Soapbox Slice | An extra hour each day = all or nothing!

With daylight savings on the horizon (no pun intended), Stable Research recently reached out to our Soapbox community to find out how they would spend an extra hour each day.

We found that while people liked to engage in a number of things, most people preferred leisure time over physical activity.

• 16% indicated they would do nothing at all and feel good about it
• 16% would prefer to spend time with their families, and;
• 14% would prefer to spend the extra time reading a good book and magazine.

While people often indicate that the reason they don’t exercise is because of a lack of time, it was interesting to note that only 13% indicated that they would use the extra hour to go outside and exercise.

Here are some of the other findings:

• It appears that spending time with family far outweighed the preference for planning to catch up with friends over a coffee or alcoholic beverage which came in at only 4%.
• Escaping in front of the TV or at the movies appealed to 6% and 5% of people respectively, with 7% of our panel indicating that they would spend the extra time making something.
• While our last Soapbox survey showed that 73% of panel members eat at home at least three times a week [link to previous survey copy] it appears that this may be a necessity rather than a choice. This survey revealed only 4% of participants would choose to spend an extra hour cooking or cleaning.
• Only 2% of participants would get a beauty treatment and only 1% would attend an exhibition.
• While the general population do take part in volunteer activities, only 2% of participants indicated that they would spend an extra hour volunteering.

Our “Extra Hour” survey participants were from an equal blend of genders aged from 16 all the way to over 75. Their living arrangements covered all life stages, from single with no children to married or De Facto with children who had left home.

The findings of this short survey reveal that a lack of exercise isn’t always linked with the availability of more time, but there’s no doubt that the summer months bring with them the opportunity to spend that extra hour of sunlight either relaxing, socialising or just kicking back and reading a good book or magazine.