Bear with me as I ramble here:
Pulling numbers out of nowhere for an imaginary person:
5 years old: You've probably spent most of your life in the care of your parents (a parent), maybe a babysitter or extended family member.
18 years old: Figure you've spent 12-13 years in school, so 2/3 of your life has been spent with classmates/friends, the other remaining time with parents/family, others, etc.
30 years old: Assuming 4 years of college, you've been working for about 25% of your life, spending that time with coworkers, figure about 50% of your life was school up to this point, with the remainder being spent with others/family.
65 years old: If you're a traditional person working til 65, that means now you've spent 66% of your life spending a good chunk of your day with co-workers.
Yeah, I get it, you're awake for 16 hours, work is only 8 hours, weekends blah blah. But today I realized just how much energy I spend on something work related: Wake up at 5:30, make myself presentable, get in car/on bike, get to work, stay there for 8.5-9 hours, get home, mentally unwind. An 8 hour work day can easily be 10 hours, making up the majority of my waking time.
This is why I choose to save and make progress toward FIRE. I can think of a million other people I'd rather spend time with than co-workers (and in reality, I really really like my current coworkers and boss).
Who have you spent the most time with so far?