The Bureau of Labor and Statistics released a study this week on how American’s spend their time. This being Labor Day, I thought it was an interesting topic to explore. The website Retale created an informative info-graphic on the data.

http://www.retale.com/info/busy-states-of-america/.

 

Obviously, we spend a great deal of time sleeping. I just wonder how soundly. How are you doing in that department? I’ve been thinking about sleep because of the quote at the header of this post. It’s from the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes. I saw it the other day as I was driving home from a political event that I attended. I was tired and frustrated. I had spent two hours knocking on doors of people’s houses, asking to speak to them about how they’d like their state to serve their needs. Most people didn’t want to speak to me. You see, I was knocking on their door from 6:008:00 PM and, if you’ll notice I was probably interrupting some valuable time in their day.

• 20-30% of them were watching TV.
• 10-20% were “relaxing” or reading (although I don’t really know what “relaxing” means)
• 5% were “socializing”
• 5% were shopping
• 20% were cleaning the house, fixing dinner, and eating

And I was walking around their neighborhood trying to get them to spend a moment making their state a better place. How foolish am I?

As I drove home–hot, tired, and frustrated (it was a Tuesday night and I had been working all day, after all)–I saw the quote from Ecclesiastes on the marquee of a church. I thought to myself, “how nice. I will sleep well tonight.”

Now here’s the thing. If you look at the maroon section of this graph, you can see that the average American spends a great deal of time working. And I’m sure everyone is working very hard. The thing that I find appalling is how the rest of the graph is divided up. While it seems that we spend the majority of our time in noble pursuits like work, caring for loved ones, and maintaining a home; nearly 50% of this graph is made up of other, smaller categories like the ones I’ve listed above. Each of them on their own doesn’t seem like it’s taking up much time, but when you look at it all together (combine the greens, blues, and pinks) and you’ll see that the vast majority of our time is spent “doing other stuff.”

Of course, if you live in Houston, you should add another large chunk of time: sitting in traffic.

This is my point: I think American’s want America to be a greater place. I think all people want to be better than their current selves. But look at the line for “education.” At most, 4.5% of American’s are spending their time pursuing an education of any kind. That’s at less than 30 minutes a day. And yet, we spend nearly 3 hours of our day watching TV.

I don’t think we should all turn the television off for good and spend every waking moment being social activists, avid learners, and in meaningful conversation with others about how to make the world a better place. I just think some limits might be helpful. What if you committed to spending 2 hours a week improving yourself or your world (or both)? At first, you’ll find that, like me, you’ll be pretty lonely. Everyone else will be watching the football game while you’re taking a Spanish class. But this is how you change the world. You start doing something for yourself. Everyone around you will think you’re a little strange, but their quiet admiration will call into question how they spend their time. And then this graph gets flipped on its head, and suddenly your little corner of America is spending its time learning to ballroom dance, and speak Mandarin, and reading about the life of Winston Churchill, and participating in Town Hall Meetings. Heck, maybe someone will even run for City Council. And then the world IS a better place.

Two years ago, after a day of hard work, I would come home, pour a glass of wine, and turn on Bravo. That was it. That was the rest of my day. Or maybe I’d go out with some friends. I felt empty and unfulfilled. And, even though I was working incredibly hard, I felt restless when I slept. So I took a yoga class. And as I started to see the benefit in spending my “leisure” hours productively, I found myself wanting to learn as much as I could, from classes, books, and people. Learning is remarkably exponential that way. The more we do it, the more we want from it.

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”
― Winston Churchill

I firmly believe that the most voracious learners are the best teachers. When you passionately pursue knowledge, you can’t help but share it with the world. If our purpose on this earth is to leave it better than we found it and to leave a legacy for those who come after us–be it our families, our community, or our species–then we’d all better get to work.

Happy Labor Day everyone! Historically, today is a day when we recognize the work of organized labor (unions) in America. Grover Cleveland chose to set today aside to commemorate the thing that makes America great: hard working people working together to stand up for what they believe in. Labor Day isn’t about a day to rest. Labor Day is about celebrating how hard we work. So work hard! Not just in the time you spend earning a paycheck, but in the time you spend earning your place in history. Labor Day is about celebrating you, make sure you do something worth celebrating.