Have you ever considered how much time you have in your whole life, and how much time you’ve spent on various activities? Suppose you graduated from college at the age of 22, and in the course of your life expect to work about 48 years, bringing you to age 70. Over those 48 years, how much time would you guess you’ve spent on routine activities such as working, sleeping, watching television, recreating, eating, and commuting?

Here’s the typical breakdown, based on various demographic studies and my own calculations:

• Working 16 years
• Sleeping 15 years
• Viewing TV 5-7 years
• Recreation 2-4 years
• Eating 3 years
• Commuting 2 years

Based on data from the research firm Veronis Suhler, the average American will spend 3,571 hours in the course of a year watching television, listening to the radio, reading newspapers, or being online. Since there are only 365 days in the typical year, that means the above activities consume a little less than 10 hours per day!

It’s amazing when you look at the cumulative total of the time you’ll spend engaged in these activities during your productive work life. Suppose that you’re already 30-something and on average will live another 45 years. Thus, you have about 30 waking years left, and about 20 years to accomplish whatever you’re seeking to accomplish. That realization alone may help you focus your time.

If you don’t expect to reach age 80, think again. The Society of Actuaries estimates that if you’re female and you’re 40 years old, your life expectancy exceeds age 85, for males age 80.

Data from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that every 25 years since 1900, the life expectancy of both men and women has increased by about five to seven years. The increase in life expectancy for people born between 1975 and the year 2000 was nearly 10 years).

On average, most people are likely to live longer than they think they will. The realization that you may live much longer than you think necessitates developing some longer-term perspectives about how you want to spend your life.

When Limits Help

With decades to go, it’s easy to get caught in the trap of delaying the activities and events you promised yourself you’d undertake. Whether life seems short and merry or long and boring, there’s only so much of it. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright once observed that people build “most nobly when limitations are at their greatest.” You can use the limits on your time or resources to achieve your most desired accomplishments.

Consider how productive you are, for example, before you leave for a vacation, or consider how well you do on a task when a deadline has been imposed (even though you might not enjoy having the deadline or like the person who imposed it). As the author of many books, I can testify about deadlines. Each contracts imposed deadlines, and these limits actually helped me be productive.

These limits may not always appear helpful or supportive, yet you undoubtedly have many of them confronting you. Here are some examples of limits you may be facing right now:

• You have to pick your kids up by 5:30 p.m. each weekday.
• You have to turn in a work log on Fridays.
• You can work about nine hours daily before your mind turns to mush.
• Your hard drive is almost full, and you won’t spring for a larger drive.
• Your contract is ending in 11 weeks.
• You have only 24 minutes left on your lunch break.
• The oil in your car needs changing after another 300 miles.
• A loved one is nearing the end of his or her life.
• You get paid every two weeks.

What limits do you face in your career or personal life that you could employ to propel yourself to higher productivity? When you learn to harness these for the benefit they provide, you begin to reclaim your time. I suggest that your daily, primary limit be finishing your day so that you leave work at the normal closing hour.

The Time Theft Culprit

After examining the problem for many years, sifting through extensive research, interviewing dozens of people, collecting articles, and tapping the minds of many learned people, I found that the No. 1 element that robs people of their time can be boiled down to a single word: Television.

Is it just my perception, or are people now watching TV at all hours? The plug-in drug has got our culture by the throat. In addition to becoming intellectually numb, are people also becoming deaf? (Preliminary data suggests that rising noise levels on society is resulting in increased hearing loss.)

People are flipping on the television the first moment that they wake up. They get dressed to it. They drink coffee to it. They eat breakfast to it. They shave or put on makeup all while watching television. Then they trot off to work only to return and, before doing nearly anything else, flip their television back on. Unfortunately, this has become the norm.

Consider the findings of TV-Free America, a public service organization in Washington, D.C., that has compiled some rather startling data about television viewers in America.

The average American watches more than four hours of TV each day, equal to two months of non-stop TV-watching per year, and equal to more than 12 solid years of non-stop TV-watching in the life of a person who lives to age 72.

• 66% of Americans regularly watch TV while eating dinner.
• 49% of Americans say they watch too much television.
• 19% of Americans say they’d like to read or visit friends but have no time!

More than 90 million adults watch television at least two hours on any Monday and Tuesday night–that’s at least 360 million viewer-hours. These viewer-hours, if applied elsewhere, could transform the nation. Ah, but you can choose to watch TV whenever you want, can’t you? Or can you? Television is a drug, with many of the same side effects as other drugs. And as the Internet becomes an even more dominating aspect of more people’s lives, it will compete, or merge, with TV to claim your time.

Oblivion Starts Here

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Dr. Neil Postman says that entertainment is the dominant force in public discourse in society, affecting the arts, sciences, politics, religion, and education. Certainly entertainment has a necessary function in your life: It stimulates thinking. It can be liberating to your soul. It can give you a break from the monotony of daily living. Of note, entertainment can free you to explore new ways of thinking, new ideas, and new possibilities.

The harm in being over-entertained–which everyone faces–is that your daily life seems to pale by comparison to what you view on the screen. What is the true cost of entertainment? Certainly your time, and usually your money. You’re willing to trade these because entertainment expressly is not reality. It’s designed to be “superior” to reality–it’s more titillating and more engaging. In a 1978 lecture at Indiana University, the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, boldly stated: “TV does not exist to entertain you. TV exists to sell you things.”

Don’t make the erroneous assumption that watching brain-drain TV or listening to shock-talkers on the radio has no impact on your time. They vacuum up time you could have used doing something worthwhile. Turn them off.

When compared to what you see on the screen, your own life may seem dull and plastic. Instead, it is real and holds great potential. Ultimately, the quality of your life and your memories will depend on what you actively did, not what you passively ingested (such as seeing Titanic for the fourth time). What will you do in the next month to enrich your life-actually enrich it? Who will you meet? What will you risk?

Consider how much time and energy you’re willing to spend with your favorite TV personalities. Now contrast that figure with how much time you actually spend with any of your neighbors. Do you even care about their lives? They are, in fact, flesh-and-blood people with real strengths, real weaknesses, and real lives. They could even become your lifelong friends. Do they offer as much pleasure to you, however, as the fantasy heroes on Star Trek, Matt Damon in his latest role, or super models posing in garments you’ll never own? You might have a reason to like your neighbors: Consider all the expensive stuff they’re not trying to sell you.

“I Only Tune In to Stay Informed”

I know people who habitually watch the nightly news believing that this will make them informed citizens. The problem is, most of what passes for news on television isn’t news. It’s merely a constant rehash of the same stories, over and over.

I’m sorry that there’s drug infestation in society, that too many teenagers get pregnant, and that there are homeless people roaming many cities. Unless you’re going to take action on any of this stuff, however, watching another report about it doesn’t count toward your status as an informed citizen. So, the time you spend watching it is largely wasted.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch any news. Rather, you need to understand the context in which news is presented. News shows are designed to attract viewers so sponsors can sell things, the same as any other show; they heighten the emphasis on some stories and completely ignore others. As long as you understand the limitations of TV news, watch away. Don’t turn off your brain when the news comes on. And remember that there are probably many more productive ways you could be spending that time.

Telekiddies

Maybe you didn’t watch as much television as kids today are watching, but you probably watched a lot, and the habit is ingrained. Kids today, however, are going to set some all-time records. Here’s what TV-Free America found about children’s television viewing:

• The number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children is 38.5.
• The number of minutes per week that the average child watches television is 1,680.
• 50 percent of children ages 6-17 have television sets in their bedrooms.
• 70 percent of day-care centers use TV sets during a typical day.
• 73 percent of parents would like to limit their children’s TV viewing (but apparently they don’t or they can’t).

Dr. James Twitchell, author of The Carnival Culture, notes that most American children begin watching television before they can talk. A child by age 6 will have invested more hours watching television than in speaking with his or her father over an entire lifetime.

New Routines for New Perspectives

As if you’re not watching enough television, what are the chances that you’re turning on the radio, cluttering up your mind from that source as well? Consider a friend of mine who liked to listen to a West Coast shock-jock in the morning. Year after year, my friend Bill was titillated on his way to work by the shock-talk.

In essence, he settled for an electronic fix that briefly took him out of his own life and into some form of contemptuous humor that got him through the next 10 minutes (or however long) on his way to work. After all the years of listening, my friend is not empowered, energized, or any better able to face his day. Bill isn’t alone; this particular shock-jock has become a multimillion-dollar media franchise and has had strong ratings for more than a decade.

If you listen closely to the shock-jocks of the world, you can sometimes detect that they are angry people. They vent their anger through a form of broadcast that has (for whatever reason) become a socially tolerated route to riches.

Instead of listening to the radio on his drive to work, Bill could contemplate what he’d like to achieve for that day. If he has meetings, he could consider some of the points he would like to make. He might visualize having a pleasant lunch with a coworker. He might put on some classical music to ease his mind as he makes his way through the otherwise-unforgiving rush-hour traffic.

If he consciously chooses to play the radio, maybe he’ll switch to a provocative news magazine-type show where issues are covered with some depth and perspective. Perhaps he’ll tune into something that truly stimulates his intellect.

Of course, he has the option of playing CDs. He can listen to famous speeches, motivational programs, or entire books on disk. He can play recordings of famous old-time radio programs or listen to the Bible on CD. By applying a modicum of creativity, he can turn his commuting time into something special. He can turn his use of the television into something special.

Bill has many different pockets of time available. He also has many options to determine how he spends them. So do you.

10 Steps to Kick Electronic Addiction

1. Go a whole weekend without turning on a radio or television.
2. Call your friends (both local and out-of-town) one evening per week instead of watching any television.
3. Return to hobbies such as stamp collecting, playing a musical instrument, gardening, or playing word games one other weeknight instead of watching TV.
4. Allow yourself to selectively watch two hours of programming each Saturday and Sunday for one month.
5. Permit yourself one high-quality video per weekend during another month. The video has to inspire, inform, reflect history, be biographical, or be otherwise socially redeeming. Stop watching shoot-em-ups, chase scenes, and films that titillate but add little to your life.
6. If you walk or jog with an iPod or mp3 player, undertake these exercises three times in a row without such a device so you can experience another way to jog: naturally taking in what you pass on your trip.
7. Look for others seeking to wean themselves from electronics. Is there a book discussion group? How about a bowling league, outing club, or biking group?
8. Attend sporting events rather than viewing the same type of event on television. Watching a good high school baseball team or women’s collegiate tennis match can be as rewarding as watching major-league baseball or Wimbledon, respectively. And you visibly support the athletes by being there.
9. Recognize that the number of videos, CDs, computer games, and other electronic items competing for your attention exceeds the time you have in life to pay homage to them.
10. Recognize that rightly or wrongly, you’ve been programmed since birth to tune in to electronic media for news, information, entertainment, and diversion. It’s by no means your only option.

Easy Math for Reclaiming Your Time

While the cumulative impact of being hooked on electronic media is considerable, the cumulative impact of doing what you don’t like to do, such as household tasks, is equally insidious.

Recall the example of your 48-year career – graduating college at age 22 and working until age 70. Here’s a quick way to see that you need to delegate or cast off those things you don’t like to do. Any activity in which you engage for only 30 minutes a day in the course of your 48-year productive work life will take one solid year of your life! Any activity in which you engage for only 60 minutes a day will take two solid years of your 48 years. How can this be so?

Think of it as a mini math lesson most of us never had in school: Numbers That Really Mean Something. One half-hour is to 24 hours as one hour is to 48 hours. That’s true by the good old commutative principle of arithmetic. Likewise, one hour is to 48 hours as one year is to 48 years.

When you consume one-forty-eighth of your day (only 30 minutes out of 24 hours) the cumulative effect over 48 years is to consume one year of your 48 years. There’s no way around it. If you clean your house, on average, for 30 minutes a day, then in the course of 48 years you’ve spent the equivalent of one solid year, nonstop, cleaning your house.

If you can’t stand cleaning your house (or something else you don’t like) for an average of 30 minutes a day, stop doing it. Don’t let your house get filthy; hire somebody to clean your house, clean it yourself less often, or find some other alternative. Why? Because the time in your life is being drained; the cumulative impact of doing what you don’t like to do, as illustrated above, is that your precious years are being consumed. This is time you simply cannot reclaim under any scenario.

“Well,” you say, “that’s fine to pay somebody to clean the house, but ultimately I’ll be paying people for all kinds of things I don’t like to do, just so I can have more time.” Exactly.

What things do you know you need to stop doing because they are taking up valuable time in your life? Here are some suggestions:

• Cleaning the house.
• Reading the newspaper every day. If it makes you late for work or prevents you from handling higher-priority activities, only do it now and then.
• Cutting the grass, or any other yard work. Fixing your car.
• Cooking.
• Reading junk mail because it’s addressed to you.
• Reading every godforsaken e-mail message zapped over to you.
• Answering the phone.
• Confusion Contusion

If you enjoy some of these activities, by all means keep doing them. Perhaps you can do them a little less; perhaps there’s another way to proceed. Your goal is to delegate or eliminate those tasks or activities which you can’t stand doing. One author advises, “Don’t manage something if you can eliminate it altogether.” Not bad advice.

To Summarize:

• You’re probably going to live longer than you think, but it will be to no avail if your days continue to race by full of frustration and the same old stuff.
• To the extent you can reduce your television viewing, you’ll experience an abundance of extra time in your life.
• The cumulative impact of doing what you don’t like to do is profound. A 30-minute, 20-minute, or even 10-minute savings per day is significant and increases the amount of discretionary time you have in your life.
• Don’t manage what you can eliminate altogether; simplify what you can’t eliminate.