A lot of people live their lives the wrong way. I’ve been saying this for a while but I’ve never put it together in a perfectly succinct manner that renders all opposition to my viewpoint blatantly incorrect. I just thought about it five minutes ago, so it’s definitely thought all the way through and completely irrefutable. It’s called the 7-8-9 Plan, and it will show you how to live a happy life. It goes like this:
7 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 9 hours of free time five days every week.
That’s it. That’s how you live a kick ass life while also being able to pay for some shit. Not a ton of shit. But all the shit you actually need. This won’t make you rich. This will just make you happy. You won’t have a jet ski or a sweet motor home through this system (unless you spend some of your free hours at the Price is Right and win the showcase) but you won’t need that shit. Let’s just say, you’ll make your way without showing off.
7 hours of work isn’t bad. It’s not a short shift but it’s easily tolerable. I’ve worked sixteen hour shifts before. The job was really easy but it didn’t matter. Simply being in one place for that long makes you want to peel your brain out. But working 7 hours is no problem. Even if you don’t like your job, 7 hour shifts are pretty easy (unless you drive for a storm chaser in Oklahoma [which sucks double time because you gotta drive directly towards tornados and you also have to live in Oklahoma]).
8 hours of sleep is all you need, and it’s as much as you should get. If you oversleep, you feel like shit. If you don’t sleep enough, you feel like shit. But if you get 8 hours, you feel great.
9 hours of free time is a TON of time to get your errands taken care of and still be able to hang out a lot every day. 9 hours. It takes a half hour to build a fort (unless you gotta drive to the store to get clothespins), ten minutes to drag a TV in there and hook up a DVD player, a half hour to make spaghetti with meat sauce, and boom: You just made a perfect place to eat your kick ass lunch and you still have 7 hours and fifty minutes to do a ton of other sweet things.
Of course, you still have your two off days (thanks to labor unions in Wisconsin) to really go hog wild on doing whatever the hell you want. It’s really quite a perfect system. I was doing the 10-7-7 plan for a while (10 work, 7 sleep, 7 free time) which was tolerable, but not ideal. Some people do the 12-5-7 or the 8-10-6 but those don’t have to sensibility or the shear marketability of 7-8-9. It sounds like a protein shake or something, which is how you instinctually know it’s good for you before you even know what it is.
I’m hoping this becomes the new Atkin’s diet/Macarena/Scientology and I think it can do it. First of all, it makes perfect sense and is completely right. Second, it has been mentioned in an article on an extremely influential website. And it also has a catchy name that would easily lend itself to key chains and shot glasses. Within two years, I predict everyone will be living like this. And those that aren’t will pray every night that they can and probably huff to forget they can’t. It’ll be like the moonwalk: Not everyone can do it, but everyone wishes they could.
Sadly, I myself, the vessel that the 7-8-9 chose to reveal itself through, am not living my life according to the plan. However, I am very close. I’m currently doing a 6-8-10, which isn’t too bad. But pretty soon I’m either gonna get sick of eaten Ramen or find more work.