Survey: We Spend Less than One Percent of Our Lives Exercising

Running photo via Istock.com/AdventurePhoto

When it’s 6 a.m. and your alarm clock is blaring, your planned 45-minute workout likely feels like an insurmountably large part of your day. A new study from Reebok, however, says otherwise.

As part of its new Honor Your Days campaign, Canton-based Reebok surveyed 9,000 people from nine countries about how they spend their time. It found that, of the 25,915 days the company estimates make up an average lifetime, just 180 are spent exercising—that’s a mere .69 percent of your life. Yikes.

By (startling) contrast, the survey found that the average person spends 10,625 days using technology and 7,709 days sitting down, which respectively equate to 41 and 29.75 percent of our lives. The survey also found that the typical person spends only 6.8 percent of his or her lifetime (1,769 days) socializing with loved ones, and .45 percent of his or her lifetime (117 days) having sex. Feeling depressed yet?

On the bright side, Americans led Reebok’s survey in number of physically challenging things done per month, completing 9.84 tough tasks per month, compared to the survey-wide average of 7.27. We also tried something new approximately seven times per month.

The survey’s results likely aren’t indicative of the world as a whole, since the nine countries included—the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Mexico, Canada, France, Russia, Korea, and Spain—are all relatively developed. Time spent sitting and using technology, for example, would likely look very different in other parts of the world.

Be that as it may, we could all stand to add a few more days to our exercise tally, and to subtract a few from our sitting count. So go ahead—book that post-work bootcamp class today. You won’t regret it.