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How much free time do you have?
- scotch_drinker 7y agoI'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.
- skizm 7y agoIf you enjoy the time with your kid, you're probably okay :)
- pavel_lishin 7y ago> 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.
- marsrover 7y agoI put 40 for a 2 year old. About 3-4 hours after work each day and full days on weekends.
- jason_slack 7y agoI’m 42 with 2 babies under 2. It seems I have 3 years free time left. Hmm too bad I can’t get the 3 years in a single stretch. :-).
- plants 7y agoReally 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 7y agoI’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.
- ido 7y agoWhy do you have to "get something extraordinary done" on your time off? You don't have to be productive any waking moment.
- whatshisface 7y agoIf you're not productive on your four-day weekends, and if you think your job isn't worth anything in the ultimate sense, you will wake up one day and be 79 without having done much of anything.
- username90 7y agoEnjoying 79 stress-free years sounds better than having things to brag about on your gravestone.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoStress is orthogonal here. Many humans[0] naturally want to create, build and improve things around them. A typical job is a nearly insurmountable obstacle to that, especially if fruits of the labour only ever manifest as paycheck - hence the desire to do that in whatever free time that's left. -- [0] - I'd argue, all.
- paulcole 7y ago> [0] - I'd argue, all. Nope! I take no joy and have no interest in creating, building, and improving things. I like buying stuff, watching TV, scrolling through the Internet, and that’s more or less it. Just passing time until I die.
- unnouinceput 7y ago~70 hours free time/week or 10 per day, wohooo...freelancing all the way baby!
- frequentnapper 7y agowhat do you do with your free time?
- unnouinceput 7y agoEnjoying 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.
- ryanwaggoner 7y agoNo other people are there to make your life fulfilled, including your kids. And if you treat them (and yourself) that way, everyone is going to have a bad time.
- nitins 7y agoI like your mindset.
- cerberusss 7y agoNo chores? Don't you have to do cleaning and cooking? Groceries?
- unnouinceput 7y agoNo. 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.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI 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.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoEh, I do ~70min each way (in a shitbox with no A/C no less) and I still manage to do stuff in the evening. I think counting it once makes sense.
- taneq 7y agoDepends entirely on the content of your commute, no? 70min in hectic traffic navigating poorly designed freeway interchanges is going to be way more exhausting than a cruise in the country with some good music.
- cheschire 7y agoBut then you might as well count the “quality” of all of the activities. Is your job knowledge work, food service, industrial, etc? Did you count your development for fun as work? What about your research for fun? Is your parenting duties time doing homework with your kids or playing board games?
- sethammons 7y agoI was doing 2 to 3 hours each way depending on traffic. I did that for 6 or 7 years. Now I work from home. It is really nice, but I still feel like I have no time.
- Matumio 7y agoYou 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).
- KirinDave 7y agoWell 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 7y ago>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 7y agoOh well that certainly makes a difference!
- trosi 7y agoI'd say an average of 30 minutes/day of gym/fitness is the bare minimum, but even double that can be very beneficial in many respects. You should find the time
- KirinDave 7y agoThanks for the advice, trosi. What was actually stopping me from putting in more time in the gym like I did when I was young was a limp attaboy from a stranger. I'm absolutely thrilled if I can find the time coinciding with the energy to do 30m a day at the gym. But as any parent who is not offloading all the work onto a beleaguered spouse can tell you: it's pretty rare when you have toddlers.
- friedman23 7y agoIf walking quickly every day for an hour increases my life expectancy by 6 or so years it would have been worth it.
- KirinDave 7y agoThat's only exercise if your lifestyle is extremely sedentary. So yeah, you should do it. But it's a very generous definition of "gym/fitness."
- tristanstcyr 7y agoI 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.
- kohanz 7y agoI know it's not intentional, but when I scrolled down and saw "parental duties" at the bottom of the list I laughed and said to myself "that's not how this works!". Move that one to the top, above sleep even, when the kids are young. Feature request for the calculator: if you say you have kids, it asks you what time they are in bed and asleep by and what time you try to go to bed: this window of time is now your chores/maintain relationship with spouse/gym/relax/hobbies/whatever time.
- pavel_lishin 7y agoTo be fair, a "lifehack" is that once the kids are old enough (~1? 2? Depends on the kid and the couple) at least one night a week should be a solo night for a parent, while the other one gets the night off. Bonus points for having a weekly babysitter (or grandparent) for date night.
- twodave 7y agoIn addition your own sleep tend to decrease as you "reclaim" some of that play time you're missing for yourself.
- souprock 7y agoYep. It's hard to resist. I have 12 kids. I sure want time for random stuff... and then I realize the Sun is rising and I haven't slept. That's with a 40-hour work week, a 3-minute commute, and none of that gym/fitness time.
- bitwize 7y agoDid you make all 12 with your S.O. or are you like those guardian-angel foster parents from _Shazam!_?
- newshorts 7y agoI have 1 free year left
- marsrover 7y agoI tried to be realistic but it comes out as -7.5. I must be lying about sleep.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago79 as the average life span? Is that worldwide? I fully expect to make it to 90.
- r-s 7y agoWorking 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoWhile 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 7y agoYup. 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.
- moneywoes 7y agoSigh, quantifying this is depressing
- Waterluvian 7y agoSome 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.
- cortesoft 7y agoYeah, as a dad of 2 kids under 4, I ended up having negative free hours. I put 54 hours of parenting a week, because it is non stop on the weekends for about 12 hours a day, and 5 hours or so on weekdays (getting them up and ready for daycare in the morning, then playing, feeding and putting them down at night.) I do get some chores done during that time, which is probably how I am able to exist with what ends up being negative free time (doubled up on some of hours) Man I can't wait for them to get old enough to play on their own without requiring my full attention.
- mruts 7y agoI live in Tanzania and here any kid that is above the age of 2 has free rein to go wherever they want. Maybe it's not a better way (though I suspect it is), but it is certainly easier (assuming you don't have 8 children like most people here though).
- Waterluvian 7y agoI think it boils down to the trade off between convenience, cost, and safety. I'm convinced that kids in the developed world are so safe and so likely to see adulthood that in order to move the needle on safety even the slightest, we have to dump a huge amount of time and money into it. Okay so the infant mortality rate in Canada is at about 4 per 1000 (about 38 per 1000 in Tanzania). How do we improve that? Well let's dump an insane amount of stress and panic on parents about which way their children are facing when they sleep. That's one of thousands of examples I could come up with if pressed. We are way way way into diminishing returns here. We have so few problems that we are obsessing over error margins worth of added safety at the cost of exponential parenting efforts. I asked my dad how they let my brothers and I wander the suburb on our own as kids. Weren't they afraid we'd be kidnapped or hit by a car or drown in the river? My dad said they never knew they were supposed to be worried. It just didn't really register as a thing. It sure as hell was a far safer place to grow up than where they did. There's also another possible angle to consider. Imagine if I got all the parents in town together and said, "so we have concluded that a healthy childhood is one full of risk and freedom and adventure. We need everyone to take the proverbial training wheels off and let your kids be kids. However this will mean that some of your children aren't going to make it to adulthood. It's just the nature of this kind of upbringing."
- zw123456 7y agoOne 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.
- forthwall 7y agoI 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 7y agoAuthor 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 7y ago> 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..
- h2odragon 7y agoNice 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 7y ago>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 7y ago>> 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_ 7y agoAt 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 7y agoThat'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_ 7y agoI 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.
- melling 7y agoThe Story of the Mexican Fisherman https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/ https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...
- justAlittleCom 7y agowhat 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).
- rorykoehler 7y agoCouldn't agree more. I also work on my side project in my free time.
- dingaling 7y ago> 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 7y agoit 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.
- sumoboy 7y agoReading HN wasn't an input box, that's my free time.
- eruci 7y agoI 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.
- dawhizkid 7y agoI 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."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- anoplus 7y agoI 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.
- dmje 7y ago61.5 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.
- jobigoud 7y agoIn 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.
- dijit 7y agoErr.. what? you can put the time as 0 if you dont (and will never have a child). But if you have a child then you cannot choose. Well, you can, just like you can choose not to work, shower or clean, but you're not fulfilling your duties in that case.
- thomaswang 7y agoNot a forced activity? Not a parent I suppose. It is as forced as work. You don't have to work just as you don't have to have a child.
- an_ko 7y agoWere you forced to have children?
- thomaswang 7y agoAre you forced to have a job, groom, eat or sleep?
- jobigoud 7y agoYes. If don't eat or sleep you die. These are required activities, not things you can decide to do or not do, so they are not competing for free time.
- thomaswang 7y agoAnorexia heard of it. That's what happens if you choose not to eat. Yes you die but it is a choice (ish, a desease? yes, but stil a choice(of madness)). Being a parent is time forcefully spent. Now one could argue that all free time for a parent of children below a certain age is parenting time,and thus it might make sense to have a checkbox rather than a time slider for parenting time. The point is a parents free time is non existant we simply cannot play games on a pc or code for an extended period of time on weekends or holidays because that comes at the cost of not monitoring your child's daily consumption of soap (it should be zero, but you will be amased), or you could lock them in a padded room (illegal) so that you can code/game whatever in peace. The point is, a child makes sure that you never have a split second while they are awake to do what you want because they will literally sit on your hands and pull your hair (and you will come to love it in a bizarre way) that's just how it is (for a while)
- jimnotgym 7y agoNaN! I have immeasurable free time Either I need to revisit my work life balance or we hugged this site to death. Or both
- alltakendamned 7y agoI 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.
- lez 7y agoThis is largely effected by the nutrition / mental / health state of the individual. I personally spend a lot of time (cooking, sports, spend time researching mineral/vitamin/other supplements), and it took me around 4 years to find the things my body needs. I am now very rarely "energy exhausted" and mentally clear the whole day, having more energy than 10 years ago. The message here is that one can spend time and pick up habits that make the body function better, with a good chance that the efforts will pay off one day.
- alltakendamned 7y agoAh well, being fit certainly helps, and I'm pleased you found what works for you! But so does being early twenties instead of in your forties (not assuming anything here, just stating age is one of many factors). If only aging could be solved by taking a multivitamin :) And while I agree that taking care of one self is important, I want to touch upon a more fundamental point. I am perfectly OK with taking rest from time to time, or taking it easy, or just sitting back with my feet up enjoying a good book, or a glass of wine with my wife. There's in my opinion little need to always be on 100% and it's perfectly OK if people aren't. I know this opinion is like cursing in church on this forum, but many people would do well being nice to themselves a little more.
- kungtotte 7y agoI think the point of this calculator is to show people that there's time to take those breaks. I filled it in and over-estimated a bunch of areas and it still said I have 11 hours of free time each week. That's a whole lot of books and wine that I can enjoy and still meet all of my existing priorities including spending time with my kid. That's freeing in a way, it tells me that when I feel pressed for time it's really all in my head and taking an hour to read a book shouldn't be a problem if I just take a few minutes and prioritize my time. Also it's probably useful for some people to see how much time is spent on work and commuting relative to other parts of their life. If they truly have no time to read a book but work+commute is eating up more than 50% of their days, maybe it's time to do something about that and fix one or both parts of that equation (move closer to work or change jobs to get closer to home, and work fewer hours)?
- danielecook 7y agoA 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.
- jasonkester 7y agoI 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.
- drankula3 7y agoI'm currently learning Django to do exactly this. How did you handle monetization and marketing, if you don't mind me asking?
- arvinsim 7y agoThe 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.
- vagab0nd 7y agoThis is what I'm trying to achieve. Do you have any tips on how you managed to do it? Did you have to change your lifestyle to e.g. reduce living cost, etc.?
- imedadel 7y agoSo I'm 20 and I've only got 26.5 hours of free time each week. I think this is... terrible?
- SuperNinKenDo 7y agoIn answer to your question: 5 hours.
- puttycat 7y agoThis 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?”
- ginko 7y agoI would put eating/cooking in the free time category. Arguably sleeping as well.
- every1elseiswng 7y agoIf 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 7y agoDamn I only got 116. How do you avoid sleep completely?
- whyweschleep 7y agoAh, 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.
- darepublic 7y agoParenting.
- HNLurker2 7y agoExpected an article about how do deal with boring free time. Got an existential crisis instead