Why It's Time to Change How You Divide Your Time

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In a podcast interview with host Jody Avirgan on "What’s the Point," Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson explained that trying to maintain a work-life balance is overrated. At first glance it would appear that the astrophysicist is suggesting we should embrace a workaholic lifestyle because efforts to balance work with other interests and goals is foolhardy.

Upon closer inspection, however, what he stated is that doing lots of things—pursuing your goals and interests while developing or maintaining close relationships—is, well, hard. Therefore, the out-of balance-feeling is to be expected from time to time and will compel you to create innovative solutions. He goes on to suggest that constant balance is not only unattainable, but, in many ways, unappealing.

I agree with Tyson that a sense of balance is not desirable, but for different reasons: When something, anything, is in balance it quite literally means that weight is distributed evenly, or that all elements are in their "correct" proportions. When it comes to how we allocate our time to the different aspects of our lives, I am not convinced that it is balance we ought to be pursuing.

Instead, I think we could benefit from seeking what is optimal.

What's the difference? Unlike balance, optimal is that which is most favorable. In terms of how we spend our time, this translates into maximizing our actions given certain constraints. The biggest limitation? Whether you are human or animal, there are only so many hours in the day to accomplish everything you need to do. Let’s call this one’s time or activity budget. One of the most fundamental aspects of animal behavior is examining how animals distribute their behavior and activities over time. Time devoted to one thing necessarily takes away from the time available for something else. Thus, understanding how an individual allocates time can give us insight into what is important to that individual.

Source: By Arian Zwegers (Bukit Lawang, orangutan Uploaded by russavia) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

For example, here is how the time budget of the thin-spined porcupine plays out: On any given day the porcupine spends 74% of its "active" time resting, 14% feeding, 11% going from one place to another, and 2% in miscellaneous activities. For orangutans it can be more variable, but still they spend 20-50% of their time during the day resting, 30-50% feeding, and 10-20% travelling; any remaining time is spent in assorted activities.

The first thing that jumps out is how both thin-spined porcupines and orangutans spend a good portion of their waking hours resting. But then again, unlike us, these two aren’t the most social creatures.

We are, first and foremost, social animals. Our relationships with each other anchor us. They provide the foundation for us to go out into the world and succeed. And yet nurturing our relationships is one of the first things to fall by the wayside as we collectively complain: I’m too busy! I’m too tired! Are we really? Or do we simply not know how to spend our time optimally? Before we look at how the average American allocates his or her time, let’s glance a two other wildly different social species:

Source: Brian Gratwicke [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

If you are degu, a small social rodent from South America, you live among others in colony, sort of like a neighborhood, and you belong to a social group, or family. You have the added concern of becoming food for a suite of predators. Consequently, your day looks like this: feeding (46%), watching out for danger (32%), resting (8%), traveling (7%), self-grooming (4%), burrow digging or home maintenance (0.2%), and social interactions (3%). Despite being social and living in groups, social activity is not the top priority because so much of their day is spent looking for food and keeping and eye out for danger.

Source: Gerald and Buff Corsi Copyright © 2013 California Academy of Sciences

Not so for baboons. Even though they spend about 12% of their time watching for predators, social interactions make up a whopping 15% of their daily time budget—five times as much as the degu. Why? Because social relationships are incredibly important to an individual baboon’s success. Apart from humans, baboons are one of the most successful primates on the planet. Yet the one thing they don’t cast aside is the importance of maintaining strong relationships with each other. What we do know is that time spent in other activities takes a hit to compensate for all this togetherness.

For comparative purposes let’s broadly categorize everything but social interactions and daytime rest as "work." How do we stack up? Subtracting 7 hours for sleeping, according to the American Time Use Database, the average American spends the remaining 17 hours divided up roughly as follows: 24% resting and 8% socializing/communicating—with the balance engaging in some version of work.

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Given the state of some of our relationships, it is possible most of us are not optimally managing our time.

One way to get a handle on the "Where does all my time go?" question is to conduct a little behavioral study on yourself. Just as a food journal can help you lose weight, and a money journal can help you manage your finances, tracking your time is an effective way to explore how you really spend your waking hours. This can give you insight into whether the way you spend your time matches your priorities.

If your partner or spouse constantly complains that you never spend enough time together while you assert that you simply do not have the time, this exercise may be particularly revealing. It may expose places where you can be more efficient with certain activities, thereby freeing up additional time to devote toward developing, deepening, and maintaining your relationship. (It has been estimated that the average American spends almost 20% of the day watching television.)

The interesting thing about baboons is that they don’t strive to "balance" their social time equally with everyone. Like us, they nurture those relationships that matter most to them. Thus, if you find yourself with someone unwilling to dedicate time to you, or always putting other activities or people ahead of you, you may want to eliminate them from your activity budget and focus your time on more reciprocal relationships.

After all, that would be optimal.