Are East Texans Too Busy?

If it's a typical week, we'll have less than a half hour of free time and we'll push ten important things to the back burner because we have trouble squeezing them all in.  That's what happens to most people across the country, but does East Texas fall in line with that?

About 6 out of 10 people say it's "extremely difficult" to balance work and personal schedules in a typical week.  That's according to Onepoll on behalf of H&R Block, and they found that most of us only get about 26 minutes of free time a week. Good grief, that's not even enough time for a good massage.  It could be a 22-minute Netflix show with an extra 4 minutes of sittin', but that's hardly enough down time to say we're refreshed afterward.

And because we have so much to balance each week, we tend to put off a bunch of stuff on our to-do lists, like regular doctor appointments and getting our oil changed.

TheLadders.com ranks the top things that we tend to put off when we run out of time, and here's how it breaks down.

Cleaning: 47.86%
Household maintenance/repairs: 39.55%
Laundry: 38.32%
Shopping: 32.72%
Going to the gym: 31.67%
Making appointments (doctor, etc.): 27.03%
Cook: 25.98%
Car maintenance: 25.63%
Going to the bank: 22.92%
Paying bills: 18.20%

Some of those things are really fun to put off!  And what we put on the back burner probably depends on what doesn't line up with our priorities.  I love going to the gym and rarely miss a day of working out, but cleaning is not my specialty and I usually do it only when the situation really gets on my nerves.  And I love to shop.  But I don't love following up on the check engine light when it pops up on the dash.  Some things are easy to put off because they're not fun, even if they are important.

So how do we find more free time?  Stay off of social media so we get more done at work and don't have to work from home later?  Have the kids do more things around the house to take the load off?  Take a personal day and hit the spa or take in a baseball game?

It seems like East Texas has things together more than much of the country, and I'm going to guess that you have more than a half hour of free time every week.  Hope so.  But if not, maybe we'll start with a 27-minute break at work today and we'll already be ahead of the curve for the week.  Hang in there.