The Cost of Care of the Human Animal

I've been exploring exactly what full-time, part-time, and work life balance mean to me. I feel like the best way to measure this is to start by calculating the cost of care of the human animal--not in terms of cash, but with respect to time.

The list below represents the baseline requirements that every human needs on a near daily basis.

• 10 screen free hours in bed. The average human needs 8–10 hours of sleep, and that includes time to fall asleep and wake up. Some people will need more than 10 hours in bed--those that need 10 hours of sleep. But a total of ten hours in bed represents a healthy balance in my head.

• 0.75 hours of exercise a day. The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes a week for moderate exercise. Assuming one day of rest a week from this specific exercise, that accounts for 30 minutes a day.

• 0.75 hours a day for hygiene. If you're working out every day, you probably need a shower. The recommendations I read state that a shower shouldn't be longer than 15 minutes, or it begins to be bad for your skin. In addition, everyone should brush their teeth and floss every day, which is probably about 10 minutes in total.

• 1.5 hours a day for food. Humans need to eat. How often, what, and when are subjects of endless debate—perhaps no area of human care is more saturated with conflicting advice. For this estimate, I’ve assumed three meals a day, each with some amount of prep and cleanup. Your mileage may vary, but food, like sleep, is non-negotiable.

• 0.5 hours a day outside. Humans need to be out of doors, preferably in green spaces. Green spaces have been shown in some studies I have read to have a positive impact on our disposition and mental health. We get vital nutrients from the sun, like vitamin D, which is important to strong bones. The real recommendation I have read here is 20 minutes, 3 times a week. I've rounded up to include travel time (ideally everyone lives within 10 minutes of a greenspace--but this is more about social reconstruction toward the emphasis of human as animal).

• 1.0 hours of intrapersonal and interpersonal interaction. My suspicion is that, next to sleep, this is the biggest gap of all of the above. Humans are social and narrative creatures. We need to interact and connect with other people. We should do this most days. We also need time to reflect on ourselves and our lives.

• 0.5 screen free hours of slack. Humans need whitespace. We need a time to do nothing: to decompress, stare at the wall, doodle, and let our mind wander--and wonder.

The total numbers here represent 15 hours of occupied time in the life of a human focused on care and attention. And it is true that there are some optimizations to be made from living in society (food prep hopefully takes less time, and perhaps can be doubled up with socialization), but I'd argue that making socialization secondary to a primary task is less beneficial than making a task secondary to socialization: spending time outside talking and telling stories. For some jobs, surely, eating can be done while working, but this is an exploit, not an optimization, in my perspective (I say this as someone who has eaten and worked for the majority of my working life).

If this is the care of a human animal, work life balance means 4.5 hours of work a day, 4.5 hours living. This aligns with at least what I know of knowledge work--that a person has about 5 good hours in them (usually in two shifts). It's worth noting that I do not count any of the care of the human animal as life. By contrast, life is the secondary set of activities that come from living in a modern society and the work that makes all the other things possible: buying groceries, going to the bank, scheduling mowers. Or cutting the grass yourself—and maybe getting that outdoor time in. Further, life is what gives care meaning.

If the cost of simply caring for the human animal is 15 hours a day, then perhaps we need to redefine what balance really means—not just in terms of hours worked, but in terms of what kind of life is left after care.

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