Where does all the time go? Some surprising math.

There rarely seems to be enough time during the workweek to get everything done. Yet, many of us would be surprised at how much of our available time is habitually spent on pursuits of potentially questionable return, once we pause to notice.

Take, for example, our social media habits.

Various studies estimate U.S. adults spend an average of approximately two hours and twenty minutes per day on social media in all its forms, from “old-fashioned” web surfing to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the like. We might spend a few minutes scrolling in the morning before and during breakfast, a few more minutes while commuting, during breaks or lunch, before and after dinner, and before going to sleep at night. A series of minor allocations of time and attention that don’t seem to add up to much.

But they do.

Let’s conservatively estimate that we--busy, educated, organizational leaders—only spend an average of 90-minutes each weekday on social media of any form. That still amounts to:

• 7.5 hours per five-day workweek, or the equivalent of almost an entire workday;

• and over 9 workweeks, or over two work months, of the year (50-week work year, assuming two weeks of vacation) spent consuming social media.

Zoom out to a 40-year career, and this would amount to 7.5 years of forty-hour weeks of our lives spent on social media. And we are not even counting weekends! Nor are we accounting for effects and opportunity costs.

The math for hours spent in distraction, unproductive meetings, and workplace drama is likely even more significant.

Your habits are like degrees on a compass. They can lead you to the impacts and experiences you seek, or they can lead you (sometimes wildly) off course.

Honing the ability to discern the habits that serve you from those that don’t is essential not just to your productivity but also to your overall development and experiences.

Here’s to improving the math…