I've seen studies that show this to be inaccurate(but I don't provide a link, because anyone can find 3 studies against any study they want to). Progress is great, but it hasn't been shown to give us "more free time". To me this is silly. There should be MAD extra free time, because what used to take 1 guy forever to make one coat, now he makes 1,000 by machine. This is my main flaw of capitalism is that if you're working harder to make it easier, when does it get easy?? Retirement??? You mean people of the past never aged???? That's amazing!

Haha

I kind of agree. Working as an engineer these days, we can e-mail files, entire sets of plans, etc. We can even send them overnight mail if we need to. We can draft things on a computer that used to have to be measured and hand drawn...

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

If the studies were based purely on people's perceptions, they would indeed conclude that we have less free time than ever before. However, if they are based on actual logging of time and how it is spent, comparing them to studies of the same nature conducted in the past confirms that we have several hours more of leisure time each day than existed even fifty years ago. On average, Americans have 30-40 hours of free time a week, the same as the amount of time that they work. This even includes mothers of younger children, who frequently state that they are lucky to get an hour or two a week; however, that does not match up with reality at all, and they see that if they log their time. Perhaps people feel that they have less free time because for the most part they only spend it watching television.

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Miles to go before I sleep

‎"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
-Khalil Gibran

A good portion of our "free time" is devoted to taking care of the shit we couldn't do when we are working. That's not free time. In fact, I call it the "misery of life". Haha

That's not counted as free time, though. Only things such as watching TV, going for a walk, surfing the internet, etc. are counted. Edit: I think what happens is that people do things for a few minutes here and there between and during leisure activities and count the entire time spent in free time as having worked on things outside a job, but if they actually log time, that's not how it goes.

As a full-time college student that is not currently working, I have 18-20 hours of free time a day. It's great.

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Miles to go before I sleep

‎"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
-Khalil Gibran

Yeah, the whole 8 hours of liesure thing is a fallacy.

Of that 8 hours of liesure,
.5-1 is spent going to work. Great liesure!
.5-1 is spent eating lunch at work. Yay!
.5-1.5 is spent getting ready for work in the morning. Unless you're me. Then it's ten minutes and go.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

That's not counted as leisure time in those studies, though.

lol Anyway.

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Miles to go before I sleep

‎"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
-Khalil Gibran