it hard to believe that I was truly busy.

So what the heck is going on? Are we truly busy?

One of my hypotheses is that we are able to maximize our schedules by lacking sleep, but I am going to touch on that in a subsequent post.  However, what I truly think is happening is that we pretend to be busy.  Maybe it is a psychological belief that busy equals successful.  Maybe it is the culture of speed in which we live.  I am unsure.  However, I do know that people waste time in all aspects of their life.

Time saving measures:

In my senior year of high school, my physics teacher informed us that he had deliberately bought clothing that would go with every other article of clothing; thus, each pair of pants, each shirt and each tie matched (he only had two pairs of shoes which would go with the correct color of pants, brown and black).  After inquiring upon why, he blatantly stated that by not picking his clothing to wear to work each day, he saved nearly 5 minutes a week, which accounts for over four hours a year.  Over a 60 year period, this one aspect would give him 10 additional days of life that he would have squandered by picking out clothes. Crazy?  Absolutely, but personally, I want 10 full days back (sadly, my work clothes don’t all match).

Let me give you another example: consider going to work; a large chunk of many people’s days is in meetings.  What the hell are we meeting about?  John Maxwell, a pivotal figure in leadership and workplace training believes that many meetings are unimportant.  Most of the time, meetings go in circles.  Individuals weren’t there last week; thus, they are behind.  Individuals are late.  Details are rushed.  New thoughts are deliberated.  Jargon is different.  Meetings are truly a waste of time, unless they are directed and shrouded in the theme of brevity.  To encourage proper meeting culture, some have turned to “stand up meetings,” in which all participants stand to ensure a more rapid meeting (people are lazy and don’t like standing; thus, they meet for a shorter time). But there have been articles to say the point of a “stand-up” meeting is to somehow detract from simply bad leadership and frankly, “stand-up” meetings still waste time.

So, we waste our personal time and our work time.  Can we improve?

I don’t have the answer for you.  I wish I did.  However, I will be picking up a journal and begin rigorously documenting my time in 30 minute intervals (including work), to help optimize my schedule and get the most of the day.  I will report back in a week or two regarding my results. One thing that will help me is that, in a way, I already do this.  I hate my squandering of time on my computer (and frankly, the screen is killing my eyes as I now wear glasses); thus, I have installed RescueTime on my computer, which tracks every second I use my phone or computer and sends me a weekly report.  Since such an inception, I have drastically reduced social media time, which saves me around 2.5 hours per week.  What do I fill the extra time with? I am honestly a bit scared of this self-study.  Maybe I am squandering more of my life than I thought.

I challenge everyone to see what they are truly doing with their time.  Are you a time waster or optimizer?  Life is short; don’t squander the seconds.