Right now, you men with your eyes on these words are eating into the 17 minutes you&8217;ll likely spend today reading.

Ladies, you&8217;ve got 23 minutes of reading ahead of you today, so take your time.

But don&8217;t worry; once you use up your average reading time, you can delve into the &8220;relaxing/thinking&8221; minutes &8212; a whopping 20 minutes for men, 18 for women &8212; to cull over my words.

Then it&8217;ll be time to waste 21 minutes for guys, 16 minutes for girls on computer games.

You probably already worked in 20 minutes of exercise, men, and 13 minutes, women.

And soon it&8217;ll be time to head to the water cooler for the gentlemen to blow 33 minutes &8220;socializing and communicating,&8221; and the ladies to gab for 36 minutes.

Now that you men have spent an hour and 51 minutes of your day, and the women an hour and six minutes, it&8217;s time to get to the real time guzzlers.

The average man 15 years and older will spend four hours 26 minutes working today. The average woman will put in three hours of non-household work.

But remember, that&8217;s an average of all Americans. Break it down, and average the folks who actually report having jobs, and that number sits right around eight hours a day for men and women.

The rest of your day goes to two things &8212; TV and sleep.

The average American man watches TV for two hours and 30 minutes on a weekday. His wife gets in two hours and 14 minutes next to him.

And the average American sleeps for eight hours and 20 minutes during the week.

Of course, none of the above applies to employees of the United State Department of Labor&8217;s Bureau of Labor Statistics employees. Those poor souls spend all their time bringing us things like the American Time Usage Survey, my source for everything you&8217;ve read so far.

Work for the 2005 numbers, which were released in July 2006, began in 2003. It took that long.

The group interviewed approximately 13,000 folks.

The results are fascinating. The whole survey &8212; something brought to my attention by Time Magazine a few months ago &8212; breaks things down into multiple categories.

The average American only spends seven minutes a day on religious activities.

We spend 12 minutes a day on lawn and garden care.

And we spend an hour and 14 minutes eating.

Most working folks would agree that time is the most valuable resource. It&8217;s the one we can&8217;t recycle, conserve or save. It doesn&8217;t rollover; it doesn&8217;t stop or bend.

It just goes.

The labor statistics show that we are doing more now than ever before. The successful of the world have learned to use their time wisely. The non-successful have all the time in the world.

I don&8217;t fit many of the averages, and I don&8217;t know if that&8217;s good or bad.

I certainly don&8217;t spend 25 minutes a day buying &8220;consumer goods.&8221;

And I spend far more than 45 minutes a day on telephone calls and e-mail.

Overall, all of our priorities seem out of whack. If we supposedly only spend 20 minutes a day &8220;relaxing and thinking,&8221; how do we make it through the day? Seems to me that a little more thinking might make other things run more smoothly.

Thirty minutes a day doesn&8217;t seem like enough no-strings-attached social interaction.

The statistical American is fascinating, but he doesn&8217;t add up. But even averages can be misleading.

You have to take away the numbers, relax, think and socially interact for more than 30 minutes to see the real thing. People aren&8217;t numbers.

Julie Finley

is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or

julie.finley@natchezdemocrat.com

.