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This is the first sunrise of the New Millennium.
168
There are many opinions on the most important
number dealing with retirement. The first thought is what age to retire at
-- 65, 60, 55, 30 or infinity. Other people might suggest 1040 or 401K, or
perhaps their medicare number. Not to suggest that any of these other
numbers are unimportant, but I would like to argue that 168 is the most
important. 168 is the number of hours in a week -- 24 hours per day times
7.
Once you retire all this time belongs to you. None of it is owned by a
company your indentured to, none of it is required for commuting and none
of it needs to be consumed by job related socializing. YOU are now free and
the 168 hours all belongs to you.
Ernest Hemingway wrote a book called for "For Whom the Bell
Tolls"; the main point of the book is that it tolls for you. Every
second, every minute and every hour that passes is lost forever. You can't
get it back and you only have a finite number. The average male lives about
2 billion seconds and the average female lives slightly longer than that.
Make every second count.
Of the 168 hours, about 8 hours a day one third of each day is spent
sleeping. Frequently older people need less sleep, they wake up in the
middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep. If this happens to you
think of it as bonus time; valuable time retreaved from unconsciousness.
The middle of the night is also usually very quiet and you are less likely
to be interrupted.
So if we subtract 56 hours of sleep a week we are left with 111 hours. Next
we need to subtract time for "human maintance. I am going to allow 6
hours a week for eating, showering, grooming and eliminating. If this is
not enough time for you I suggest you eat faster, shower less and eat a
prune every day. This leaves 105 hours a week or 15 hours a day of what I
think of as freedom programing. It can further be broken down into three
five hour periods a day or twentyone per week. Note that this is
substantially larger than the forty to fifty hours a week that you spent
working; more than twice as much.
Once you have made a list of your retirement activities the next step is to
distribute them into these 21 weekly increments. Suppose you would like to
leisurely read the newspaper every morning and drink a cup of coffee. How
much time do you want to spend? I would suggest that you can read all the
headlines in less than ten minutes. And if you then spend ten minutes
reading each of five articles in the paper you have used up one hour. Does
this seem like a good expenditure of time? I think each person has to
answer this question by thinking about what would be alternative ways to
use this same amount of time. There are only 168 hours so the trade of is
yours. Draw up a schedule for a say a month and keep track of what you are
doing. Don't be ashamed to include naps or television watching time, but
think about what fraction of your 15 hours a day should be devoted to TV
entertainment, junk mail and internet surfing.
I think the best time to exercise is the morning when you have the most
energy. Afternoons are good for napping. Running errands is best done when
the traffic is going to be least. Set aside large segments of time for
hobbies like painting. Maybe you paint for three hours and then go to the
gym and run a few errands on the way home; thats a morning maybe every
morning. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to plan out the rest of
you days and weeks.
When you get your schedule done you are ready to figure out how you want to
trade off hours from one activity to another. The trade offs are based on
you own set of values. You only get 168 hours doing anything means not
doing other things. Don't forget to walk the dog and hug your spouse
frequently.
I know that this might seem a bit neurotic to many readers, but remember
the bell tolls for you. Think of each hour as worth one thousand dollars.
You worked hard for decades to have this time. This kind of time
study probably only needs to be done annually or quarterly. Or whenever you
have the sensation that you don't have enough time to enjoy your
retirement. The bell tolls for you!
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