14 Dec How We Spend Our Hours
There’s a parable I once heard about three fish. It goes something like this:
There are two young fish happily swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way. The older fish says, “Hello! How is the water today?” The two young fish look confused. Then one asks, “What in the world is ‘water?’”
The message is that sometimes the most obvious realities of our lives are invisible to us – hidden in plain sight, like water is to fish.
I thought of this story when I stumbled upon a graphic showing data from the American Time Use Survey, breaking down who we spend our time with over the course of our lives.
We have a sense of how we spend our time with others – we know the hours we go to work, the holidays we might spend with family, the summer breaks with our children home, the weekends we recharge with time alone or with friends. But how does that time change as we move through our lives? These data from the American Time Use Survey offer some insights on how we may spend our time over the course of a lifetime:
Sahil Bloom offered a beautiful interpretation of these data, summarized here:
- Time spent with our parents, siblings and family usually peaks in childhood and declines sharply after age 20.
- Time spent with friends peaks at age 18 and then declines sharply.
- Time with our significant other trends up until death.
- Time with our children tends to peak in our 30s and decline sharply thereafter.
- Time at work and with coworkers is significant during our working years of 20-60.
- Time spent alone increases steadily throughout our lives.
So what are the takeaways?
- Cherish time with parents and family.
- Prioritize meaningful friendships.
- Be present for the brief time with your children.
- Find a significant other you really like to be around.
- Choose work and coworkers that energize you.
- Love yourself.
Like water surrounding the young fish, the realities of how we spend our time and the people who matter most are often hidden in plain sight as we go through our days.
I can’t stop thinking about this graph – recognizing the reality of precious time with my loved ones, the short years with my children, the value of deep and meaningful friendships, the importance of investing in my marriage and learning to embrace time to myself. There’s something helpful about developing an awareness of and appreciation for how we spend the hours that blur into days that make up years that, in the end, determine how we spend our lives.
It’s the kind of data that can stay with you for a lifetime.