[Acting Like Godot]

I was thinking about whether it's feasible to pursue 20 interests. To my surprise, I see that this could actually be possible and realistic.

A day has 24 hours. Assume you use 8 hours for sleep; and 8 hours for your non-interesting but necessary tasks. That leaves you with another 8 hours a day to pursue your interests.

Ignore Sundays. Let Sundays be rest days, buffer time, do-nothing time or whatever you want to call it. That would leave you with about 313 days in a year to pursue your interests.

So in a year you have 313 x 8 = 2504 hours, to pursue your interests.

With 20 interests, that works out to be about 125 hours per interest per year. That's quite a lot. It works out to be about 2.5 hours per week.

So let's say one of your interests is learning to play the guitar. You attend a one-hour class every week. You practise on your own for 30 minutes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You keep this up, for an entire year (not bad, yah?). You would still be within your "quota".

And you can fit in 19 other activities, each requiring approximately the same time.

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So far I have assumed that all your interests are discrete and separate. But importantly, many of your interests are not. For example, you may be interested in tennis, and you may also be interested in fitness. Yet time spent playing tennis is also time spent getting fit.

So effectively you have "expanded" your available time. You do not need 2 hours to play tennis and another 2 hours to get fit. Instead, the time spent playing tennis goes simultaneously towards two interests.

Other examples of synergistic activities:

- you are interested in writing articles for eHow, and you are also interested in public speaking. You write an article for eHow discussing your ideas on how to be a better public speaker. The time spent writing this article goes simultaneously towards two interests.

- you are interested in photography and you are also interested in travel. You travel to another country, and you take plenty of pictures. The time spent on photography fits right into your travelling activities.

- you are interested in ancient history, and you are also interested in travel. You travel to a historic old city, and visit the monuments, the ruins, the ancient castles, the heritage sites etc. Again the time spent on the trip goes simultaneously towards two interests.

- you are interested in reading, and you are interested in meeting people & making new friends. You join a book club, attend literary readings, discuss and discover new books, meet other members, interact with them ... and fulfill two interests at one go.

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If you find these synergies between your interests, then effectively the available time for each interest goes up. It may even be possible to discover synergies between three or more activities.

In practical terms, your available time for pursuing each activity could increase well above 125 hours per year; or way more than 2.5 hours a week. (And I'm still working on the assumption that you'll pursue 20 activities throughout one whole year).

So what do you guys think?