The Hours of the Week

Recently, in my Organizational Behavior class, the students and I discussed the mysterious nature of time. (Cory, our lone reader at this point, should disregrd this entry, as he's already heard what I'm about to say. Sorry, Cory, check back tomorrow.) We basically broke down the hours in a typical week according to major time-consuming activities. The results are quite surprising.

For instance, let's say that you worked one full-time job (40 hours), went to school full-time (40 hours; the equivalent of another full-time job, in a teacher's world anyway) and got an unrealistic 8 hours of sleep every night. How much time would you have left over? Obviously, someone who holds down two full-time jobs and gets 8 hours of sleep per night shouldn't have time to breathe, let alone alone kick back and watch a movie or read a book every now and then. But take a look at the following breakdown...

Total hours in a week............168 hours

MINUS

Full-Time Job #1...................40 hours
Full-Time Job #2...................40 hours
8 Hours Sleep Per Night.......56 hours


Hours left over......................32 hours!!!

The question is, what do we do with all of this left over time? One of my students said, "We do the small stuff, like walking and talking." And that's a great point, but keep in mind that a lot of this small stuff is already factored into the full-time jobs.

I take 2 lessons away from this analysis: (1) Be careful to manage the "small things" well, as they are more responsible for draining your time than you might think and (2) quit complaining about how busy you are. Chances are you just don't manage the time you have efficiently enough. Join the club.