The 24-Hour Illusion

We're told we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

That Jeff Bezos has the same 24 hours as you. That the single parent working two jobs has the same 24 hours as the retired millionaire.

But this equality is a fiction.

The truth? The 24 hours on your clock aren't the same as the 24 hours on mine.

When you're living with chronic pain, hours dissolve into managing discomfort rather than creating value. When you're caring for an aging parent or a young child, large chunks of those hours aren't yours at all.

Economic privilege buys back time. It means not spending hours on public transit, not doing your own housekeeping, not wrestling with broken systems designed to make the poor poorer through wasted time.

Time poverty is real. And it compounds, just like wealth.

The next time you hear "we all have the same 24 hours," pause. It's a convenient myth that ignores the profound inequality in how our hours are distributed.

Instead of chasing productivity hacks, perhaps we need honesty about the time we actually have available. Only then can we make meaningful choices about how we spend our most finite resource.