I can remember the last time I thought to myself, “This is the ideal day”. So ideal that I could do this over and over again Groundhog Day style, with few deathbed regrets. I was in Los Angeles and it was February 2024. I went to an early morning spin class then worked until lunchtime when everyone back in the UK had logged off for their evenings. Then I went to a library and spent a few hours researching a personal area of interest. Next I took myself for an early dinner, which was spent off my phone observing the Californians with their personal trainers and dogs and sexy-slacker fashion sense, and finished the day being silly with my friend at her house. In the year since, I’ve had good days, fun days and compelling days, but none that felt that perfect.
It wasn’t because I was in “holiday mode” away from London; it was because there was a balance to it all, proportionally speaking. I got to follow my instincts, indulge in life and still achieve what needed to be done. That observation suggested to me that there is a certain chemistry to the ideal day – and researchers at the University of British Columbia have now discovered just that.
Social scientists analysed data from the American Time Use Survey, where participants filled out how much time they spent on 100 different activities, which included all the big hitters, such as doomscrolling on a phone, exercising, and socialising. They then looked at what participants called a “better than typical day” and clocked how much time was spent doing activities on those days. That became the formula for the average person’s perfect day.
This is the menu: six hours of quality time with family, two hours with friends, one and a half hours socialising, a six-hour workday with a brief 15-minute commute, two hours of exercise and one hour maximum of screen time. The only thing here that sticks out to me as strange is two hours of exercise, which seems excessive for most people – but that could presumably count as a two-hour stroll around a park with friends, blending the activities. To make this template day add up to a normal amount of waking hours, you would probably have to combine things anyway.
In general, this formula makes total sense. Our ability to apply it, however, hinges on the fact that our working days are heinously long, usually eight or nine hours – far from the “perfect” six. Personally, I am built to hyperfocus for about four or five hours and then I’m drained with fluff for brains, destined to spend the rest of the working day on vital tasks, like scrolling on my phone, having extra coffees or distracting others. If we’re not entrepreneurs, it would seem that to reach the dizzying heights of many perfect days leading to a perfect life we’re at the mercy of the companies we work for.
Having ample time for friends and exercise is obviously important. Most of my subpar to bad days are those I haven’t had time for, or planned for, both of these things. And if you’re going to have a family, I’d imagine that, yes, spending six hours to bond with them is a good thing. Given that lots of people like me live away from their families, are single or don’t have a family, I’d be curious to see what makes up a perfect day for us, rather than the average American with 2.4 kids. For me, I’d instead spend those six hours on quality alone time, like I did in LA, essentially exploring, learning, reading or doing hobbies.
Ultimately, what this formula brings to mind are the adages: “everything in moderation” and “balance is key”. All the elements of life in this formula are given their rightful place, almost honoured for what they can provide. Even the stuff that feels like a chore, like work, is seen for the importance it can bring to the overall meaningfulness of a person’s time. It’s witheringly poor, I suppose, that we’re so disconnected from our natural rhythms that our allocations of tasks need to be dictated to us. Yet we’re already living our lives to a blueprint of nine hours of work a day and five hours of screen time. Maybe we do need a new formula to consider.
