Each of us has 24 hours a day, every day, to use as we see fit. And we all unfold those minutes and hours differently. We all have different goals, and how we spend our time reflects what’s important to us personally. When you multiply the choices we make with our time by her 8 billion people around the world, we get a fascinating picture of the human species.
How much money and how much time is there in the world?
We often talk and think about how much money we have. And it inevitably takes time. You probably have an idea of how many of these resources there are, but what about the world?
How much money is there in the world?
This may be difficult to answer, but experts estimate that there is approximately $8 trillion worth of currency in circulation in the United States, of which approximately $2 trillion is in circulation in the United States. However, this estimate does not include other types of assets other than currency. The total value on Earth is probably in the thousands of trillions.
How much time is there in the world?
There are currently an estimated 8 billion people living on Earth. These people work 192 billion hours every day, and in a year they work more than 70 trillion hours.
How is time used on Earth? Overview of World Humanity Day
Scientists at McGill University recently conducted an unprecedented study. analysis. They compiled data on time use for 145 countries.
Researchers have collected complete estimates of what humans are doing and calculated averages over time and across populations to provide an aggregated, high-level view called World Human Day .
The results may seem surprising.
Five categories of human activities
Researchers have classified all human activities into four categories.
1. We spend 9.1 hours on sleep and bed rest
Around the world, and for all humans, sleep takes up 9.1 hours out of a 24-hour day. As a species, this takes up most of our time.
This may seem like a lot, especially for people who wake up many times during the night for various reasons. However, this difference is due to the inclusion of children in the estimates, as well as time spent in bed without sleep.
2. Activities that produce direct human results take 9.4 hours.
Groups spend the most time in activities that directly affect humans: eating, grooming, playing, watching television, socializing, caring for children, education, and religion.
This type of activity takes 9.4 hours per day and includes:
- 4.6 hours of passive leisure or social activity
- 1.6 hours at meal time
- 4 hours of active recreation
- 1.1 hour hygiene and grooming
- Childcare time is 3 hours
- in healthcare.2
- 1.1 hour of schooling or research
- .2 hours in religious practice
3. Activities that deliver external results take only 3.4 hours
In total, only 3.4 hours are spent on activities that deliver external outcomes. These are things that change the physical world. That is, all food supply (including farming, raising livestock, manufacturing and cooking the food we eat), mining, logging, oil and gas extraction, cleaning, construction, telecommunications, and manufacturing physical goods.
- 0.9 hours for meal preparation
- 0.8 hours to grow and collect food
- 1 hour in food processing
- 8-hour maintenance of living environment
- 0.01 hours for waste management
- 7 hours to create the technosphere (construction, civil engineering, telecommunications, manufacturing of any physical product)
- .1 hour of non-food provision (natural resource extraction)
4. Spend 2.1 hours on activities that deliver organizational results
The smallest block of joint time is spent on organizational activities. These efforts include the transportation, government, military, trade and commerce, real estate, and financial industries.
- 9 hours by human transport
- Allotted time is .9 hours (trade, commerce, government, finance, law, etc.)
- 3 hours to transport materials
Fajzel, W., Galbraith, E. D., Charmes, J., Frie, E., Hatton, I., Le Mézo, P., Milo, R., Minor, K., Wan, X., Xia, V., & Xu, S. (2023). World Humanity Day. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(25), e2219564120.
Observations and insights into collective time use
In their report, the researchers make some interesting observations about how we spend our time. Here are some of their insights:
- Surprisingly, the amount of time spent on activities such as eating, daily transportation, hygiene and grooming, and food preparation does not vary with the material wealth of the population.
- However, the time spent growing and gathering food varies widely depending on wealth, ranging from more than an hour in low-income countries to less than five minutes in high-income countries.
- The time spent producing and collecting food in rich countries has decreased by about 1.2 hours, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the time spent on experiential activities (entertainment) and infrastructure, construction and maintenance activities has increased. offset by.
- Given how highly dependent we are on natural resources, the amount of time spent extracting matter and energy directly from the Earth system is low by global standards: 5 minutes per average human day. That’s about it.
- Currently, the world’s energy and material supplies are provided with only a small fraction of the total time (equivalent to about 3% of the world’s economic time), so the time allocated to these activities does not necessarily require adjustment. may change relatively significantly without any changes. It has a significant impact on the time allocated to other activities. This assessment shows that climate change solutions, such as moving labor from fossil fuel industries to building global renewable power infrastructure, are global in nature, in that there are clear physical areas within which humanity can reallocate. This suggests that it is very feasible from a time budget perspective. Adjust the time between related activities without significantly disrupting the overall time distribution at the population level.
- Material wealth has a negligible effect on travel times at the population level. Even as cars become faster and airplanes become more available, the amount of time we spend getting from place to place does not decrease.
- The time required to directly process waste is approximately 1 minute per day.
- Many waste problems, including ocean plastic buildup and water pollution from toxins, could potentially be significantly alleviated by relatively small reallocations of total human time budgets.
Make the most of your time and money
As the research team behind this study on collective time use points out, how we spend our time affects not only how we experience life, but also how our surroundings affect us. The impact will also be determined.
Making the most of your time is very important, and that probably includes thinking about how much time you spend making and allocating money.
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