
A Day in the Life of Americans - paulb81
https://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-americans/
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40acres
I wake up @ 4AM most days to get my work out in. Walking to the gym gives me a
glimpse of a different America. It's mostly men, white guys in my city, they
are all middle class looking dudes. Loading up trucks at the nearby grocery or
beginning/ending their shift, maybe some security guards once in a while.

There's some homeless people every once in a while but for the most part they
don't seem to be active. There are no cars in the streets and it feels like a
movie set. Always an interesting hour, 4 AM.

~~~
abenedic
> It's mostly men, white guys in my city

I am sorry, I am not American, though I live here. Does this not in itself
contribute to the uncomfortable feelings of women and minorities in your city?

~~~
always_good
This question kind of reeks of the non-American who consumes so much American
media that they think their place of origin doesn't have the same
characteristics like mostly men out and about at 4am operating the third shift
or wandering home drunk.

And I'm not too sure men at work, regardless of race, rank very high on the
scale of people you're scared to run into in the early morning, even in your
place of origin.

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em500
If you're mostly interested in the breakdown of time spend, rather than these
animations between activities, the charts at the data source are much clearer:
[https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts.htm](https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts.htm)

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fogetti
For me it's very strange to see that a huge portion of the population sleeps
until 9am (and a big number even until 10am!). I worked in many countries
before and in most workplaces you had to show up at least by 9. Of course
there were some exceptions but in general that's how it was.

~~~
chrisco255
Yeah, well there's a lot of businesses that operate late into the night. You
think 24/7 pharmacies, retail, restaurants, etc operate themselves? There's
also emergency personnel, security, even night construction crews.

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charmides
Seems like my sleeping patterns are a lot different than those of most other
people.

Also, I felt depressed to see that people spend most of their lives sleeping
and working or in some transition thereof.

~~~
mancerayder
Even more suspicious or chore-seeming to those that are more productive during
the evening, which studies recently suggest this could be how some of us are
wired. There's this, I think Anglo-Saxon fixation on early mornings being
where productive and good people do things.

Maybe a cultural byproduct of regions of the world with short, dark winter
days?

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ghaff
One of the benefits I find with coming back from trips to Europe returning to
the US East Coast is there's about a week where I'm tending to get up by 5AM
or so. I slip back to a normal schedule but I really feel good getting a bunch
of work done by 9AM or so. Can't really keep it up sans jetlag though.

~~~
121789
It’s a really great feeling. I went for a while getting up at 5:00am, going to
the gym, then straight to work by 7 or so. I’d often get the most important
work of the day done by 10 and I felt pretty amazing. But having to go to
sleep by 10 (which means in bed by 9:30) was too hard to adhere to.

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pitaj
The animation is a little hard to follow because the "balls" get stuck in
different places for a while, and the colors aren't easy to distinguish or
attribute to certain activities.

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purplezooey
I like the guy who goes into work at 5am then goes back to 'sleeping' at
7:15am. heh.

~~~
new_hackers
pager duty, lol

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Kagerjay
That was some pretty dope animation

I was surprised the numbers at work around 1-3 PM only tops off at 30%. It
said the diagram was for ages 25 to 34, most of these people should be working
9 to 5 jobs though.

I thought the numbers would go upwards of 50% to 60%

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jondubois
It's extremely surprising that by 3pm in the middle of the day, there are as
many people enjoying leisure time as there are people working (about 30%).
Where are these people? I don't see anyone leaving the office at 3pm where I
work. I'm pretty sure that the 'average day' doesn't mean weekend.

I thought it might be night shift workers, but then during the night, only
about 1% of people are working.

~~~
mysterydip
I would have agreed with you before I got a job in the public sector. I'd say
a quarter of the people in the buildings around here are gone by 3, with
hardly anyone still here by 6. Some of those people start their day at 6 too,
but there are also some "in by 10, out by 2" kinds of people. Nearby DC seems
to be the same way from their rush hour traffic patterns.

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ofcrpls
Previous discussion in 2015
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10738607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10738607)

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11thEarlOfMar
I'd be curious to see different countries at the same time of day. Would be
quite illustrative, I believe.

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known
The U.S. is the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World

[https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-
product...](https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-
vacation/)

