Twenty Four Hours… That’s all we get in a day.  No more and no less and the most interesting part of this time constraint is that no matter who you are, you only get 24 hours. Rich Poor, Sick or Healthy. Black or White, Male or Female we all are allotted 24 hours. However the difference comes in how we spend each day and as a photographer it can be an interesting time, so much so that when it all boils down to it the majority of Bahamian Photographers have between 3-5 hours most days to actually get work done. 

How much time really??

I’m sitting having a conversation with a friend of mine and somehow we get on the subject of what are you doing with your time. I think it stemmed from a question about finishing a project or something either way we landed on this subject. The question was asked why was it that I always seem so busy to do other things, its a valid question as well as one that is not asked often so I guess it was a good time to discuss how much time we really have.

Its a common misconception that we actually use our 24 hours effectively in our day to day lives. This misconception can happen pretty easily as it stems from our childhood and potentially school. What do I mean by this well its actually quite simple when you take a step back to evaluate the situation. 

Yes we are allotted 24 hours per day but how much of that day do we actually spend doing things we really want to do like spending time… quality time with family. Indulging in a hobby or in my case working on a business. I told my friend when you really do the math we actually have about 3-5 hours that are completely ours. Now this may vary from person to person but for the majority of Bahamians and I dare say persons around the world, we pretty much fall into this time category. But How?

4 Hours? How?

Ok lets look at the math because the numbers pretty much never lie unless you cant count. We have 24 hours per day right? Everyone starts the day with the same amount of hours. Not counting specific times I will just go with time in chucks of hours and not stating an actual time of day.

If you work a traditional job, as many of us do including myself. We pretty much 8 hours per day, including your lunch break and any other specified breaks, so we will chunk it into a full 8 hours. However where most go wrong in this calculation is the time it takes to prepare to go to work and to leave work.

All that time counts to working toward a specific goal which is getting to work to put in your time. Technically when we consider getting up and getting ready to go to work including driving time to and from work, on average that would take an extra 3 hours.

So now we add 2 hours in the morning from wake up time, shower, pick out clothing and iron if needed, make breakfast, get dressed and pack a bag if needed and driving time to work in Nassau traffic amounts to an average of 2 extra hours.

Again this is an average time, some will be more others probably a little bit less. Not to mention if you have to get children ready for school and we can add another hour for your commute back home.

Now of your 24 hours that should be all yours you are down to 11 hours per day.

11 Hours Left

Eleven hours doesn’t seem too bad, its some good time to do a lot of stuff. Well not really. I’m going to skip ahead to another big time consumer besides your job. SLEEP. This is where it becomes a bit blurry because the average person rarely gets the exact amount of sleep per night.

Although its been stated by the media that adults need about 8 hours sleep its rarely the case. Studies have shown that persons on average gets about 6.8 hours of sleep but for this example ill round it off at 6 hours. 

So now when you consider how much time we actually spend sleeping it really hits home how little time we actually have per day. Taking away another 6 hours from the 11 hours we are left with 5 hours. Five hours, this is where things get interesting.

Five hours isn’t so bad its still a lot of time to get things done. Wrong. This time is critical to your overall development and lifestyle. What we do with this special chunk of time makes all the difference in the world… Literally.

5 Hours Left

Five hours, This is the time in which you can make choices that affect your life and will determine if you will be called busy by your friends and family or a time waster.

What happens in this 5 hour gap? Of course with humans being the creatures that we are, our lives will also be different from location to location, household and responsibilities. However on average we can state that there are a few commonalities and patterns seen in human behavior.

Here are a list of things that persons usually do when they get home from work. These activities can take anywhere from 1-2 hours.

  • Yard work
  • Minor house cleaning
  • Take care of pets
  • Watch Tv (news or movie  takes more time)
  • Take a nap
  • Take a shower (stay in or go out again)
  • Surf the internet (social media)
  • Cook
  • Take care of children (most often takes more time)
  • Relax (various ways)
  • Etc.

Depending on the time of year or even the season this chunk of time can vary but we can be modest and subtract one hour from the time slot which now leaves us with four hours all to ourselves. 

This four hour time depending on who you are is either spent doing more of the same of your after work routine or for some this is the time that they take to work on their hobby or to run a side hustle… small business. 

The final four

As I mentioned before the last 5 hours is the actual time that the average worker really has per day. How they choose to spend this time all depends on what they are doing with their life.

For some this is the time they take to work on their side hustle to make a little extra cash, this can be difficult especially if you do not live alone or have to carry out what persons call adulting. 

To translate this into a photographer in the Bahamas, you will see that there is very limited time during the week to get work done. That 4 hours can turn into 2 hours or no time at all depending on their work load.

Running a side business after a long day of work isn’t as easy as it seems, it really takes determination and tons of discipline.

Four hours… That’s pretty much all you get to work with and when you realize how little time you have you then start taking advantage of every little opportunity to have some free time. Unfortunately that free time is added to your side hustle.

Caveat and conclusion

Ok I get it this may not particularly refer to your life but then you were not in on the conversation with myself and my friend. This is a break down of life’s time and how its an illusion to many to think that they are in control of their 24 hours.

Granted some person do work on jobs they love and hence the statement ‘find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life’ may hold true but we  know that the majority of people do not work in a job they love they work because they have bills to pay.

Taking into account the weekend can be tricky as its spent in a myriad of different ways all depending on what your interest are. This can mess up a control experiment because you no longer have that chunk of 8 hours at work along with the prepare and drive time of 3 hours. So your 4 hours of time would change to 15 hours of all me time. Or so we would like to think.

The moral of the story… LOL There is no moral just an awareness of how much time you really may be working with vs subconsciously thinking you have a whole 24 hours to work with each day. I leave you with a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger. 


I’ve always figured out that there are 24 hours a day. You sleep six hours and have 18 hours left. Now, I know there are some of you out there that say well, wait a minute, I sleep eight hours or nine hours. Well, then, just sleep faster, I would recommend.