You Have Two Extra Days a Week

Have you been feeling like you’re always short on time lately? If you have, you’re far from the only one. And in a way, it’s true. Your time is limited, but you do also have more of it than you think. You’ve simply mislaid it.

To be more specific, you’ve mislaid it in your pocket. If you’re an average smartphone user, you look at your phone 200 times a day, for 45 seconds each time. That’s a total of 2.5 hours. Every day. Which adds up to 17.5 hours in a week. (And these are conservative figures, iPhone users who dare to look at their weekly "Screen Report" is often met by a far higher number.)

A work day is usually thought of as 8 hours long. This means you spend more than two full work days a week looking at your phone.

On average.

Now, we do need our smartphones, for lots of different things. To most of us, they are important, even essential, professional tools. The international networks that many people maintain today would be impossible to keep up with without a smartphone. You are probably even reading this article on your phone.

However, even without knowing you personally, I’m still pretty confident that the majority of those 150 minutes a day aren’t strictly necessary.

So, let’s entertain the idea of eliminating a small portion of them. Not even a large portion. Say you were to leave your smartphone alone just every fourth time you reach for it. That doesn’t sound too unreasonable, does it?

That would still give you 28.5 work days (or 228 hours) each year to spend on something else. 

Think about it. By simply leaving your phone alone one time in four, you’d be giving yourself almost six extra work weeks every year to do great deeds, make new connections, or have inspiring encounters. Or, you could just learn to kayak.

You’ve got time. Plenty of it, in fact. You just have to reclaim it.