I recently came across data on how we spend our time over the course of our lives.
The insights are simultaneously inspiring and depressing.
Here are 6 graphs everyone needs to see:
Time Spent With Parents & Siblings
Peaks in childhood and declines after age 20.
Lesson: Prioritize and cherish every moment.
Time Spent With Friends
Peaks at age 18 and declines sharply to a low baseline.
Lesson: Invest your energy in the healthy, meaningful friendships that last.
Time Spent With Partner
Trends upwards until death.
Lesson: Never settle for less than love.
Time Spent With Children
Peaks in your 30s and declines sharply thereafter.
Lesson: Slow down and embrace the sweetness.
Time Spent With Coworkers
Steady during the prime working years from age 20-60.
Lesson: Find work—and coworkers—that create energy in your life.
Time Spent Alone
Steadily increases throughout your life.
Lesson: Find happiness and joy in the time you have to yourself.
How We Spend Our Time
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All of this data reminds me of one of my favorite sayings:
The days are long but the years are short.
Last summer I was on a walk with my newborn and an older man approached me.
He said:
“I remember standing here with my newborn daughter. An old man came up to me and said ‘It goes by fast, cherish it.’ Well, my daughter is 45 now. It goes by fast, cherish it.”
It hit me hard.
For those asking, the visuals in the thread were done for me by Carousel (creator-focused spin-off of Off Menu).
They’re doing all my design work with a dedicated team.
Social media is a drug designed to make you wish you were somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else.
Don’t fall into the comparison trap.
Embrace the positive, valuable people and ideas you can follow.
Reject anything that makes you feel you’re not enough.
You get to choose what you let into your mental and physical environment.
Are you consistently consuming content from people that makes you feel envy or jealousy?
Stop. Unfollow them.
Replace it with things that create energy. Your entire world will change.
The “Instagram vs. Reality” meme is quite accurate:
The perfect image that you see is rarely a reflection of reality.
The idyllic photo of the person with the floating tray of fruit in an infinity pool in Bali was actually taken between rounds of crazed bird and monkey attacks.
When I catch myself feeling anxious, I invert the negative thought.
“What if this doesn’t work?” becomes “What if this works?”
“What if I come up short?” becomes “What if I exceed my wildest expectations?”
Stops negativity in its tracks.
My logic:
I find that anxious, worried, or negative thoughts tend to multiply rapidly and consume my headspace.
When they do, it becomes a slower process to push them out.
Cutting them down at first sight is the one thing that has consistently worked for me.
“The body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment...if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings.” - The Blind Watchmaker
You may have to work to avoid merging into negative surroundings.