From the Desk of Janet Barclay

Several weeks ago, I asked my readers to take part in a survey consisting of two questions:

1. In a typical week, how many hours do you spend on work-related activities (including travel time)?
2. In a typical week, how many hours do you spend on leisure activities? (Watching TV doesn’t count!)

Today, I’m going to share the results of that survey.

For each question, participants were asked to select a range that best described their situation. For work-related activities, the choices were 20 or less, 21 to 30, 31 to 40, 41 to 50, 51 to 60, 61 to 70, or 71 or more. For leisure activities, the choices were 3 or less, 4 to 7, 8 to 10, 11 to 15, or 15 or more.

Most people reported spending 41 to 50 hours per week on work-related activities and 8 to 10 hours on leisure activities. (This was the average answer, and the most frequent, in both cases.) I have to admit that I was surprised by the results, as I was under the impression that people worked more than that, especially those who operate home-based businesses. Realizing that my sample was fairly small, I set out to see if I could find any other statistics on this subject, and came upon a fascinating study published by The Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE) just last month, which states that:

“…87% of the HBBs [home-based businesses] in our survey reported working more than 31 hours per week, with 41% reporting work hours in excess of 51 hours per week. This is slightly lower than the 47% working 51 hours per week or more in non-HBBs.”

I’m quite sure these statistics are more meaningful than the results of my own small survey, but it’s always interesting to learn more about my readers.

Here’s their full report, if you’d like to know more. I found that the easiest way to view the slide show is to click on the “Fullscreen” icon at the bottom right and use the arrows to advance the pages.