A commonly cited figure is that we blink an average of 12 times a minute while we’re awake and each blink lasts about a third of a second. So that’s 11,520 blinks in a 16-hour day, taking up just over an hour.
So in an 80 year lifetime, you’ll spend three and half years blinking. That’s had us thinking – what else do we waste our lives on?
How long do you spend...
Yawning?
We yawn about nine times a day as an adult, even more when we were younger (a 12-week foetus yawns 25 times a day). That’s at least two weeks of yawning in your life.
Putting your socks on?
It takes about 20 seconds to put your socks on. If you wear socks every day, you’ll devote almost a week to this task.
Scratching?
Even without any specific allergies, most people will scratch 97 times a day for a couple of seconds per scratch. Total time spent: two months. Plus one extra scratch that you just did after reading this.
On the toilet?
You spend between one and three years on the toilet – depending on how much fibre you get in your diet (and how much scrolling you do on your phone).
Travelling in a car?
You’ll also spend just under three years travelling in a car. This means some people spend more time sitting on a loo seat than a car seat.
Swallowing?
You swallow at least 500 times a day. Mostly this happens when you aren’t actually eating, just continuously cycling saliva from your mouth to your stomach to your bloodstream and back to your mouth.
Some studies have measured normal swallowing rates as high as 1.32 times per minute. That’s almost 2,000 times a day and would add up to a year and nine months of swallowing in an average lifetime.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Marlowe Fox, via email) 'In an average lifetime, how long do we spend blinking?'
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