32: You have 168 hours per week

Full disclosure: I was thinking to write the headline more dramatic like “How To Spend 11 Insane Years And Never Work Again” but I will leave that for LinkedIn and Medium.

An average week consists of 40 working hours. In a month that makes 160 hours only for work, assuming you work properly and don’t just hang around and goof around.

Now, let’s say you’re crazy. I know everyone is a bit, but you could be even more. You could be working your whole monthly hours in one week (7 days), and even have 1 hour and a bit (1.14) left for sleep every day.

It’s insane how cool that is. Imagine all the work you do in a month you do in a week, or even the work of 4 months in 1 month, or 1 year in 3 months.

That would mean to have 3 months of hard, insane but very productive work and 9 months of vacation or whatever you do in that time. Some dudes would probably just continue doing their thing.

Let’s go further with that:

  • 2 years in 6 months
  • 3 years in 9 months
  • 4 years in 12 months (1 year)
  • 8 years in 24 months (2 yrs)
  • 16 years in 48 months (4 yrs)
  • 32 years in 96 months
  • 45 years in 135 months
  • 48 years in 144 months
  • 64 years in 192 months

The average employee has a work life of 45 years, 20 to 65 years for example.

With my calculation above, this person would only have to spend 11.25 years to reach the pension. I just saved this lucky one 33,75 years (3/4) of his/her work life.

Of course this is all crazy … and fascinating at the same time.

If you went all-in and if it was humanly and biologically possible to work 160 hours a week with 1.14 hours of sleep every day, you would spend only 1/8 of your life with work instead of the regular 1/2 of your life – assuming you’re getting 90 years.

So, let’s say you just finished high school with 18, finished university or any other kind of higher education with 21 and now your “all-in”-work-phase starts. You would be done with work by 32. That’s my age now! And from this age until you want to live, you have nothing else to do, if you’re an employee with average salary and average pension.

Now here comes the clue: You have your fixed pension covering all your monthly costs, are happy to not be employed anymore and now start your own business! I mean, you’re only 32 years young and have at least 40, 50, 60, 70 years in front of you to make that business successful. To make it really successful it takes 25 years on average, like it was the case with known companies as Apple.

I’m not crazy here.

I’m trying to widen your horizon with simple math and make you see the possibilities if you escape your average-thinker’s mindset.

Go crazy and stay sane!! 😉

The take-away from today: Not having time is not the issue. Taking the time and using it so you accomplish your things, is. And… understand how little time 40 hours are if you have 168 to spend. So much free time, or so much accomplishment time.

This was episode 32 of the #weekdaykickoff 🌊. Every Monday-Friday morning. Colombian time. Until episode 5 I also audio-recorded on Anchor, you can find me there as “Alexander Kluge”.

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