Comments on: How We Spend Our Time

By: Peter Coles

Peter Coles — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:47:39 +0000

Sean

It’s better if I think of Wales nowadays

Peter

By: Amos Zeeberg (Discover Web Editor)

Amos Zeeberg (Discover Web Editor) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:01:32 +0000

The break-out on travel says that only about a fifth of that time (16 minutes) is related to work, which seems pretty low to me. I guess people are going to Paris, after all. (Not really, I know, but it’s nice to imagine.)

Spiv’s comment about being an outlier makes me think: Isn’t practically everyone an outlier in this data set? Everyone with a regular job works way too much, retired people work way too little and golf way too much, babies spend way too much time chewing on non-food items (how’s that categorized — personal time?), the blog-writing and -reading crowd watches way too little TV and uses way too much Internet, etc.

I’d like to see an average day lived by this average person. Bet Michel Gondry could make it into a great music video. Done in a single take, of course.

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:48:05 +0000

Think of England.

By: Peter Coles

Peter Coles — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:31:28 +0000

54 seconds for sex? How do you make it last that long?

By: Tristram Brelstaff

Tristram Brelstaff — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:29:14 +0000

That is an awesome graphic.

By: Spiv

Spiv — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:46:10 +0000

Whew, I’m a big outlier in this (probably like most of your readers). 8-10 hours of work a day, hour and a half of commuting, couple hours of leisure (bicycling, working on car, building rocket engines, whatevs). Socializing is part of the leisure time, generally, or meal time. Probably not good.

This one got me though: “While only about 5 percent of people have trouble falling asleep, those who do are lying awake for 70 minutes, on average.”

I’m one of those pooching that average. Usually takes 2-4 hours to nod off, get a solid 5 hours a night. Invest about 8 hours in the sleep thing, but I definitely don’t get it. Stupid 5%.

By: Oded

Oded — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:24:42 +0000

How is work 3.5 hours a day?? Shouldn’t it be the massive part, like 9 hours a day? Even if you multiply it by 5/7 because of 5 workdays a week, it should be way more than 3.5 hours… That just sounds way off.

Edit: I just saw that it was mentioned in the post. I guess it could make sense with unemployed (That means there are quite a bit of unemployed folks..). Employed people use 5 hours a day working, *7/5 that comes out to 7 hours a workday working, and maybe plus 1 lunch hour, so yeah, I guess that could work…

By: Bjørn Østman

Bjørn Østman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:23:19 +0000

It’s interesting to see that time for eating almost exclusively cuts into working time.

Also, I wonder how they treated overlaps, such as eating while watching TV, or socializing while traveling.

And why are almost three hours missing?

By: NewEnglandBob

NewEnglandBob — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:56:09 +0000

These reported results are not even close to how I spend my time.

By: Jim Buck

Jim Buck — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:39:11 +0000

I think we need to leave a shuttle in orbit when they are decommissioned.

Since we will be dismantling our launch capabilities we will no longer be able to put one in orbit, should it become needed. A shuttle would be able to evacuate the Space Station and would offer flexibility in our orbital abilities. Astronauts could transfer to the station and the shuttle could then be remotely controlled to a holding orbit. Another shuttle could pick them up and return to earth.

Please let me know what you think and any information on how to let more people know about this idea.

Jim Buck
boisetech @ msn .com