The Japanese have a saying: “A man is whatever room he is in.”
— Burt Cooper, Mad Men

Credit: phrancij
Credit: phrancij

The average American sleeps about 7 hours a night. That leaves them 17 hours in a day.

Now, if ‘re not a workaholic or don’t put in a lot of overtime, you probably spend about 8-1/2 hours at work (half an hour for lunch). And then there’s the commute back and forth; assuming that you don’t fight California-like traffic there and back, that probably about an hour. When you put those together, you have 7-1/2 of your day left.

Then there’s getting ready for work: showering, grooming, and maybe even make-up. Let’s say that also takes about an hour. Now there’s only 6-1/2 hours left in the day.

So on average, 10-1/2 of our 17 waking hours revolve around work. That’s about 62% of your day. And that’s not counting all the time you spend thinking about work when you’re not there.

With at least 1o-1/2 hours, 5 days a week going into work, that’s about 44% of your waking week. And when you consider how the other 56% is divided up among erands, chores, family, and friends, you realize that work governs way more of your life than anything else.

Whether you like it not, work plays, by far, the most important role in who you are because it takes the lion’s share of your mind share — your moods, your thoughts, your personality. So if you hate what you do for a living, how do you manage to not hate yourself?

But more importantly, if you love yourself, how do you settle for doing something that you don’t love?

About CT Moore

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Hi, I'm CT Moore (@<a href="http://twitter.com/gypsybandito">gypsybandito</a>) and this is my personal blog, a place where my thoughts go to wander. I'm a recovering agency hack who now manages <a href="http://socialed.ca/seo/">SEO</a>, <a href="http://socialed.ca/social/">social media</a>, and <a href="http://socialed.ca/content-marketing/">content marketing</a> campaigns through my consultancy <a href="http://socialed.ca/">Socialed Inc</a>. Sometimes I speak at conferences, too, but you can check me out on <a href="http://ca.linkedin.com/in/ctmoore">LinkedIn</a> if you really wanna know <i>that</i> much more about me. And if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line. I love it when strangers come a callin' ;-)

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