Most people work a five day work week and that brings us back down the normal Twenty Four hours in a day. OK, I can do simple math and perhaps I could have just stated plainly, there is Twenty Four hours in a whole day. Everyone knows this and it makes for a boring post to just kick things off like that and I'm not looking to stop here at just Twenty Four hours in a day.
So its been said that people should get at least Eight hours of sleep a day. What is said and what really happens is two different things of course. So our day is knocked down to just Sixteen hours that we are, say awake and engaged in the world and others all around us. The time we are asleep is our time to rest, recharge, dream, and reload for the next day.
OK, your awake and what is next, well we are talking about a work week, so lets get some things done and earn some money. The goal and most of the world works... oh, we work Eight hours a day and Five days a week for a total of Forty hours and get paid for doing all of this.
There goes another Eight hours in the day. So we've used Eight for rest and Eight for work and know we have a magic Eight hours left for other stuff. What is so magic about it? For starters, I'd say most of us don't have a full magic Eight hours to ourselves, family, and/or friends.
Lets get back to work for example, we are paid for the Eight hours, but we are there longer than that and for most people at least an extra half hour each day. This is so we can take a lunch break and we don't get paid during our lunch break. So this half hour has to come from someplace, guess it comes from the left over Eight hours.
Are we done? Of course not and I'd say we have more of a time leak to the magic Eight hour day. Fact is most of us don't work at home and have to commute to work and that is going there and back. I'm willing to bet a good average is at least a half hour to drive to and a half hour to drive back home.
What's left over, take our magic Eight hours and subtract One and half hours and we are left with just Six and half hours out of each work day to take care of other things that don't require work or sleep. This means our work day is truly a Nine and a half hour work day and this is provided we all work only a standard Eight hour day, what if we stay an extra hour or two each day.
That time has to come from somewhere and that means we sleep less or give up more of the, lets call it free time. Is it really free? I suppose it is. Our magic Eight hours a day might really be closer to only half of that depending how hard we work or we sleep a lot less and that makes it harder to work or stay awake during our free time.
It was Robert Owen (not related to me, as far as I know and I don't want to spend my free time to find out if he is really) who coined the phrase "Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest" in 1817. Funny thing is back in 1810 he really wanted a Ten hour day.
I'm sure glad its not a standard Ten hour day over the Eight hour plan in place, we'd only have about Two or Four hours to ourselves. I guess there's not much magic to an Eight hour day the more I think of it. I can tell you this, if I'm not working or sleeping, then I want to make the most of the hours I have to myself, my family, and/or my friends.
