I want to give you a perspective.
If I say that your most important choice is how you spend your time, how does it sound to you?
If I say it is more important how you spend your time than how you spend your money?
Why would I even say things like that?
Well, here’s the thing.
When I write this, I am at the age of 40 and in a few month I will turn 41. I can not change any of my choices I have made in the past, nor how I have spent my time.
A swedish man is expected to live to the age of 81. This means I roughly have 40 years to go.
40 years is a lot of time, isn’t it? Well yes, it is, and no, it is not.
In Sweden, where I live, we are currently expected to work until the age of 65. This mean that I have about 24 years to keep working. And provided that I do not make any changes in my life (which I most likely will) I will spend the time of my next 24 years like this:
- During each and every year of my coming 21 years I have 365 days with 24 hours to spend. Gives me 8760 hours per year (not taking leap years into account).
- On average I spend 8 hours a night sleeping. Gives me 2920 hours of sleep in a year and 5840 hours remaining to other things.
- On average I work 253 days a year, and my work day is about 1 hour commuting to work, working 8 hours + 1 hour lunch, and then 1 hour commuting back home. Gives me a total of 11 hours per working day, which is 2783 hours in total. Now only remaining 3057 hours per year to spend freely.
- I spend about 2 hours preparing meals and eating per day, and about 2 hours a week to go grocery shopping. This gives me 730 hours preparing meals and eating and 104 hours grocery shopping, and 2225 hours remaining.
- I spend about 4 hours a week on cleaning and laundry. This gives me 208 hours and 2017 hours remaining.
- These 2017 hours per year until I turn 65 (a total of 42357 hours) I choose how I spend, exercising, meeting people, creating memories, getting experiences, transporting to and from events, entertaining, spending time in nature, reading books, watching movies, watching TV, listen to music, listen to podcast or radio. How much is 2017 hours? Well, a movie is between 2-2,5 hours on average. So it is 1000 movies a year, which is about three movies a day. And 2017 hours spread evenly on each day is about 5,5 hours a day, which of course varies between a workday and a day off.
After I turn 65 the running the same numbers without work I get 4800 hours per year instead of 2017. A total of 76800 between 65 and 81. This gives me a total of 119157 hours in my expected lifespan to 81 years old to spend. And after writing this only 119156 remains. 🙂
Not to scare you in anyway, only trying to give you perspective. And I am sure the same calculations for you will get a different result.