Statistics for the Worker Bee
I was curious about what percentages of our life are spent doing what over long periods of time, such as a career that we might have for most of our life. That and I'm bored.
Let's lay the groundwork first and say our imaginary Joe Nobody lives to be 70 years of age. Cause of death? Let's say a freak bobcat attack, because those will do some damage to most of the elderly and small children. In our case, it'll do just fine. A fitting death for a pseudo-workaholic that retired early.
Joe Nobody has a career. He works an average 40 hours a week and will work 35 years before retirement. This, of course, is not a character of my generation as we will have to work double that amount of time until we are able to die, I mean, retire. This will do fine for now.
At the ripe age of 70 years old, our Joe would have lived a total of 611,520 hours. Assuming, of course, nothing significant happens to our planet and our precious orbit that would increase or decrease the hours per day in the next 70 years, let alone the next 70 million, we will use the 24 hour format.
Joe is now suddenly 70 years old and worked 35 years of his life, but what percentage is that really of his life? Just by saying 35 years our of 70 sounds as if it's most of your life, but is it really? Interesting results resulted when I combined my brain with elementary math.
Assuming Joe Officedrone, he took his wife's last name at some point, worked 8 hours a day five days a week. A regular old 9-5 position. The American dream, I guess. Joe Officedrone would have only spent 11% of his life working if he lived to be 70 years old. This isn't all that bad when you consider he may sleep for 33% of his life with an average of 8 hours a night.
Now what if Joe Nobody, recently divorced, worked for 50 years out of those 70 years. A lesser man would shout, "That's over 70%!" I say nay, have that man put on the rack and don't stop until his toes touch his scalp. Assuming the same position would be over 50 years, it turns out to only be a staggering 17% of Joe's life spent working.
This doesn't sound that bad, but how many of my generation will only need one job? What if Tim Screwedbyoldwhitemen, it's Scandinavian, has to work two part-time jobs to average 40 hours a week? Worse, what about a full-time job and a part-time job? Let's crunch those horrifying statistics.
Tim works on average 65 hours per week, 40 hours a week from his primary concern and 15 hours from his secondary hassle. Let's say because of the advancements in medicine and science, Tim lives 85 miserable years, but works for 68 of those years. All because my generation will probably have no retirement plan.
Now, to explain a bit, let's say Tim has a steady permanent position for most of his life, but has his own little business where he works 15 hours a week. He makes candles, I don't know. He lives a total of 742,560 hours at 85 years old. At these numbers, Tim would have worked 31% of his life away making ends meet. He lived paycheck to paycheck his entire life and ended up committing suicide.
While Tim was screwed, Joe Nobody got lucky, but let's return to the early retiree again. If Joe worked only 35 years of his 70 years, but worried about his job, on average, 3 hours a day Monday through Thursday, 1 hour on Friday, and 4 hours on Sunday, what would be the damage?
Well, Joe spent 5% of his life worrying about his job. This adds in a tremendous amount of stress, shortening his life span to 55. That's right, Joe dies from a heart attack instead of retiring at the tender age of 55. That changes a bit around, believe it or not. At 55, he lived a total of 480,480 hours, which a very lumpy and fun total.
Though, this only brings up his average life worked percentage to 15%, he worried about his dumb job for an adjusted 6% of his life. I think Tim's stress percentage might beat this exponentially. For a grand finale, let's see if Tim could live to be 85 without some really advanced medication to keep his blood pressure reasonable.
Now, because Tim has his own business, he worries about that almost every day. He worries about it at work because he has to go home and make the candles, he can't simply go home to relax. He worries about it on the weekend, even Saturday, because that is the most free time he has to make candles. Tim worries about candle making at least 6 hours a day, every day, but doesn't worry about his full-time job when he's making candles or when he is home.
Tim worries about his stupid candle making business for 20% of his 85 years. Tim kills himself by making a giant candle, crawling inside it before it hardens, and has a blow torch rigged like in Home Alone that starts the wick, which will then, eventually, allow time to release his now waxy body back into the world. Sort of like those candles that reveal bony hands after the wax melts around Halloween.
Tim had problems.
The morale of this story? Try to keep the job worries below 6% and the total time worked below 15% or prepare to end up like Poor Tom. I mean, Poor Tim. Damn you Led Zeppelin for rocking so hard.
Damn you.
