According to a recent study, people tend to exaggerate the number of hours they work each week, and people who work the most tend to exaggerate the most.

A number of possible reasons have been put forward to explain this, including the idea that people want to impress others with how hard they work. But I think it's also possible that for many people, it just honestly FEELS like they're working more than they really are. I think this occurs when people don't really have a handle on their “spending” when it comes to time.

So let's break this down with an example and crunch some numbers. We can agree that we all get the same number of hours in a week: 168. We also all need to eat and sleep; let's say that Bio Time takes up 77 of those hours. Then there is Core Time, for work and things related to work such as commuting time, which we'll estimate at 45 hours (your mileage may vary). That still leaves 46 hours of what I call Prime Time, and how you use it can make all the difference in how much you get out of life.

How much of your Prime Time is being eaten up by dealing with noise – the stressful recurring issues that suck the life from you? How much is just spent mindlessly watching a re-run of a show you didn't really care for much the first time? By contrast, how much Prime Time do you spend on the things that nourish your soul, give you renewed energy, and allow you to grow? Things like time with family, or reading, or working on projects you love?

In other words, those 46 hours are where you make or break your life. Again, it often doesn't FEEL like we have that much time, and in fact your Core Time may very well take up a more sizeable portion of your life. But the fact remains that you DO have Prime Time hours available to you each week, and it may be more time than you realize. This is time that is entirely in your control and it is important that you DO take control of it.

After all, we all have the same number of hours, but not all hours are created equal. Prime Time is where you have the flexibility and autonomy to make the most choices. It's where you decide the kind of life you're going to live. If you let those hours slip by unattended, you're likely to be like the people in that survey who have a skewed view of where the time of their life is going.


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