If you consider yourself an average American that means last year you spent 8.6 hours a day sleeping, 3.7 hours working and devoted 5.1 hours to leisure time, half of that time watching television, according to a survey. Tracking the days of working parents with little free time to retirees and teenagers, the national study included a wide spectrum of people. It was conducted to show that this "average" day was the furthest from anyone's actual day.
The Marathon Schedules of Working Parents (ages 25-54) spend:
Any extra time in the day was spent eating, shopping, attending to personal hygiene and doing other miscellaneous activities.
A U.S. telephone survey conducted in 2003 asked 21,000 participants how they spent their last 24 hours. The results confirmed some preconceived gender speculations surrounding the amount of work women do around the home, even in two-working parent households.
The Women Carry the Majority of the Household Load:
Men were shown to make up for their slacking at home by working more hours -- 8.3 hours compared to 7.7 hours for women. Men also enjoy more leisure time, with 5.4 hours compared to the 4.8 hours for women. This number dropped to 4.0 leisure hours for women with children under the age of six.
A Breakdown of Other Activities
Scientists are hoping to use these results as a way to put a price tag on the amount of unpaid work as a measurement tool of total economic output, income and productivity. They also want to use it to evaluate American's quality of life.
Currently, U.S. gross domestic product shoots up when a family puts a child in day care or sends their laundry to the dry cleaners. On the other hand, the GDP drops when parents have to cancel day care or spend time doing their own laundry.
Yahoo! News September 15, 2004
The booming number of two-household incomes, trying to find extra hours in the day to care for the family and do household chores has turned time into a valuable commodity. Even though it's not stressed in the article, TV watching has become as programmed and common as turning on the light switch upon entering the home.
I stopped watching TV when the Bulls finished their last of six world championships with Michael Jordan. Answering e-mails and reviewing articles on the Net is more than enough to keep me busy.
However, this week I did have basic cable installed, as it was essentially "free" with my high speed Internet cable access. It seemed reasonable to have, especially when I am on TV, as it was disappointing to not even be able to tape myself on TV since I didn't have cable access.
Anyway, I diverge. The key here is that many of us say we don't watch TV but the true reality is that the average is nearly FOUR HOURS a day. What a waste of one of our most precious resources, time. If one is going to invest that much time in TV, they should at least exercise for one hour while watching it.
Most of the country is in serious exercise debt and claims that they have little time to exercise. Well, maybe if they watched less TV they could exercise a bit.
Aside from limiting your time to exercise and communicate with important people in your life, most people don't realize that watching TV actually puts you into debt. You can click on this link to read the dozens of other articles that I have posted on the negative effects of watching TV. If you can't get off of the TV habit then please consider using my free EFT manual to help provide you with the motivation to rid yourself of this dangerous addiction.
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