The following chart represents the average time spent each day on a variety of activities for ALL American adults (people aged 15 or older), from the Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent American Time Use study. Might give you some answers to “where did all my time go today?” pondering.
Some highlights:
- Only .47 hours of the day or 28.2 minutes on average was spent participating in educational activities–which includes research, homework, taking classes for a degree or personal interest or extracurricular activities for high school students.
- Work consumed 3.57 hours of the day
- Leisure & Sports added another 5.21 hours to our day–which includes: watching television, browsing the internet, playing video or internet games, exercising, recreational outdoor and athletic activities, socializing, as well as watching or attending sports events.
The next chart shows the average time spent each day for college and university students:
Some highlights:
- On weekdays, full-time university and college students spent 3.3 hours engaged in educational activities (see definition above)–that’s an average of 16.5 hours per week to get homework done AND take classes. Over a school year, at roughly 18 weeks a semester, that’s 594 hours in school and doing school related work, out of a possible 2880 hours of weekday, waking time during that same school year, given an 8 hour average time sleeping–or 20.6% of the time.
- 2.9 hours working
- 3.7 hours spent in leisure and sports activities. (see above definition)
NOTE: These data are averages for 2007 to 2011
How are you using your time, and are you spending your time productively?
