ClearLife TGIF :: What Would You Do With 1,000 (Extra) Hours?
Weekly Drop || #5
“Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.” - Chinese Proverb
We all know our time here is limited, but every once in a while we are reminded of just how scarce our time is. It could be a health scare, the loss of someone we love, or even a bit of media that brings this awareness home. A YouTube video, “The Time You Have (in Jelly Beans)” (a mere 2:44, and worth each second), shifted my perspective almost a decade ago. I guess seeing how short our life is changed a lot for me.
Time Flies
“Mom, I can’t believe sixth grade is almost over,” my twelve year old son exclaimed more than once last week. “The years seem to move faster as we age,” I replied. It turns out research confirms that it can feel like time goes by faster and faster as we get older, a result of our lessening diversity of daily stimulation, learning, and activities.
There are things that we can do to feel like time is passing more slowly: add new experiences to our weeks, disrupt routines—including walking or driving different routes, and incorporate new sensory experiences to our days. We can also incorporate mindfulness practices to our routines to help us feel more present—actually in each moment.
1,000 Hours of Found Time
That’s all nice, but what if you were gifted 1,000 hours a year to do anything you want?
To put that into context, 1,000 hours in “around the clock” time is 41 days and 16 hours. This works out to about six weeks or just under three hours per day spread out over an entire year, effectively doubling our average annual discretionary time.
What could we do with 1,000 extra hours?
According to the State Department’s foreign service language training program, English speakers can reach general professional fluency in related languages such as French, Italian, or Swedish in 600 to 750 hours and slightly more difficult ones, German, Swahili, or Indonesian, in 900 hours.
Other things we could do with 1,000 hours include write a novel, learn a coding language, train for a marathon, launch a community nonprofit, become a certified yoga teacher, learn how to play an instrument, and read at least 400 books.
What Does This Have To Do With ClearLife?
“Found time” ended up being an unexpected upside of ClearLife for me. When I put my favorite dimmer (evening drinks) down in 2017, it wasn’t long before I realized my relationships were evolving, my health was improving, and I was saving money. Almost a year had passed before I realized how much more life I felt like I was living. It felt like more hours in the day. I see now it was.
When we pause a habit that is taking us away from presence, we free up a lot of our time, especially when the habit a daily (or close to daily) one. It’s not just the time spent doing the thing, it’s the preparation time, the time we spent dimmed or tuned out, recovery time, the fixing-things-we-may-have-done-while-not-fully present time, and the thinking-about-whether-we-should-do-the-thing time.
In my case, regular “social” drinking was pretty time consuming. The preparation time (making plans to meet out or host boozy events), the actual drinking time (not all wasted, as there were some great times drinking), the being just-buzzed-enough-to-not-do-anything-else-well time (reading (myself or with the kids), writing, or something creative), and then of course, the recovery time (sleeping in on weekends, skipping exercise, unhealthy breakfasts, the lost hours while shaking off the booze in my system from the night before)—it added up!
This does not include the time wasted thinking about drinking, that little conversation we are having inside of ourselves, distracting us from the present moment: Should I drink tonight? I guess, so, everyone else will be. If I do, I’ll just have one… or a glass of water for each drink. Maybe I’ll wait to start until a bit later, so it is less drinks over less hours. It’s a weeknight, I guess I can wait until the weekend? Who cares, I’ll just have one. One more won’t hurt. And so on and on and on.
In my case, I did the math. I figure on average I was spending about three hours a day on the above, roughly 1,000 hours a year.
It’s Not Just Booze or Drugs
There are many things that we can limit or stop that can “give us” a lot of time back. Social media is a big one. The average American spends 2 hours and 31 minutes a day on social media and this leaps to at least 7 hours per day for teenagers. Other “time expensive” habits include scrolling news, surfing the Internet, getting stoned, watching TV, online shopping, and gambling. Remember, it’s not just the thing, is the time around the thing too. We can add that all up and multiply it by our best guess of days per year we maintain these habits. It can be pretty shocking.
Who Cares?
Not everyone. When I was in my twenties I certainly didn’t. I was modeling and/or in law school for most of that decade. I loved my late nights, long weekend mornings sleeping in, and slow greasy breakfasts with friends, at least on the days I wasn’t studying or working. In my thirties it was more like survival as I was ramping a career and starting a family; I wasn’t really thinking about purposefulness or the scarcity of discretionary time (I wish I was).
It seems though, as we get older, not only does it feel like the months and years go faster, there is more we want to experience and do, and well. Or if we are doing less as we age, we at least want our time to be well spent… more quality time with loved ones, or time in nature, or writing, or building something with heart, or simply learning to do less and be more :)
What would you do with 1,000 hours?
Miscellaneous….
Hosting: a donation-based monthlong series on The Journey of Relationships with my beloved Soren Gordhamer. We started on Monday and will continue today with Vanessa Bennett and John Kim (The Angry Therapist). ✨
Noticing: I’m looking forward to joining a Girls Weekend (for one quick night!) later today, in wine country, sober. These intimidated me in my early ClearLife days, much less so now. ❤️
Preparing: to reach out to my network for support around getting my book our into the world now that I’ve crafted the (unexpected) epilogue. Noticing it’s easier for me to help run a multi-billion dollar company than ask a few friends for help in doing something new! 🌱
I bet your girlfriends are all very excited for their special time with you. ;)
Love this one! Thank you Cecily ❤️
Beautiful!!!