Let’s invest our downtime
As the world has been on lock-down, I’ve been thinking about our time at home. It’s a burden, but can it also be an opportunity? Sure, it’s an opportunity to spend time with family, most of us got that on day one. But, I wonder, is this an opportunity for more? Let’s consider a quick thought experiment.
The average commute to work in the US is 26.1 minutes. Most of us spend around an hour a day in our car. But we aren’t right now! Right now, we have an extra five hours a week, assuming our lack of a commute is the only thing that is giving us more time.
Now that we aren’t in an office stopping to chat at a friend’s desk, getting caught in the kitchen while getting coffee, or in meetings that didn’t apply to us, we have more time to get work done. Because we have more time to get work done, we should be more productive and should stop working those “overtime hours” we put in to constantly catch up.
By moving from working 100% in an office to 100% at home, I would guess the average person is saving around 10 hours a week.
Here’s my question. What could you do with ten hours a week? Can you learn to code? Can you learn a language? Can you learn to paint, draw, or play the guitar? Can you take a class or get a certification? Can you write more, read more, learn more, or do more?
With so many difficult things going on in the world, what if we invest our downtime? What if we become better people while we ride this out? Our communities will become better, and our world will be on a better path to recovery.
