
How much free time do you have? - deegles
https://erikrood.com/Posts/free_time_calc.html
======
plants
Really depressing. Between work, long commute, gym, and part-time grad school,
I have 18 free hours a week out of 168. Makes me wonder what the hell I am
doing when I have other hobbies that I would love to be pursuing. Most of the
time I simply don't have the mental energy to pursue much of anything in my 18
free hours. Sometimes I just need to turn my brain off.

I find myself to lash out in weird ways when I am particularly stressed. For
example, I am much more likely to spend a lot of money on something that seems
like it has the potential to make me happy or book a vacation spontaneously.
It seems like keeping my head on straight requires so much willpower that I
can't save any for other aspects of my life. Who knew life was hard?

~~~
ianai
I’m in the middle of a four day weekend. I’ll probably get absolutely nothing
extraordinary done in it. Despite there being plenty of things I could be
doing. The 40 hour work week is tyrannical.

~~~
allthecybers
> The 40 hour work week is tyrannical.

If you are stating this seriously, I often wonder why there isn’t a great
movement toward a reduction in working days/hours in the modern workplace.

It’s kind of mind boggling to me why we have to trade most of our waking hours
for the majority of the prime of our life to make a living wage. Modern
society should be solving for this.

~~~
southerndrift
It is solved. Everybody can choose a job where they works less hours or become
a freelancer and work as many hours as they want. This doesn't work on a
global scale, but as an individual, that choice is possible.

The problem is that people want to buy more than they can afford from doing
less work.

There is no way to resolve this. As long as there are status goods like
sneakers for $1000, people will have to work the hours needed to afford them.
You can only have fewer hours if everything is standardized to the point that
machines do all the work. But who wants to live in such a world of uniformity?

~~~
jeena
I don't agree, humans worked for 80 hours a week and then together reduced to
40 hours a week. I don't see why they could not reduce it to 30 or 20 hours a
week.

Everyone worked on a Saturday then suddenly most of the people stopped working
on the Saturday, I don't see why it would be impossible for most of the people
in the society to stop working on Friday too.

~~~
southerndrift
Because 40 hours a week are, if you remove vacations, holidays and sick
leaves, on average roughly 4 hours per day. That's the amount tribal people
work per day. There is no inherent human need to reduce that time further.

As I said, people can already work for 30 or 20 hours per week. Why is it not
enough for you if you stop working on Friday?

Do you want 30 or 20 hours per week with equal pay? Then indeed you have to
reduce the supply of work to rise hourly wages. But then, less is produced,
the supply of goods is reduced and thus things cost more, most likely
disproportionally more than the increase in wages.

~~~
jedrek
> Because 40 hours a week are, if you remove vacations, holidays and sick
> leaves, on average roughly 4 hours per day.

I'm sorry, but who told you this?

The median amount of PTO in American companies is 10 days + 8 days of Federal
holidays. That 18 days vs 260 weekdays, or 7% of the work year, meaning the
average American works 7.5 hours a day, not 4.

~~~
southerndrift
Tribal people don't have weekends. It's 2*52 days + 18 days = 122 days out of
365. That's 5.3h per day. To me, that is close enough to 4 hours that people
don't feel stressed to the point that there is a desire for change.

In comparision, people spend 3 hours on average watching TV.

------
alltakendamned
I am always somewhat puzzled by the focus on free time without taking into
account the energy balance of a person.

I find often that when someone says “I don’t have the time”, what they really
mean is that they don’t have energy left to take on something else.

In my case, I find that there’s often enough hours, but I don’t always have
the energy to be active 100% of that time and just end up taking some rest.

~~~
kd5bjo
The trick seems to be to identify your various different out-of-energy states
and what activity is consistently restorative for each. Then, get experience
with those activities when you’re fresh so that you have less of a hurdle to
jump over when you really need them.

The biggest issue, of course, is that it requires you to experiment with new
things when you’re dead tired in order to figure out what helps in the first
place. A more subtle problem is that some activities help at first and then
cause problems later- Television/YouTube is like this for me; sometimes, it’s
the most effective way of resting but if I’m not careful I’ll go straight
through energetic into a different, harder to escape lethargy.

~~~
scotty79
I think there are two problems. Tiredness and boredom. TV's sweet spot is when
you are mildly bored and pretty tired. It tires you even more but alleviates
boredom a bit.

I had after-school routine. When I was comming back from school I was bored
and tired but too bored and not tired enough to go to sleep immediately. So I
watched TV for an hour or two becomming slightly less bored and completely
tired. After that I slept for few hours and after that wake up and be semi-
funtional human again, able to do homework or enjoy myself for a bit.

The problem was I got addicted to TV and I watched it even if I wasn't that
tired and theoretically had energy to entertain myself with something that had
better joy/effort ratio than TV. Instead I always defaulted to TV which costed
me too much energy for enjoyment provided.

Eventually I had to ask my mom to put a parental lock on TV and even then
after school I was lying in front of turned on TV that showed no channel (due
to parental lock) pushing buttons at random trying to unlock it. I even
managed to unlock it once (3 digit code) but couldn't repeat it.

Eventually my dumb brain learned that lying in front of a TV no longer gives
me any joy (because I can't turn the channels on) and I shook the addiction.

~~~
kd5bjo
In my experience, there are a lot more than two sliders but the general idea
seems right. By choosing the right program, television can help fulfill all
sorts of emotional needs: social, excitement, creativity, escapism, curiosity,
etc.

The problem is that it’s effective for such a large range of needs, it
promotes the illusion that, if you only found the right thing to watch, it can
fix anything. So you end up channel surfing, wondering why you can’t find
anything you’re interested in, when what you really need is a stroll outside.

~~~
scotty79
> television can help fulfill all sorts of emotional needs: social,
> excitement, creativity, escapism, curiosity, etc.

Yes. I totalle agree. I think social was most important for me. The problem
with TV is that it fulfills those needs but very inefficiently. It takes a lot
of time of lying inert in front of TV to get any significant fulfillment. And
the insidious part is that because people are lying down they think they are
resting. But that's rarely true. Lying down especially for hours tires you
even more.

So TV provides you with versatile fulfillment but at very slow rate and at a
significant cost that's not easy to notice.

------
Waterluvian
Some feedback about the formula from a parent:

The formula needs to account for the reality that with young children your
"parental duties" expands to occupy all free time when kids are awake. And
also shifts other chores into any free time slots when kids are asleep.

Kids are asleep. Time to clean the kitchen, do the dishes, switch the laundry,
cut some veggies for tomorrow's dinner, and then find somewhere softer than
last night to pass out.

~~~
gewoonkris
I try to make it a point to do all the chores when the kids are awake. When
they are asleep is time to relax; not do mundane tasks

I don't feel it's my duty to entertain my kinds every waking hour, so if they
have to settle with watching me fold the laundry or unload the dishwasher, so
be it.

This probably won't win me the father-of-the-year award, and it is parenting-
style me and my girlfriend don't always agree about, but I refuse to sacrifice
all my free time for my children.

~~~
DanBC
How would you feel about this choice if one of your children died of cancer?

Would you still think you'd made the right choice, or would you regret
prioritising laundry over your children?

~~~
jclulow
Literally nothing will prepare you for that. No amount of time is enough.
Living your life in abject fear of that morbid possibility is crippling.

~~~
DanBC
"spending time with my kids" is not "living in crippling fear of them dying".

~~~
sokoloff
It sounded like you were opposed to doing mundane daily chores or otherwise
not giving 100% of your free time to them while they're awake for fear that
you might regret that choice if they died young of cancer. That doesn't seem
that far apart to this reader.

------
jasonkester
I spent several years working toward the goal of maximizing my Free Time, and
hit a point a couple years ago where I'm effectively as Retired as I want to
be, at any given moment. The SaaS businesses tick away in the background and
seldom require my intervention apart from a quick customer service email sweep
every couple days.

I'd recommend this path over the VC + Co-Founders "Startup" life that gets
promoted here so often, since I've never seen an outcome from that track that
appears to me to be relaxing and enjoyable.

Anyway, regarding the calculator submitted here, it seems to use a bunch of
the things I do in (what I consider) my Free Time to deduct from the amount of
(what it considers) my Free Time. When I have the chance, I go out Bouldering
(which it counts as fitness) or play with my kids if they're off school (which
it dings as parenting).

Every hour you're not working for somebody else in exchange for money aught to
be considered "you" time. All the other things on that list seem like
perfectly fine ways of spending that time.

~~~
arvinsim
The hard part is actually finding a viable business, not technical chops.

Still trying to find a way to do it since I don't want to work for a salary
all my life.

------
Ididntdothis
I think commute time should count two or three times. I sit in the car for 80
minutes a day and I am totally shot in the evening so I get nothing done even
if I have time. . On the days I work from home I work the same amount. After
work I relax for half an hour and can do things after. Commuting is a real
soul killer in my view.

~~~
Matumio
You just made me realize how lucky I am. I'm commuting 2x 55min per day. I
always think it's too much, but it's mostly by train. There is about a 50%
chance of me getting 2x 35min uninterrupted reading time out of it (depending
on the crowd).

~~~
LilBytes
Man, I ride my motorbike to work every day and it usually takes 15 minutes
each way on average. Yet I wonder what it'd be like to jump cities and double
my income. comments like yours and the OP really make me understand and value
my free time substantially.

------
h2odragon
Nice thought provoking presentation. I once billed 150 hours in a 7 day
period, and they were honest hours, too. Since then I've stopped working and
raised a daughter; and parenting was harder work than the insane "i have no
life" schedule I used to push.

Bit over a decade into the family thing, it's certainly more rewarding. Other
people would find other choices rewarding and that's great too.

We're all too apt to forget that in the end, this time is all we have. Are we
really using it like we want to?

~~~
noobly
>150 hours in a 7 day period

Doing what? Just curious. I could only image doing something like that if the
job was extremely lax - like a toll booth operator in a slow town, or
something.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
>> 150 hours in a 7 day period

> Doing what? Just curious.

I can't speak for the GP (as I am not they), but can say I pulled a 118 hour
work week once doing s/w development. Four 20 hour days for one client and the
other 38 for another.

Suffice to say it was not a fun week.

~~~
oarabbus_
At that point, wouldn't it have made more sense to set expectations that their
1-week turnaround is realistically a 3-week ask, instead of working 20 hour
days?

~~~
LilBytes
That's a difficult argument to make when you're contracting or a consultant
and are expected to deliver X and not work Z hour.

~~~
oarabbus_
I know, and I've been there.

There, meaning working absurd extra hours in order to deliver to the client as
reneging would mean I have to own up to the client the fact that I totally
fucked up the scoping (usually it's scope creep or changing requirements, but
you can't really blame them even if it's their fault).

I've done that before, and perhaps other people here are getting paid more to
consult than I, but it's not worth it IMO to sacrifice your life for the
client.

~~~
AdieuToLogic
> There, meaning working absurd extra hours in order to deliver to the client
> as reneging would mean I have to own up to the client the fact that I
> totally fucked up the scoping (usually it's scope creep or changing
> requirements, but you can't really blame them even if it's their fault).

The client for which I did the four 20 hour days had a project manager that
committed to a milestone delivery with _their_ client and did not run it past
the dev team. So I did everything possible in order to deliver for the client.

Were it that I underestimated the scope of work (which I have done many
times), I definitely would have conveyed that.

------
justAlittleCom
what is "free time"? I consider doing most of those things on my "free time".
When I go excercise, I have no obligation do to so, I do it on my "free time".
If I had kid, I'd consider spending time with them as "free time with my
kids". I dont like this pessimistic perception of time, and it's not mine. The
only non free time I have, is the one I "owe" to my employer. And this time, I
freely give it to him, and If I wasn't contractually require to do so, I'd
probably do the very same thing (I teach and research at uni).

~~~
dingaling
> If I had kid, I'd consider spending time with them as "free time with my
> kids"

It's really not, though. Before parenthood I had all these romantic 'Swallows
and Amazons' ideas about lazy summer days on riverbanks and meadows.

In reality time with young kids is about mundane things like making meals,
doing homework, playing what _they_ want to play, trying to coax them to help
with chores that you need to get done, finding craft activities to deflect
them from screen-time etc etc

It's not in the slightest bit free-choice or frankly enjoyable. I've just got
up on Saturday to find that it's raining heavily, my heart sank. Now to find
14 hours of indoor child-oriented activities...

~~~
em-bee
it gets easier as the kids get older. it also helps to have interesting
hobbies yourself that you can involve your kids in.

so instead of asking: how am i going to entertain this bunch on rainy
weekends, ask: what hobby might i like to pick up that i can get my kids
interested in.

i have been struggling with that too. i am considering things like learning an
instrument, programming, playing board-games.

i found a simplified version of DnD, made it even easier and combined it with
using lego to build the environment (including treasure boxes)

and when it's not raining there are plenty of outdoor activities to choose
from.

~~~
em-bee
_what hobby might i like to pick up that i can get my kids interested in_

i'd actually like to rephrase that a bit. kids are naturally interested in
everything their parents do. so the question is not whether i can get the kids
interested, but rather, whether is is something that is interesting for me,
yet suitable for kids.

------
tristanstcyr
I don't know if that's how free time works once you have kids. "Parental
duties" takes the free time. You get some time when the kids sleep.

~~~
closeparen
Kids from elementary school onward have homework, friends, books, games, TV,
etc occupying several hours of most nights. It’s not like they’re interacting
with both parents continuously for every moment between work/school and sleep.

~~~
em-bee
for a first grader in a country where schools are very intensive, it takes
100% parental involvement for every minute of homework. have more than one
kid, and both parents are busy...

------
hn_throwaway_99
While I think it's good to take stock of "where does my time go??", the
calculations here are pretty misleading IMO. For example, I think, for most
people, if you had absolutely no other external obligations (e.g. you are
independently wealthy, no kids, etc.) and you had exactly 5 years left to
live, I think most people would consider that you have "5 years of free time
left". By taking out things like sleep, eating, grooming, chores, and even
discretionary things like "going to the gym", and then converting the
remaining hours _back_ to years by dividing by 24/7/365, you're left with some
really misleading numbers.

~~~
Noumenon72
Yup. If I retired right now, I'd show as 20 free years and 17 busy years. But
I would feel like I had 32 free years.

------
zw123456
One thing that everyone needs to take into consideration is that it is not a
static thing. When I was younger (30's) I had 0 free time probably, but now I
am semi-retired and work out of my home freelance which I do mostly for
something to do. Which means I have tons o free time, more than 60 hours a
week easily. I think it is good to work hard earlier in life so you can enjoy
more free time later on.

------
r-s
Working remote at a company with good culture, 0 commute, no children, and
minimal housing upkeep. At 32yo I have never had more free time in my life.

I spend very significant amounts of time in the gym (which I love), and in the
outdoors. Rarely bored. I sometimes dream of having the 40 hours I work in a
week free too.

------
scotch_drinker
I'm 46 with a 3 year old I spend a lot of time with (21-24 hours a week). I
love that time but it's a little depressing to only have 5 years of free time
left.

Pretty eye opening to see it as a total number.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _with a 3 year old_

This was my first thought. The calculator is fine, but not all free time is
equal. If the kid's having a not-great night, and is _finally_ asleep by 10pm,
I theoretically have an hour before I have to go to sleep, but I'm tired and
realistically I'm just going to click around for awhile before going to bed.
Ditto if I'm up at 6:30; I theoretically have 30 minutes, but who knows when
the kid'll wake up. Maybe I have 30 minutes, maybe I have zero.

It's as if free time had a half-life.

------
unnouinceput
~70 hours free time/week or 10 per day, wohooo...freelancing all the way baby!

~~~
frequentnapper
what do you do with your free time?

~~~
unnouinceput
Enjoying life my friend. Wife and kids, they are there to make your life
fulfilled, not to be a nuisance or chores, as the tool had one of the fields -
I put there 0, I don't have any chores to do in my life.

~~~
cerberusss
No chores? Don't you have to do cleaning and cooking? Groceries?

~~~
unnouinceput
No. I pay other people to do chores. That's why I make money. As for groceries
I don't consider this part of "chores". I usually do groceries with my kids,
whenever my wife will let me do it, since every time we just fool around and
buy a lot of unnecessary stuff just for the fun - which my wife hates it. Like
I said, enjoying life with my family.

------
forthwall
I don't really consider sleeping, eating or fitness wasted time really, you
basically need it and most I personally find it enjoyable and excluding
sleeping, it's practically a use of free time. I think would love some
checkbox that signifies a "waste" in a sense.

Also, your application doesn't seem to like accidental space-bars being
pressed in inputs. Causes NaN and its hard to figure out why.

Regardless pretty cool/interesting

~~~
qwerty2020
Author here - I find a lot of those mentioned personally enjoyable too, but
what I was essentially trying to do was quantify my own 'must do' activities
(e.g. if I don't sleep ~8hrs/night things go downhill fast, etc) regardless of
whether or not I enjoy them.

From there, I view the remaining time as truly open, not requiring working, or
general meat sack maintenance. Categorization can definitely go either way
though. Part of the message, aside from just quantifying how limited time is,
would be to find enjoyment where you can in your 'mandatory' activities too as
they'll represent the bulk of your life.

~~~
lmitchell
> Part of the message, aside from just quantifying how limited time is, would
> be to find enjoyment where you can in your 'mandatory' activities too as
> they'll represent the bulk of your life.

I wish I could give this comment more upvotes. I'm slowly learning this lesson
in my personal life - I wish I could learn it faster, but the goddamn brain is
just too much more insistent than the body..

------
puttycat
This reminds me of an incredible dialogue from a remarkable Seinfeld episode
(S02E02):

> GEORGE: They always make me take stock of my life and how I’ve pretty much
> wasted all of it, and how I plan to continue wasting it.

> JERRY: I know, and then you say to yourself, “From this moment on, I’m not
> going to waste any more of it.” But then you go, “How? What can I do that’s
> not wasting it?”

------
jobigoud
In my probably unpopular opinion, parenting shouln'd be on the list. It's not
a forced activity like sleeping or eating or commuting. It's a conscious
choice people make between it and other hobbies.

~~~
meheleventyone
That sounds very naive. Yes people have chosen to have kids (and some haven’t)
but you also chose where and how you work so by similar logic we should
discount those choices. Once you have kids there are a lot of things that
aren’t optional, and unlike a long commute aren’t easy to change.

~~~
jobigoud
You choose how and where to work, yes, and this is already factored in the
form by the duration of the commute. Unlike having kids, you can't elect to
not work though, because you need money to pay for buying food and shelter.
(Unless you are in survival mode, in which case the concept of free time is
probably foreign anyway).

------
melling
The Story of the Mexican Fisherman

[https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-
fisherma...](https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/)

------
marsrover
I tried to be realistic but it comes out as -7.5. I must be lying about sleep.

------
dmje
61.5 pw free. Work for myself, no commute, kids are 14 and 11 so pretty self
sufficient. Run rather than gym (saves travel and fannying about time), don't
sleep massive amounts...

The default 7 hours a week "grooming"? Wtf?

I'm obviously scruffy and unclean, too.

------
danielecook
A few ways to get more free time:

\- combine commuting with working out. Even if you only run 1/2 way and still
have to catch a train for the second half you’ll still be getting time back.
\- hire a cleaning service if you can afford it. Maybe a Roomba? \- move
closer to work to reduce your commute time. \- don’t keep your phone by your
bed. If you are like me you’ll waste time in the morning and evening. \- don’t
make more chores for yourself than necessary. For example, you can often wear
pants 2 days of the week without issue.

------
anoplus
I feel very strongly the amount of free time is, to a great extent, a social
standard rather than some economical constrain. I believe 35 hours work week
is no less productive (or even more). I wonder how many believe the same and
whether we can push it as a community.

One of my biggest satisfactions in life is killing jobs. Finding out about a
solution to make some work obsolete, even my own work. But this game is also a
team game. To work together to make things simpler and cultivate the free time
enabled by this.

------
KirinDave
Well I know the author of this certainly has more free time than me. 7 hours a
week at the gym? What and incredibly laid back lifestyle.

~~~
noobly
>7 hours a week at the gym? What and incredibly laid back lifestyle.

What a strange thing to pick at - is there a joke I'm missing? And it's not
strictly the gym, it's 'gym/fitness'.

~~~
KirinDave
Oh well that certainly makes a difference!

------
eruci
I am probably at the other extreme, in having too much free time. Not that I
don't have things to do, although I'm self-employed, my income depends on a
complex system I've built that needs constant refining. My todo list is long.
But it can easily be pushed off.

So, that's what I'm doing at this very moment while thinking about how much
free time I have.

------
moneywoes
Sigh, quantifying this is depressing

------
dawhizkid
I think of free time as time spent doing something you want to do, not
necessarily time spent doing nothing.

If you find work that feels like play, then I'd consider that "time spent
doing what you want to do."

------
sumoboy
Reading HN wasn't an input box, that's my free time.

------
jimnotgym
NaN! I have immeasurable free time

Either I need to revisit my work life balance or we hugged this site to death.
Or both

------
imedadel
So I'm 20 and I've only got 26.5 hours of free time each week. I think this
is... terrible?

------
HNLurker2
Expected an article about how do deal with boring free time. Got an
existential crisis instead

------
ginko
I would put eating/cooking in the free time category. Arguably sleeping as
well.

------
every1elseiswng
If you have less than 24hrs a day for fully-expendable time, at your own
leisure, you are doing something wrong.

Let the mexicans work, man, you are doing something wrong.

24 hour club. All day every day!

~~~
elif
Damn I only got 116. How do you avoid sleep completely?

~~~
whyweschleep
Ah, well, I might be misconfigured. Anyways I consider sleep a good thing, so,
it's all in the game. It's volentary sleep, to say the least. But good call. I
am mistaking and not you.

------
SuperNinKenDo
In answer to your question: 5 hours.

------
newshorts
I have 1 free year left

------
darepublic
Parenting.

------
brighter2morrow
79 as the average life span? Is that worldwide? I fully expect to make it to
90.

~~~
ido
According to Wikipedia life expectancy worldwide is 69.

Japan has the highest life expectancy of any country at around 85.

