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Imagine this: you’ve just turned 22, you’re fresh into the workforce, and statistically, you have about 60 years left to live. Sounds like plenty of time, right? But what if I told you that the way you spend your weekdays—dreaming about the weekend—could steal decades from your life? This is the shocking reality laid out in a recent analysis, which explores how work dissatisfaction reduces our “desirable” years down to a startling minimum. In today’s world, where financial independence, retirement plans, and work-life balance are constant points of discussion, this video offers a sobering calculation that resonates with a much larger conversation about time management, mental health, and even financial freedom. Could decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain technology help us reclaim some of that lost time? Let’s dig into the numbers.
The lesson’s core message is simple but profound: if you hate your job and live for the weekends, you’re losing more than you think. By analyzing how life expectancy and work schedules intersect, the speaker shows how time spent in sleep, at work, or doing undesirable chores drastically cuts into the years we actually enjoy. The transcript lays out a series of calculations, illustrating how the average person who lives until 82 has far fewer “good” years than they might expect. The alarming thesis is that if your life satisfaction hinges on those two precious days at the end of the week, you might be sacrificing decades of fulfilling life.
Several bold claims are made. For example, the video notes that a person working a full-time job may, at best, have only about 11 years of enjoyable life left once all other factors (work, sleep, health issues) are considered. This dramatic realization forces us to reconsider not only how we view work but how we prioritize our time.
The video’s strength lies in its ability to put cold, hard numbers behind an emotional reality many people feel but rarely quantify. Three strong points emerge in this discussion:
Potential Weaknesses
Interestingly, the dissatisfaction with the traditional workweek mirrors a broader dissatisfaction with centralized finance, which has given rise to decentralized financial (DeFi) systems. Just as the video criticizes the rigid structures of work and retirement, the crypto world aims to disrupt the rigid structures of traditional banking and finance.
The broader implications of the video’s message stretch beyond individual life satisfaction to societal norms around work and productivity. As remote work and gig economies continue to grow, the traditional workweek may become obsolete. Technology is already reshaping how we think about time, work, and leisure. In a future where blockchain and DeFi systems are more integrated into daily life, we could see a shift toward greater autonomy in how people spend their time and earn money.
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies are leading this charge by decentralizing not just finance, but also labor markets. Blockchain-based platforms may offer more opportunities for people to contribute value in exchange for rewards, reducing the dependency on traditional employment models.
In my experience as an expert in both finance and blockchain, I’ve seen firsthand how decentralized technologies can give people more control over their time and income. The idea of living for the weekend is outdated in a world where financial systems are becoming increasingly decentralized. Crypto enthusiasts who have staked their assets or engaged in yield farming know the power of earning passively, untethered to the traditional workweek.
However, it’s essential to strike a balance. While crypto offers freedom, it’s still a volatile market. Just as the video advises not to wait until retirement to start living, I would advise crypto investors not to assume their tokens will provide future wealth without a solid plan.
The video offers a sobering look at how we waste time when we live for the weekend, and this lesson extends into the financial world as well. Whether in traditional finance or crypto, time is the most valuable asset we have, and how we choose to spend it determines our life satisfaction. The rise of decentralized finance offers exciting new possibilities for reclaiming our time, but it also requires thoughtful planning and awareness of the risks. Ultimately, whether in work or in investing, the key takeaway is clear: don’t wait to enjoy your life—start now.
Life is short, especially when you spend most of it doing things you don’t enjoy. In traditional finance, the value of time is often calculated in dollars, hours worked, or years saved. This lesson dives into the relationship between time, work, and life enjoyment, drawing connections between these traditional financial concepts and the growing world of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. As we break down the numbers from a time-management perspective, we’ll explore how crypto offers new opportunities to rethink financial independence, the value of work, and the role of decentralized economies in improving how we spend our most precious asset—time.
Here are some key financial and crypto terms that you’ll need to understand:
For each of these sections, the crypto connection is vital because decentralized finance allows us to rethink how we spend time and money. In the crypto world, time isn’t just a resource spent at a job; it’s an opportunity to earn in a decentralized, flexible manner. Whether through staking, participating in governance, or yield farming, the concept of financial independence is accelerated. However, the risks are different too—crypto is volatile, and just like in traditional finance, not every plan works out.
In traditional finance, your ability to enjoy life depends on your job and how much you save for retirement. Crypto allows a faster route to financial freedom, but it comes with risk. Many early Bitcoin investors, for instance, were able to retire decades earlier than expected due to the rise in Bitcoin’s value. In contrast, people who planned poorly or invested in unreliable projects lost their assets quickly.
One major challenge in both traditional finance and crypto is how to manage time wisely. While traditional systems often feel rigid and confining, the volatility and unpredictability of crypto markets can make it difficult to plan long-term. Blockchain technology solves some of these problems by allowing individuals to decentralize their earnings and not be confined to a single job or workweek.
Based on the CIA’s data, the country with the highest life expectancy is Monaco, with an average of 89.5 years. In the United States, it drops to about 80. In Canada, about 82. In the United Kingdom, around 81. Across the world, this number can fluctuate dramatically, dropping all the way down to the low 50s in certain less developed countries.
But for the sake of this video, let’s assume your life expectancy is on the higher side of the world’s average, and that you will have no incidents of health complications or tragedies, allowing you to live to 82 years old. Eighty-two years on this planet as yourself—not too bad, but that’s from birth. In terms of your remaining time in life, we have to subtract however old you are right now from 82.
For the sake of this video, let’s say you are 22 years old, as that is generally an age when a lot of people fully begin their careers. After subtracting that, at this point, you now have 60 more potential years of life, which equates to 21,900 days, or 525,600 hours. Still not too bad.
But, if you get an average of eight hours of sleep per night, 175,200 of those hours disappear, and you now have just less than what is equal to 40 years of waking life left. That brings your life expectancy down by 20 years. That’s kind of scary, but it gets a lot scarier if the following is true for you.
A 2017 survey indicated that about 50% of US workers described themselves as unsatisfied or unhappy in their job. In another 2017 study conducted worldwide, when asked anonymously, 85% of workers admitted to disliking or hating their job. At such a large percentage, it is rather likely that one of these people might be you.
Or perhaps you don’t necessarily hate or dread your job, but you find yourself rarely ever enjoying it or feeling inspired by it, always wishing for the weekend, always wanting the week to be over and for it to be Friday night. If this is the case, and your life enjoyment is based almost entirely on the weekend, let’s see what happens when we subtract all the weekdays from your remaining 40 years of life.
There is an average of 260 workdays in a year, not including holidays. After subtracting those across your remaining 40 years, your number of days goes from 14,600 all the way down to 4,200, leaving you with only about 11 years. But, if you figure you retire at an average age of around 63, you might say that you should get some of those days back.
But if you also figure that, in the US, the chance of having a disability or mental impairment is 68% for people over the age of 65, then this age isn’t exactly a time of your life to hold out for and claim as years filled with happiness and enjoyment. So in fact, I would argue that, in terms of desirable life, we should actually take at least a portion of those days away.
First, let’s give you them all back, but then let’s consider that after the age of 65, as you grow older and older, the likelihood of developing health conditions or having existing health conditions worsen only increases. So, as a rough generalized average, across all the years after retirement, all the way up until death, let’s say a person has somewhere around two good, healthy, enjoyable days out of every seven.
Now you are exactly right back where you were, with 11 years of remaining life. In living for the weekend, you went from what first sounded like a decent 60 years of remaining life, all the way down to only 11. And as an extra kicker, what if you have weekends that aren’t that good? Weekends where you have to do things that you don’t want to do, like house chores, yard work, dealing with annoying personal stuff, or even going into work to catch up on things.
That’s at least another year or more off of your remaining life. If you are 22, your waking life expectancy for the life you want to live is now equivalent to around the age of 32. Regardless of your age, who you are, what you do, or the exact accuracy of these numbers to your life, if you live for the weekends, the point holds true.
The idea that anyone would accept living a life where this amount of it is wished away, where such a huge quantity of time is spent not wanting that time to happen, where such a small percentage is spent enjoying it and living in the moment—for anyone that has any sliver of hope in not living like this, it is borderline insanity to accept.
Sure, there are responsibilities we must attend to in life. Sure, there are things we’re going to have to do that we don’t always want to do. Sure, every day of our job or career can’t always be fun or how we want it to be. But to work a job, be in a career, or be at a company that you don’t enjoy or find fulfillment in, at least a majority of the time, you’re essentially signing away most of your life.
Life is extremely short. If you do all the math and consider every little trivial or self-maintenance-oriented thing we spend time doing, even if you love what you do for work and don’t subtract all the weekdays from your remaining life, the time we have is still frighteningly short. So, it truly is so important that we do not give it away, that we are careful and conscious of what we exchange it for, that we do not let outside pressures from family, friends, or society convince us to just give it away blindly and choose jobs, careers, companies, or lifestyles that we don’t personally enjoy or resonate with. That we don’t become easily distracted or persuaded by short-term glitz and glamour that we know we don’t really need, and that we try our best to avoid accepting anything less or making big mistakes that force us to have to.
If you feel like you are constantly wishing for the weekend, only for it to come, and then, in the blink of an eye, it ends, and you’re back at the same starting point on Monday, waiting for the weekend all over again. If you feel like you are anywhere close to living a life where you dislike almost every day of what you do, throwing each day into the trash of wasted time, perhaps you should spend some of your time trying to figure out how to make sure you don’t waste any more of it.
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