I only have 100 minutes a day

I only had 100 minutes a day to spend on sex, bragging, funerals, doctor's appointments, shopping, sports, theater, and anything else I could be spontaneous about.

I called my dentist to make an appointment, and he told me he didn't have even one hour available in the coming week, so I hung up with a few cries for fear of disturbing him, because he's a serious professional. But when people invite me to a seminar, or ask me to edit a memorial album of a master, or write a paper, or join a panel of experts, no one will believe me if I say I'm not available. They would say, "Come on, Professor, a man like you always has plenty of time!" Apparently people never see us humanists as serious professionals - we are a bunch of loafers in the eyes of others.

I did some calculations and encouraged all my colleagues to do their own and tell me if they were correct. A normal non-leap year has 8,760 hours, so assuming 8 hours of sleep a day, 1 hour to get up, shave and dress, half an hour to brush our teeth and go to the bathroom, and no more than 2 hours to eat, we use up 4,197.5 hours. Another two hours spent scurrying around downtown would also be 730 hours per year.

Teaching 3 classes a week for 2 hours each and taking an afternoon to give a mini-teaching session to students, that's another 100 hours used up. The amount of time I spend in college - I condense my teaching into 20 weeks - is 220 hours, plus 24 hours of exams, 12 hours of reading papers, and 78 hours of departmental and committee meetings. On average, I read five papers per year, each averaging 350 pages, at least twice per page, once before revisions and once after; at three minutes per page, that's 175 hours. The shorter papers are mostly covered by assistants, but still require 6 meetings, each responsible for reading 4 papers, averaging 30 pages each: reading plus preliminary discussion, at 5 minutes per page, this is another 60 hours. Not including my own research, which has taken 569 hours.

I edit a semiotic journal called VS, which comes out 3 times a year and totals about 300 pages. Not counting the time spent reading manuscripts and returning manuscripts, at 10 minutes per page (evaluating, revising, and proofreading), that's a total of 50 hours that could be spent. I edited two more academic monograph series related to my line of work. Six books a year, totaling 1800 pages; at 10 minutes per page, another 300 hours were spent. For the translation of my own writings - essays, books, articles written for newspapers and magazines, papers read at seminars, etc.; considering only the texts I can check, I read 1500 pages a year, at 20 minutes per page (reading, cross-referencing the original, communicating with the translator face-to-face or by phone or letter), which is another 500 hours. And then there is my own writing, even if I don't include writing books, just essays, miscellaneous articles, reports, lecture notes, etc., which easily add up to over 300 pages. If you add in the time spent thinking, taking notes, revising, and goofing off, that's at least an hour per page - another 300 hours. For my weekly magazine column, at the most optimistic estimate, it would take another 3 hours per week to select the topic, take notes, reference several books, make a draft, cut it to the proper length, dictate it, and send it off. Multiply that by 52 weeks and that's 156 hours. Finally there is my mail, and although there is still a lot of unanswered mail, I have to dedicate 3 mornings a week, from 9:00 to 13:00, and that takes up 624 hours.

I also calculated that last year alone, when I accepted only 10% of the invitations and attended only seminars closely related to my profession, as well as a number of unavoidable public appearances, I devoted 372 hours to actively participating in such activities. And because many of these events are held abroad, travel takes more than 323 hours.

The above adds up to 8121.5 hours, and subtracting from the 8760 hours per year leaves me with 638.5 hours, or in other words, 100 minutes per day to have sex, brag, attend funerals, go to the doctor, shop, exercise, and watch theater. As you can see, I haven't counted in the time spent reading books outside the scope of my work (books, miscellaneous, comics). Assuming I use my travel time to read, 223 hours, 5 minutes to read a page, I could potentially read 3,876 pages, the equivalent of about 13 books of 300 pages. And what about smoking? Let's say 60 cigarettes per month, if each cigarette takes half a minute (to find, light, and put out), that's 182 hours in total. That's too much luxury. I have to quit smoking.