#291 How to Add 11 Years to Your Life

Count How Many Times You Check Your Phone Today

Quick quiz today: Do you know how often the average American checks his or her smartphone?

* Enter Jeopardy music here *

Well… What’s your guess?

How about every six and a half minutes.

That’s 150 (!!!) times per day.

Second part of the quiz: How often do YOU check your smartphone per day?

Here’s one of the many reasons why that matters.

In addition to the fact that smartphone addictions look an awful lot like all the other addictions out there, and the fact that after too much flitting around in shallowville it’s REALLY hard to ever go deep, researchers say that you’re wasting up to ELEVEN years of your life on distractions.

ELEVEN YEARS!

Here’s the napkin math. According to Adam Alter in Irresistible, most people spend between one and four hours on their phone per day. The average is a quarter of their waking lives which equates to more time on their phones than on any other activity aside from sleeping.

That’s 100 (!!!) hours per month “lost to checking email, texting, playing games, surfing the web, reading articles, checking bank balances, and so on.”

Add that up and… That’s ELEVEN YEARS over the course of a lifetime.

Yowsers.

So…

Today’s +1. Want to get some time back for deep living? As in, YEARS of your life back?

Count how many times you check your phone today.