How many free hours do you have on a work day?

[Ns1]

I just wrote out my daily schedule and not including the 1 hour lunch break I have, I have exactly 3 open unaccounted for hours between 8p - 11p every night. And by unaccounted I mean that's the second I get home until the second my next official responsibility starts.

I've allowed myself a luxurious 5.5 hours of sleep in this schedule.

Any minute I'm stuck in traffic or I use to pick up dinner takes away from those 3 hours. Is this pretty much par for adulting or am I just doing it wrong?

 

[BoomerD]

Rofl...work day...rofl

 

[rh71]

I work at home and am project/deadline based. So lots. It's really the only reason I'm still here after 17 years. I get to do whatever like taking my kids to appointments or sports at like 4pm if I have to. I've been known to go out for lunch hockey at the local rink for a couple hours too.

For someone like my wife who's out the door at 630am and gets home at 515pm, you still have to account for her cooking dinner and cleaning up so she's not really free until like 7pm. Bed by 10. I tell her all the time it's ok to do take-out more often.

 

[BoomerD]

Gawd...I hate srs answers...

Waaaaaaaaaay back when I actually worked for a living...I generally crawled out of bed about 0230, out the door between 0330 and 0400...so I could drive ~100 miles for an 0600 start. I rarely worked less than 10 hour days...usually 12 (or more) and considered it a good day if I was home by 8 pm...where I'd grab a shower, maybe a bite to eat, crawl back in bed...and do it all again the next day. It always seemed like I would pass myself going the other way by Thursday...and I al.ost always worked 6 day weeks...with a smattering of 5's and 7's in the mix...

 

[thejunglegod]

I just wrote out my daily schedule and not including the 1 hour lunch break I have, I have exactly 3 open unaccounted for hours between 8p - 11p every night. And by unaccounted I mean that's the second I get home until the second my next official responsibility starts.


Any minute I'm stuck in traffic or I use to pick up dinner takes away from those 3 hours. Is this pretty much par for adulting or am I just doing it wrong?

Pretty much the same with me and I'm assuming for most adults as well who work in an office. I usually make up more time for myself by sleeping late but I'm assuming it won't be helpful health wise in the long run.
It all gets me so depressed that I have to keep doing this for another 20 years or so. Man I hope I can think of something which can help me work from home.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I'm not sure if you're stating that correctly, or you just have a really miserable schedule. Are you saying that you get off work at 8PM, drive home, do whatever, and that you're asleep by 11PM? If so, you have a _really_ miserable schedule.

 

[Ns1]

I get home by 8pm assuming I don't hit traffic / do OT / pick up dinner.

I have to take care of a bunch of stuff 11-12 and then I sleep 5.5 hours and do it all over again.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Depends on my shift. My "commute" is 15 minutes at most. It's actually like 7 minutes but I try to give myself 15 as it only takes one idiot driver to make it longer, like someone that tries to turn left in a stupid place.

I won't count morning as that is just getting up ready for work, so if I get off at 5, get home by 5:15, normally go to bed at like 11-12 if I work the next day so that gives me a bit over 6 hours. Whatever time it takes to make supper will cut into that of course. I don't really count the hours after 11 though as that is really when I try to go to bed, I just happen to procrastinate and go to bed later most of the time.

On a 12 hour shift I get home at around 7:15 and really try my best to be in bed by 10 because I also have to get up an hour earlier the next morning, so that gives me only a few hours. I normally don't eat supper when I'm on 12h shifts, I try to take my lunch later instead.

I prefer working 12 hour shifts though, as the more 12s I work the more full days off I have. I rather have nice long stretches of hours to do stuff than to try to cram it in a few hours after work. That and after a full day of work I don't really feel like doing anything, whether it's 8h or 12h, it's still a full day of work and comes up to the same imo. The act of having to get up early makes me tired for the rest of the day, too.

 

[XavierMace]

I generally leave work on time and live 5 minutes from the office. No family/kids, so after factoring in making dinner and any other tasks (cleaning/laundry/etc), that still generally leaves 6 hours to do whatever even with 8 hours sleep. Then there's the not great days like yesterday where something figuratively blows up and I was at work for 19 hours but that's the exception not the norm.

 

[Kaido]

I just wrote out my daily schedule and not including the 1 hour lunch break I have, I have exactly 3 open unaccounted for hours between 8p - 11p every night. And by unaccounted I mean that's the second I get home until the second my next official responsibility starts.

I've allowed myself a luxurious 5.5 hours of sleep in this schedule.

Any minute I'm stuck in traffic or I use to pick up dinner takes away from those 3 hours. Is this pretty much par for adulting or am I just doing it wrong?

I've been doing a lot of evening projects at work lately, but when I'm working day shift, this is my preferred routine:

4am to 6am: Morning routine
6am to 7am: Commute
7am to 4pm: Work
4pm to 5pm: Commute (sometimes longer with traffic)
5pm to 7pm: Free time
7pm to 8pm: Bedtime routine, then lights out

I like the weekends to be free for family & personal time, although it depends on work projects...a lot of IT stuff can only be taken down on nights & weekends. But yeah, your situation sounds about right for a working adult. It's easier if you have a fun job and/or you get to nef during the day. I babysit computer installations often so there's a lot of waiting between clicks to read or post throughout the day.

I think in a lot of ways it's a Good Thing to be busy with work. If you look at people with non-standard schedules, especially celebrities where they make a lot of money & never have to work again if they don't want to, they get bored & then they get into trouble because that's just human nature. They go on the party circuit because they can stay up all night because they don't have to be at work the next morning, and the recurring story is that they die of drug overdoses or alcohol intoxication or whatever. I mean, the list just goes on forever...Prince, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Heath Ledger, etc:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_from_drug_overdose_and_intoxication

Plus, I go a little nuts when I go without working too long...I get bored easy, and I am not a productive person by myself at home. It's not like I would do anything meaningful if I were to retire today...probably just nef more, tbh.

 

[Kaido]

That and after a full day of work I don't really feel like doing anything, whether it's 8h or 12h, it's still a full day of work and comes up to the same imo. The act of having to get up early makes me tired for the rest of the day, too.

Yeah, available energy weighs heavily on time available. You may have 5 hours of free time at night, but if you're dragging, then it's going to be fairly unproductive time because you're not going to feel like doing anything.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That and knowing that I have limited time makes me less likely to want to start something, like I'm not going to prep to work on a project or something knowing that I need to keep checking time and that my time is limited. So after work I tend to just relax or not do much, I save my days off for doing productive stuff. (or try... sometimes I get lazy. )

 

[lxskllr]

I've always avoided working ot when possible, so work takes up 9.5-10 hours, and the rest of the time's mine. When the girl was here, I had parent duties, but there was nothing else I'd rather do. It was a responsibility, but not work. I've been getting a lot of fuck off time at the office lately. I play around on the computer, or whatever. So that extends my home time.

 

[renz20003]

I try to work as little as possible, any time I can leverage getting off early I will.

 

[Grooveriding]

I live about 10 minutes by subway away from work, so generally about 3-4 hours, even with working 10-12 hours a day.

 

[gorcorps]

Waaaaaaaaaay back when I actually worked for a living...

Quit rubbing it in you retired SOB!

 

[gorcorps]

My work schedule isn't really fixed, but I usually have from 5pm to 10pm on weeknights. That can shift depending on how early I want to go to bed, or if it's a later work day, but that's average I'd say. I also have an hour in the morning, as I got into the habit of waking up earlier than I used to and getting ready at a slower pace, without time to actually sit and have a breakfast. I could go back to leaving for work immediately, but I like this better. I'm up earlier dealing with the animals anyway.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Would most people agree that a healthy portion of their day goes into doing parental things?

 

[Exterous]

Mine can vary but this is the baseline
Wake up at 6:15am
Leave for work: 6:55am
Get to work by 7:15am
45min lunch whenever
Done with work at 3:55pm
Home by 4:20pm

And thats pretty much it until bedtime. I looked for a while for a job that didn't have much after hours responsibility. Nothing we do is really all that critical and if you're marginally competent the deadlines are easy to meet so the incidents of "This can't wait until tomorrow" are few and far between (Once this year). We do have 4 scheduled Saturday maintenance days a year but most of us get overtime so I don't mind a notably larger paycheck for that.

I don't regret leaving behind busier schedules at all

 

[Majes]

From 6AM to 3PM im at work, but since I live 10 minutes away I generally get from 3-9 each evening to do what I want. At some point in that time period I have to play with or walk the dog and make/eat dinner but the rest of the time is unstructured.

I have no kids and I don't coach. I run an after school robotics program 1 day a week and I play soccer 1 day a week, but other than that it's pretty much Path of Exile time.

 

[highland145]

I must be doing it wrong. All of my work time is when I'm at home.

 

[K1052]

Up around 6
Out the door by 8:30, walk to work and get there before 9
Lunch around 11:30
Take off about 4
Gym till 5 then walk 5 min home

So pretty much from 5 till 11ish when I go to bed I'm more or less free.

I'm not usually the one doing the cooking since that is the husband's domain and he gets cranky if I mess around in the kitchen too much.

Not a lot of what I do requires me to be physically present at the office but I'm never truly off or on vacation. This is an acceptable tradeoff IMO for the freedom I enjoy in my schedule. Having moved closer to the office also eliminated like 80% of my commute time and I can do it on foot.

 

[purbeast0]

It really depends what you mean by "free" time really. Is it just time not in work? Time that you aren't "doing something" like I routinely go to the gym but I consider it "free" time since I'm doing what I want. Is it when I'm watching my son or making dinner? I consider that free time in the sense that I'm not working but I'm also doing it because I have to.

I typically get up at like 5:45am - 6:15am and leave work by like 2pm or 2:30pm. Then I go to the gym and am home by 4pm.

But then my wife works too and I'm with my toddler until she gets home. When she gets home though it's not like I just hand him off to her or anything. But once he goes to sleep around 8pm or 8:30pm we'll either watch TV or hang out, or she'll do the treadmill and I'll do my own thing, or sometimes I'll just go play video games.

I've been playing a lot of Mario recently in my HT but last night I was playing it on the couch with the Switch in portable mode while she was on the treadmill in the other room.

 

[Red Storm]

Takes 15 minutes to get to work, which starts at 8:30am, ends at 5pm. 15 minutes to get back home, so from ~5:15pm until 7:30am is my time. I usually get 7-8 hours of sleep.

 

[Ns1]

I was way optimistic. 4 hours of sleep is good right?