Your Life In Numbers

Interested in how your life is broken up over the years? Maybe days? We’ve done it for you to show you how much time you spend sleeping, eating, working or even socialising. As well as how much time you have outside of your daily routines.

We spend most of our lives asleep. Sleep impacts how well you can focus at work and your well-being, so we must ensure we get enough. To calculate your ideal bedtime and wake-up time, check out our Sleep Calculator.

The average human spends roughly 79 years, or 28,854 days, or 692,496 hours, on Earth.  Let’s take a look at how we spend the time of our lives…

The average person spends about 26 years sleeping in their life, which equates to 9,496 days or 227,916 hours. That’s one-third of our entire lives spent asleep in bed. Surprisingly, we also spend 7 years trying to get to sleep — a total of 33 years or 12,053 days! Our 2024 Sleep Survey revealed that, on average, the UK sleeps 6 hours a night in bed.

But what’s so special about sleep? It boosts mental and physical well-being, including immunity and weight regulation. However much you need, a quality kip is a sleep well spent.

As for tossing and turning, do some breathing exercises, read a book or have a relaxing bath to make you sleepy. If you aren’t tired, don’t force it. Just think of what else you could be doing with those 7 years!

However, trying to reduce the amount of time you sleep probably isn’t a good idea. Unless you’re a short sleeper – only 1-3% of the population are – you risk your health.

Whether daily grind or dream career, our jobs take up a lot of our time; 13 years on average, actually. That’s 24% of a typical working period of 50 years.

For those who just can’t get enough, there are about 441 days worked overtime in a life.

Related: How To Improve Your Sleep Routine If You’re A Workaholic

If you add this all together, you’ll potentially work for the equivalent of 4,748 days during your time here. Getting there safely can depend on good sleep. It’s estimated that 20% of road traffic accidents are sleep-related, and 40% involve commercial vehicles.

After all that hard work, we love catching up on social media. After a long commute home, we’re likely to settle down to our favourite TV shows, too. We spend around 8.3 years (3031 days) in front of the TV. That’s enough to watch 72,757 hour-long programmes in a lifetime.

How many times a day do you look at your phone? Enough to spend about 3 years on social media. A third of UK adults and half of 18-24-year-olds wake up to check their phone in the middle of the night.

Food, glorious food,… arguably one of life’s greatest pleasures. We love it so much that we spend almost 4 and a half years eating it! That’s 1,643 days’ worth of time munching away.

But are we always eating what we love? Apparently not, since 64% of Brits say they are trying to lose weight or on a diet most of the time. Additionally, 66% of workers now eat at their desks and only take an average of 28 minutes of lunch break. Treat yourself to a trip outside this lunchtime.

It’s time to pack up and jet off to your holiday destination. Most of us will spend just over 3 years of our lives in different destinations than the ones we call home. This translates as 1,095 days in far-flung places.

Where you choose to go is up to you. The most popular holiday destination this year is Ibiza, coming in at roughly £2066 for a week’s stay and flights.

Exercise takes up an average of 1.3 years of our lives. That means we spend more than double the time on social media than we do feeling the burn, and we spend over six times as long watching the TV.

Sleep and exercise have a direct link. Poor sleep equals the inability to exercise to your full potential. On the other hand, just 10 minutes of regular exercise can massively improve sleep quality. It’s simple: without both, we’d risk our health; with both, we can be the best versions of ourselves.

Romance isn’t completely dead, at least not for the most part. The average person spends 395 days in their life being romantic. Over one year of time used for flowers, candles, fancy meals and you-know-what!

We often remember school as a huge part of our upbringing, a time that shaped and changed our childhood. In reality, we only spend around 334 days’ worth of our lives in primary and secondary school—that’s not even one year!

Sleep-related disorders in children have tripled over the past 10 years. This can lead to lowered immunity, increased behaviour problems and lack of concentration.

After all the ‘essentials’ like working, eating, and being entertained, we’re left with all the extras—things we do every day without thinking about:

• We spend 235 days of our lives waiting in queues.
• 115 days are spent laughing.
• Women spend 136 days getting ready, while men only take 46.

After all this is added together, we’re left with approximately 2997 days or 8.2 years. Within that time, you’ll commute, clean, see shows, have a family, run races, tell stories, and so much more. You’ll live your life, hopefully, how you want to.