Workers have no time for free time

Almost half of British adults feel they have ‘very limited’ free time for themselves during the working week, according to new research.

According to a new survey of UK adults in full or part-time work, this was a cause of concern for more than 1 in 3 – who confess that they suffer stress as a result.

Furthermore, the research discovered that 1 in 10 report that their busy schedules have even impacted their health.

The survey also examined the tasks that respondents feel take up most of their time outside of work.

Depressingly, household tasks – such as cleaning, tidying and doing laundry – most commonly eat into an individual’s otherwise ‘free’ time outside of work.

Understandably, caring for children (including bathing them, helping with homework, reading to them, changing nappies and feeding them) came in second – a finding that many time poor working parents can probably sympathise with.

Doing overtime outside of working hours was a common free time vacuum for more than 1 in 4.

Pascal Culverhouse, founder and CEO at ElectricTobacconist.co.uk, commented: “Clearly, free time is seriously limited for many adults in 2017, and this is having some pretty negative effects – not only in terms of people’s mental health, but for some it is actually impacting on their general health, which is definitely a concern.

“Taking time out of your day for yourself is obviously really important – but for some, it can be very difficult to find the time to do so. Those who live with housemates, partners or their families could try to share out tasks like household chores, cooking and paying utility bills or doing the food shopping, to make it equal and free up time outside of work.”

Life admin such as banking, paying household bills and doing food shopping ate up free time for 1 in 5 and 8 per cent of home cooks said preparing food burned time outside of work.

The top 5 types of activities that British adults believe they spend the most of their time on, aside from work: