What is Time Worth?

Alexis Gilley

“Time is money.” Time is something most people take for granted in life, as it is not something that has a specific end date. In life humans will either conduct positive ways of spending their time or waste it away. Time determines many things, when you wake up, when you go to sleep, when you eat, and the extra time you get to do whatever you want. Still only some people understand the value of time.

With a poll taken in 2019, Americans on average spend 35 minutes on their commute to get to work. In a year that would mean 152 hours, or 6 and a little less than half a day people spend driving. That is assuming you take off Saturdays and Sundays. Most jobs commonly take a good amount of driving to get to but it is good to realize when something is unecessarly consuming your valuable time, like driving for an extended period of time.

In 2019 a study was done showing that 16-24 year olds spend on average 3 hours a day on social media, meaning they spend about 1095 hours, or 18.25 days consumed entirely by a digital world. Your 365 day year just turned into a 347 day year. Another projection for the usage of social media predicts that adults will average around 6 years and 8 months in their life on social media.

Another way people often throw away their time is procrastinating. In a poll consisting of about 2200 people, they claimed that they had spent about 2-3 hours a day procrastinating. Which will be about 52 days a year your life is thrown away. Every seven years that means you have spent a combined time of a year of your life procrastinating on pointless things.

So how much is time worth? When going about life people should decide what activities are important and are worth doing. Rather than procrastinating, driving, or spending an unnecessary amount of time in the digital world, enjoy an hour of your day back.