44 Hours, Give or Take
Ayodeji Awosika offers amazing insights here about making the most out of the time we have to help change our lives. He offers a magical number of 44 hours. Once you take away the essential functions of life — sleep, eating, bathroom use, self-care, work, and so forth, you have about 44 hours per week, give or take, to spend as you choose each week. This is approximate 6.3 hours per day.
How we choose to use that time is a key factor in the fulfillment, happiness, and peace of mind we find in our lives.
Are there ways to stretch the essence of an hour beyond its mere time value? Sometimes we can make an hour worth twice that as measured by tasks completed or riches gathered? What if we are multi-tasking? Or what if we are simply buttering both sides of the bread at once without the tedium involved with multi-tasking? Since scientists often warn that multi-tasking is not our natural way of functioning optimally, so many opportunities arise where we are able to do multiple things at once in a way they meld together into a single point of focus. Vocalists can practice singing in the shower, for instance, or so many people might even complete projects or solve problems in their sleep.
What about time spent in the aid of friends, the service of our fellow humans and beyond humans, and working for the betterment of the greater world? These efforts to make a difference in the lives of others and the world certainly can yield lasting, immeasurable impacts. Sometimes it might even be an hour set aside to help a friend in need, to volunteer with a local charitable organization, or to advocate for social and human rights issues around the globe. How vast might the ripple be that is borne from that hour of charity, service, and love?
And is it not such a marvelous thing that so many healthy and productive activities actually have the potential to literally harvest more hours for our lives. Let us remember potential here because no amount of time is ever guaranteed for our lives. But so many activities that boost physical, mental, and spiritual health actually can be main factors in adding years to our lives. Consistent exercise can help boost elasticity and endurance in older adults. Also, maintaining healthy diets and body weight also are strongly correlated to longevity. These discoveries directly contrast with our common attitudes towards a healthier lifestyle — it just takes too much time to cook a healthy wholesome meal or take a half hour or more out of every day to exercise. But an hour used so constructively to help our health(as well as the health of others and the greater world) can certainly be an hour earned.
On the other side of the coin, there can be ways that those extra hours are misspent or lost. Certainly, we may all jump to list those common time-wasters from our current digitized and technological age — these include smartphone scrolling, online streaming binging, or excessive social media and email checking. All of these great modern day blessings can be used in a balanced manner to bring numerous benefits. Also among the time suckers are those traditional detractors that have always been with us. How many hours are lost to unnecessary tensions from toxic relationships or environments? How many hours fall out of our view from excessive worry or overdwelling on negative, destructive emotions? Certainly, there is more to life than any of these negative time-suckers. Ways to rebalance and rediscover the unlimited riches unfolding in each second include simply pressing the pause button on a regular basis to rediscover positive energy and also turning off autopilot to actually be present in each moment.
6.3 hours each day, or 44 hours per week. That is how much time Awosika and others postulate each person has that is truly theirs. How we choose to use those hours is up to us. But just like with so many other things, these amazing insights are hardly scratching from the surface of the topic at hand. In what ways can we stretch the essence of each given hour, rather than letting it slip away like the sand in those age-old hourglasses? How do each of us meet the challenge of capturing but even a small part of the timelessness at the heart of the ideally thousands and thousands of hours we are blessed with in our lives?
