I found a neat report on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics website which outlines how people spend various hours of their day. I thought it would be neat to make a little comparison tool for this, to compare how you spend your hours to the “average US citizen.” So here it is. Here’s a brief description of each field and how it works:
- Activity is the name of the activity. “–” means it’s a sub-activity of the previous activity, so ideally, each parent activity will have at least as many hours listed as the sum of the child activities.
- # Hours is how many hours, per week, that YOU do the particular activity. You don’t have to be fully engaged while you’re doing this activity because…
- % Dedication indicates how engaged you are (as a percentage, 0-100) to the particular activity. If you’re 100% engaged in sleeping when you sleep, for example, you can enter 100 here. If you multi-task for many activities, you’ll enter lower percentages for those activities.
- How you compare indicates how you compare to the average US citizen. A value of “1” here would indicate you do this activity exactly as much as the average citizen, while a value of .5 would indicate you do the activity half as much and a value of 2 would indicate you do the activity twice as much.
| Activity | # Hours | % Dedication (0-100) | How you compare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Care Activities | |||
| — Sleeping | |||
| Eating and drinking | |||
| Household activities | |||
| — Housework | |||
| — Food preparation and cleanup | |||
| — Lawn and garden care | |||
| — Household management | |||
| Purchasing goods and services | |||
| — Consumer goods and purchases | |||
| — Professional and personal care services | |||
| Caring for and helping household members | |||
| — Caring for and helping household children | |||
| Caring for and helping nonhousehold members | |||
| — Caring for and helping nonhousehold adults | |||
| Working and work-related activities | |||
| — Working | |||
| Educational activities | |||
| — Attending class | |||
| — Homework and research | |||
| Organizational, civic, and religious activities | |||
| — Religious and spiritual activities | |||
| — Volunteering (organizational and civic activities) | |||
| Leisure and sports | |||
| — Socializing and communicating | |||
| — Watching television | |||
| — Participating in sports, exercise, and recreation | |||
| Television calls, mail, and e-mail | |||
| Other activities, not elsewhere classified |