Oh, no! It takes 162,335 minutes a year to maintain my health and wellbeing

It was the sixth time I’d washed my hands that day. My red, raw wrists stung as I toweled off, protesting the friction and New York’s bone-dry winter. Being a dog owner (twice-daily poop exposure) during peak respiratory illness season (strangers coughing on you) is no joke.

I thought about how life is a procession of vital, unskippable tasks: washing and eating and resting and pooping and exercising and brushing your teeth on a loop, forever.

Some version of this tedium thrums steadily for all of us. “A quiet monologue runs through my head at all times. It is this: dinner dinner dinner dinner,” wrote Rachel Sugar in the Atlantic last month. “It’s not just the cooking that wears me down, but the meal planning and the grocery shopping and the soon-to-be-rotting produce sitting in my fridge.”

That day, my friends texted about the slog of personal upkeep. “I am now putting basic things like ‘apply night cream’ on my daily to-do list,” said one.

“For some reason filling up my humidifier is where I really get mad. I’m spending my wild-ish and precious-ish life on a HUMIDIFIER,” wrote another.

A final miserable text pinged: “When is anyone supposed to do anything?”

Great question.

I did some mental calculations. How long did it take to cook fiber-rich oatmeal and walk my recalcitrant hound? Add the hours spent bawling to my therapist and the minutes of stretching muscles foreshortened by my sedentary job. Drinking two liters of water takes several minutes multiple times a day, as does showering and brewing cups of polyphenol-rich black tea.

All that meditating, all that flossing, all the skin cells I had to slather with SPF: I wondered what I could have done instead, like learning Cantonese or being up to date on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Teeth gnashing, I opened up a spreadsheet and started cataloging the chores of being alive and their duration. Meditating: 3,650 minutes a year. Washing my face: 730 minutes. Walking the dog: 25,550 whole freaking minutes a year. As the list grew, so did my fury. It was humiliating how much it took to simply be a person. My friend Sisyphus, I thought, feeling kinship with him and his big stupid rock.

Finally, I crunched the data to estimate how much time I spent a year on this nonsense. The total: 162,335 minutes.

I was agog. A simply ridiculous number! Equivalent to 2,705 hours a year, or 112 days. And it didn’t account for work or sleep, both of which I definitely need to do. I’m not a gym rat, or someone with a 12-step skincare routine. I don’t cook every day, play soccer or do pilates. I hadn’t included grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, volunteering, watering my numerous physiologically beneficial plants or staying informed amid a devastating news cycle.

I don’t have children or a car or a house – just an annoying body with chronic pain, for which basic maintenance can feel relentless. You can probably put on socks in a matter of seconds; for me – please do not picture this – it can take about a minute.

And this all adds up to 162,335 minutes per year! When am I supposed to, say, lie on the floor and contemplate the mysteries of existence?

I am joking, but in a demanding and chaotic world, plenty of other people are seeking ways to manage the basics. According to Google Trends, searches for “self care reminders” went up 3,800% in mid-January. In 2024, lifestyle brand Lululemon reported that 45% of respondents to their corporate survey experienced “wellbeing burnout”. “The more pressure we feel to be well, the less well we feel,” reads the report. But this isn’t even as high-concept as that.

I’ve long let go of the idea that my health has to be perfect – I subscribe to the scholar Mimi Khúc’s idea of unwellness. In an interview with the Guardian last year, she said: “We are being forced to be ‘well’, to pretend we’re OK, to never have needs, to never be sick, because all those things would mean something is wrong with us and we don’t actually belong. This constant pressure can be deadly.”

It’s a refreshing view that recognizes the burdens of upkeep – even when it’s a privilege to be able to do it.

“I resent how much time this takes up,” I texted my friends. My health issues mean routine tasks are more time-consuming than they used to be.

Related: I tried an anti-inflammatory diet for a week. This is what I learned

This left me with a dilemma. As a lifestyle editor, I encounter a lot of information about how to improve one’s wellbeing. I don’t have the constitution to be a fanatic, which is good because that’s the mindset that leads to comparing erections with your son, Bryan Johnson–style. But there are some gradual changes I’d like to make based on what I want my future to look like: like weightlifting for bone health and eating more nutritiously. I’m also forever curious about adjustments to body function. For instance, should I really be paying more attention to my feet?

Rageful spreadsheet frenzy over, I took a beat. One hundred and twelve days was almost a third of a year. That’s a lot! Why would I put pressure on myself to do more? With this data, I stopped wondering if I should try every new healthy activity. I simply don’t have time. I need to work and have fun and do nothing sometimes (which can also be good for you).

Life admin – what a drag! But deciding what to eat and doing YouTube workouts are also how I care for myself. I appreciate those efforts – well, I have to, as part of my nightly gratitude practice (1,825 minutes a year).

Still, dreading another two months of cracked, inflamed skin, I ordered the humidifier my group chat recommended. But, they warned, you have to fill it up every night. My heart sank, thinking of the sluggish water pressure in my kitchen faucet. At a few minutes a pop, there goes another 240 minutes of my life.