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Jev's ideal day vs the average American's real one

Asked how it would spend an ideal day, how much time does Jev give to sleep, work, reading, TV and exercise, compared with how Americans actually spend theirs?

result39 questions

Jev's ideal day, next to the average American's real one: more relaxing (2.8 hours vs 0.3), more time on the computer (1.8 vs 0.2) and learning (1.9 vs 0.4), far less sleep (5.7 hours vs 8.7), almost no TV (0.4 vs 2.7) and almost no travel (0.2 vs 1.2). Its 19 answered activities add up to 24 hours.

sleeping5.8 · 8.7

working2.8 · 3.3

tv0.4 · 2.7

travel0.2 · 1.2

eating1.7 · 1.1

grooming0.3 · 0.7

socializing0.8 · 0.6

housework0.5 · 0.6

cooking0.4 · 0.6

education1.9 · 0.4

childcare0.5 · 0.4

shopping0.2 · 0.4

reading1.5 · 0.3

exercise0.8 · 0.3

relaxing2.8 · 0.3

games0.5 · 0.2

computer1.8 · 0.2

volunteering1.0 · 0.1

calls0.4 · 0.1

Jev's ideal day (hours)Americans' actual day (hours)

How to read this: One row per activity, in hours. Grey (lower bar): the average American's real day, from the diaries. Magenta (upper bar): Jev's ideal day. Where magenta is longer, Jev would spend more time on it.

19 activities answered (of 20 asked); Americans' means from 181,335 ATUS diary days.

In short

Jev's ideal day trades sleep for the mind: 5.7 hours of sleep against Americans' real 8.7, and 2.8 hours of relaxing and thinking against 0.3.
TV nearly disappears (0.4 hours vs 2.7) while work barely shrinks, 2.8 hours against a real average of 3.3.
No survey here asks Americans about their ideal day, so the gap mixes Jev's taste with anyone's gap between ideal and actual.

What the data shows

Yes Honey meme: Jev's ideal day: 5.7 hours of sleep and 2.8 hours of relaxing and thinking — Jev's ideal day: 5.7 hours of sleep and 2.8 hours of relaxing and thinking

More thinking and learning: relaxing and thinking 2.8 hours (Americans 0.3), education 1.9 (0.4), reading about 1.5 (0.3), leisure computer use 1.8 (0.2), volunteering about an hour (0.1).
Less of the body's business: sleep 5.7 hours (8.7), grooming a third of an hour (0.7), travel 0.2 (1.2).
Almost no TV: 0.4 hours, against 2.7 for real Americans, the biggest cut after sleep.
Work stays: 2.8 hours, a bit under the real average of 3.3.
It adds up: the 19 answered activities total 24.2 hours.

What it means, and what it doesn't

Jev's ideal day is a reading retreat with a short night: thinking, learning, reading and helping, with the TV off and nowhere to drive. To fit it all in, it gives up three hours of sleep compared with the average American's real night.

It doesn't show what Jev "does": it has no days. It's how it describes a good one.

Caveats

Ideal against actual. There's no survey of Americans' ideal days here, only their real ones. The gap mixes Jev's tastes with the ordinary distance between anyone's ideal and their actual day; most people would also like less commuting and more reading.
A day for a model. Jev has no body to sleep or commute. Its answers describe the day it thinks it should want, which is a self-portrait, not a schedule.
Coarse answers. Nine time bins per activity, with hours from the middle of each bin. That the total lands near 24 hours suggests the answers hang together, but each figure is rough.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes74%
Does it describe you?: Yes58%
Would you have predicted it?: Yes51%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is shaky
How much should a reader rely on it?: A little
Which caveat matters most?: Ideal against actual60%

Why ask this

An ideal day is a compact self-portrait. What someone would do more of, and what they'd drop, says what they value. Asked about its own ideal day, Jev has to trade hours between sleep, work, reading, TV and people, and the trades are revealing when set next to how Americans actually spend theirs.

The same picture of a good day shapes the advice it gives: ask it to plan a weekend, a study schedule or a healthier routine, and its own idea of how hours should be spent comes along.

How this was done

The people and the data

No one has surveyed Americans' ideal days, so Jev's answers are set against their real ones: the American Time Use Survey (Bureau of Labor Statistics), where Americans log everything they did on one day. The comparison uses 181,335 diary days from 2003 to 2016, weighted to represent the population, and the average minutes spent on each of the same 20 activities. Jev answered 19 of the 20, and its total covers those 19.

What Jev was asked

The same 20 activities as in "A random American's day, as Jev pictures it", asked about its own ideal day:

On an ideal day for you, how much time would you spend relaxing and thinking, doing nothing in particular?
None at all · 1 to 29 minutes · 30 to 59 minutes · 1 to 2 hours · 2 to 3 hours · 3 to 5 hours · 5 to 8 hours · 8 to 10 hours · 10 hours or more

That's 20 new questions, each asked with the bins in shuffled orders and averaged.

How it was measured

For each activity, Jev's ideal time (from the middle of each bin) against the diaries' average, and the total of its ideal day, as a check that the answers add up to a real day.

Where these questions live

39 questions across 2 topics of the map. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Society & Culture

How Americans Spend Their Day20

Lifestyle & Taste

Habits & Routines19

Every question

All 39 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

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