"And remember, we all have the same 24 hours in the day!" - A very common closing statement from any entrepreneur, self-help guru, or motivational speaker giving a seminar. While that statement in itself is true, it glosses over the fact that peoples' current circumstance does dictate how many of those hours belong to them. So lets break it down.
With 24 hours in a day, that gives you 168 hours in a week. To stay healthy, we should sleep for an average 6-8 hours a night. Now there has been some study into polyphasic sleep cycles which lets you get by on 2 hours of sleep throughout the day in the form of short naps - but very few people follow polyphasic sleep cycles. So lets go with 7 hours as its in the middle. 7 hours a night for a week is 49 hours, leaving us with 119 hours.
We have basic human needs when it comes to hygiene. So around 90 minutes on average a day will disappear. Across a week, that's 10.5 hours - we'll round it up to 11 hours though to give ourselves a nice buffer. That leaves us with 108 hours.
We need to eat. We can't get by without food. Plenty of solutions have come and gone through the years of how to make things quicker and more convenient - but we're not at the point where a pill will feed us (yet.) So we need time to both prepare and eat. Three meals a day on average. Giving 30 minutes per meal, across 7 days gives us another 10.5 hours - we'll round it up again to give ourselves a bit of a buffer. That leaves us with 97 hours.
Even though Amazon wishes it could be in our subconscious and provide us what we need before we even consciously realise, that's not the case currently. So grocery shopping and shopping in general is still a thing. Even if you have your shopping delivered, the act of shopping still takes time. In general, you'll probably end up spending 3 hours a week shopping. That leaves us with 94 hours.
Unless you like living in a pigsty, wherever you live will need looking after too. Per week, you'll probably end up spending around 3 hours cleaning and tidying up - be it spread piece meal throughout the week, or all at once. Regardless, it is something that should really be done. That leaves us with 91 hours.
If you work a full time job to pay the bills and survive, you're generally on a 37.5 hours contract per week. For most people, there will also be a commute involved for their job too. Some studies were conducted into commute times and stated that people would be happy to commute for up to 45 minutes (source.) On a 37.5 hour contract, you'll generally be working 5 days a week, so at 90 minutes travel time daily for 5 days, we get 7.5 hours, yielding 45 hours a week dedicated to work. That leaves us with 46 hours.
In those 46 hours, if you have any other responsibilities (such as family), that needs to be taken into account. The distribution of those free hours isn't even throughout the week either - you will have more time free on the weekend, but less during the week. You also need to take into account some time to shut off and unwind. Burn out is a real thing - we can't be functioning at 100% day in, day out, without giving ourselves a chance to recuperate.
As each person's circumstances can differ, the above is a guide. Look at your own circumstances and work out how much time you really have available.
Instead of concentrating on sound bites that sound good, we should be concentrating on something constructive instead. For example, how do we balance the time we do actually have remaining, and what can we do with that time?
A book I enjoyed thoroughly reading recently (to the point where I sat and read it cover to cover without a break) was "The War Of Art" by Steven Pressfield (amazon link.) In "The War Of Art", Pressfield talks about treating your professional life and what you want to do and achieve like a company. This allows for some separation (you are not your work) but also can provide organisational benefits. Consider this. You work for a company; yourself inc. You are contracted to work for yourself for 55 hours a week, inclusive of any time you spend working to make money to pay the bills. In the above scenario, it leaves you 10 hours spare. All of a sudden, you have a set amount of time a week that you know you have to put the work in. However you decide to split the time is up to you - but you need to put in the hours of work, and you can't leave early (unless - like at work, an emergency comes up.)
When you have a defined amount of time, you know what is feasibly achievable within that time. All of a sudden, you begin to organise your work into manageable goals, setting yourself targets of what can do. You prepare the work in such a way that you can jump in and do what's required, but then jump out after to go back to whatever else is needed in your life. You have the ability to reflect on the work you're doing, but also the ability to plan for the work you need to do. Not only is there psychological benefits to this (small manageable chunks are easier to digest rather than a whole elephant), but there is a sense of progress too which can be managed.
You might just find that you get things done, regardless of how many hours YOU have in the day.
How many hours did you come up with a week that you have access to? What are you doing with that time? What are you working towards? I'm interested to hear in the comments section below.