Someone said to me recently (and I’ve often said it myself): ‘You spend so much of your life at work…’ (not me, specifically, especially now I’ve gone down to a 32 hour week).   Anyway, I’ve worked it out.

Let’s assume there are about 700,800 hours in a lifetime (24 hours a day x 365 days a year x let’s say 80 years, give or take – given that your life expectancy increases with age and by the time you’ve got past those troublesome childhood years, you can expect to exceed the average lifespan).

Of those hours, you spend 8 hours a day x roundabout 220 days a year (allowing for weekends off, annual leave, statutory leave, sick leave & that day you just sat and looked out of the window) x 45 years (assuming you start at 20 and work full-time until you’re 65 – sure there’ll be unders and overs and anyway who retires at 65 any more?) = 79,200 hours at work.

As a percentage of your total lifetime hours, that’s about 11%. How about that then?   You’ll spend three times that sleeping.