What Americans Actually Do All Day Long

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/08/29/160244277/what-americans-actually-do-all-day-long-in-2-graphics

by hooande • 14 years ago

67 48 14 years ago

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

Clearly they take a weekly total and divide by 7. 7:48 of 'religious' time is just about 55minutes a week so I'm guessing an hour of church a week.

Would be interesting to do the multi-variable analysis across different factors like education, location, etc.

majormajor• 14 years ago

If these numbers were the result of dividing by 7, that would put the working/commuting number at 64 hours a week instead of 46.

40 minutes of non-weekend volunteering/religious activity sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I haven't seen the church part as much on the coast, but back in Texas there were a lot of people I knew who went to at least an hour's worth of in-week religious service.

slurgfest• 14 years ago

An hour is not very much, in some churches and some places outside of the US church can go on most of the day.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

I agree, with your observations, in California people might work 50 hrs a week and commute 15 hrs (90 minutes each way) Which is why it would be interesting to compare Texas vs Arkansas vs California vs Montana vs college degree vs no degree vs rich vs poor etc etc.

raygunomical• 14 years ago

But the article says:

> Here's how the average American with a full-time job spends a typical workday

It mentions "workday" specifically, so it probably doesn't include weekends.

Tyrannosaurs• 14 years ago

In which case 50 minutes a week becomes 10 minutes a day which doesn't strike me as unreasonable - a bit of prayer, bible reading, maybe a weekly group of some sort and you could see how they got to that number.

Plus I suspect this is one of the things people will over estimate (in the same way that they'll probably underestimate watching TV).

samstave2• 14 years ago

Get up

Check email on phone / check HN / check reddit

Shower/get baby ready

check email / check HN / check reddit

prep backpack, get things needed for work

bike to bart (music)

check HN / check reddit (music)

arrive at embarcaderro

go to starbucks - order "large hot water" {free} - insert teabag supplied by office (restock once a week) [mighty leaf green tea tropical]

walk to client site

work / email / work / HN / reddit / meetings / work / email / txt / call wife / eat / HN / reddit / etc

wrap up

walk to bart

email / HN / reddit

arrive to home station

bike home

family time

dinner

family time

work / HN / reddit

family time

email / HN / reddit

sleep

rinse/repeat

lukeholder• 14 years ago

this is me. HN /Reddit. i feel sad.

textminer2• 14 years ago

"The ride bike to BART then get off at Embarcadero" is what killed me. Here I thought I was a special East Bay flower.

Domenic_S• 14 years ago

I wish I could ride bart. East bay --> san jose is not a very fun commute.

Just what, 6 more years before the south bay bart lines are done?

alexfoo2• 14 years ago

Parenthood rocks.

Apart from the obvious point that it is mind-bogglingly fantastic in itself (far more rewarding than all of this computer stuff) it had a profound effect on my work life balance.

Gone are stupid hours at work; I changed my work hours to fit nursery drop-off/collection times and even dropped to a 4 day week so I could spend quality time with my daughter rather than her going to nursery for an extra day. My productivity has improved (both subjectively and measured objectively during formal job reviews/appraisals) which I put down to being more focused during the limited hours I am at work to do my job as I know that I can't just do it later.

Outside hours, I can only access work (including email) if I bring my laptop home, and I now only do that for one weekend a month when I volunteer to be on call.

And now that she's nearly 3 I spend a lot of the time I would have been checking banal stuff on the Internet with play time and bonkers discussions with someone soaking up everything that's going on around her and developing her reasoning and understanding of it.

It's been long enough that I really have no idea what I used to do with all of my spare time before I became a father. Wouldn't change it for the world though, as I said, parenthood rocks.

P.S. It just keeps getting better and better too.

P.P.S. I reserve the right to change this when she becomes a mardy 11 year old.

timjahn2• 14 years ago

"It's been long enough that I really have no idea what I used to do with all of my spare time before I became a father. "

My little guy just turned two and I echo all your thoughts here, but this one is especially true.

What the hell did we do with all our time before??

Here's to parenthood. :)

robocaptain• 14 years ago

This is great to read.. I love the idea of "bonkers discussions", now I have that to look forward to in 3 years. :)

ciupicri• 14 years ago

Is shopping left for the weekend? Also, where's the cooking? Is it included in dinner?

mintyice• 14 years ago

6 minutes of Education is pretty sad.

ChrisBaldwin2• 14 years ago

Statistics are just statistics. Nothing is sad about 6 minutes when the "average" American isn't in school.

Super_luigi• 14 years ago

the data is for "average American with a full-time job". This assumes that they have already completed their education. 6 min/day is about 36.5 hours of education, which seems quite a bit for a professional

s8qnze982y• 14 years ago

They're not "just statistics", as they point to some interesting facts.

Americans for example travel less and work more compared to other countries.

"6 minutes of education" is definitively negative (although I would personally use "narrow (minded)" in place of "sad") when compared with "90+ minutes of TV".

BrainScraps• 14 years ago

If you liked that, you'll love this:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/31/business/20080...

Divided by age range, gender, ethnicity...

simantel• 14 years ago

This is amazing! Much more data-dense than the NPR piece.

samg_• 14 years ago

"The numbers are, of course, averages. So parents may spend much more time, say, caring for children, while people without children will spend no time at all."

Stuffed at the bottom, of course. Averages lie!

dpres• 14 years ago

Just counted...

I wrote 169,020 lines of code in 9,691.25 hrs over 4 yrs from 2007-11 for a part-time job while going to school.

That's 17.44 lines per hour or 0.29 lines per minute, not including code written for school or leisure!

iSnow• 14 years ago

How do Americans procreate?

jschuur2• 14 years ago

Looks like they don't list activities < 5 mins.

Tycho• 14 years ago

I'd like to see what the difference in time spent 'grooming' is between the sexes, or alternatively what the breakdown is between basic things like showering, teeth-brushing and more advanced activities.

corkill• 14 years ago

I would like to see the biggest chunk "work" broken down into what most people are actually doing. Time spent on social media, checking email, phone etc.

andyjohnson02• 14 years ago

It would be interesting to know how much of the "leisure" time is spent watching television. My guess is almost all.

k2enemy• 14 years ago

TV: 1hr 35min

There is a second graphic with a breakdown of "leisure" and "cooking, cleaning, etc"

andyjohnson02• 14 years ago

Thanks for correcting me. I missed the second graphic.

I still find it depressing that TV takes ~50% of an "average" person's leisure/discretionary time. 94 minutes per work-day is just over 407 hours per year, and weekends will add more.

Edit: Changed to exclude weekends. Assume 260 work days per year.

michaelochurch• 14 years ago

Holy fuck those numbers are depressing.

neilkelty• 14 years ago

Where's exercise contained? I don't mean that I'm surprised it barely registers, but what category is it under?

nhebb• 14 years ago

"Playing sports" - under the Leisure details - is probably the catchall category for exercise.

JoeAltmaier• 14 years ago

And sex? Under Leisure? Other? Talking to people on the telephone?

yummyfajitas• 14 years ago

For anyone who is interested, the microdata is here:

http://www.bls.gov/tus/datafiles_2011.htm

Most of the questions people are asking can be answered with about 20 minutes of work and a little pandas-fu (or excel, if you are that sort of person).

hessenwolf• 14 years ago

If anybody gets a chance, a graph that isn't a spiral of circles would make for a slightly easier comparison. Seriously, a spiral of circles?

What Americans Actually Do All Day Long

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