Maybe you have seen the meme that was floating around on Instagram a while ago? Something along the lines of, “we all have the same 24 hours in a day – what’s your excuse?”
The one I saw had some bad math:
8 hours work
8 hours sleep
10 hours left for “me” time
Poor math skills aside – that’s some straight up patriarchal, ableist, classists bullsh!t right there. I don’t know if this was posted by a cis -gender, heterosexual man… but I’m going to take a guess that it was! (Sorry, not sorry).
There was a time where I would have heard this statement and taken it at face value, then felt bad about the way I was spending my 24 hours a day. But the math isn’t mathing!
The assertion that “we all have the same 24 hours” is often touted as a universal truth, suggesting that everyone has equal opportunity to achieve their goals within the constraints of a day.
Lets take a moment to break that down. While yes, technically, we are given 24 hours each day, that 24 hours can look vastly different for each one of us, so we certainly don’t get to use those 24 hours in the same way.
What I realize now is this type of statement assumes we:
- all have one full time job
- don’t have any commute
- are able to get 8 hours of sleep
- don’t need to care for anyone else like a disabled partner, children or aging parents.
- have hired someone else to shop, prep, cook and clean up our meals
- don’t have to do our own cleaning or that we don’t need to take ourselves to multiple medical appointments due to chronic illness or injury.
- are not getting an education in addition to working
- and so many other things!
The above assumption, that beyond 16 hours for sleep and work, we have 8 hours to spend on working out, or self care or any way we see fit is, well, it’s just wrong.
The next time you feel guilty about not doing something you think you should be doing catch yourself and remember that this type of message is rooted in our culture of hustle.
Remind yourself that you are doing the very best you can and the idea of universal equality in time is a myth.
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