To ask what % of your life is survival vs enjoyment?

[Commonsensitivity]

Mine is 80% survival 20% enjoyment. This doesn't seem balanced to me. But is it modern life now? Is it being a working mum? Would like to hear your percentages to see if I am out of line.

I would say 95% enjoyment 5% survival. I love my life at the moment.

90% enjoyment, 10% survival. FT work, one primary aged DC, good DH.

I'd say 50% of that is due to my perspective (positive mindset and outlook) and 50% is due to the actual stuff I do.

95-99% enjoyment I’d say. I love my life and I’m grateful for it every day. I’m very rarely unhappy.

20% survival 80% enjoyment but I like my job!

Until a couple of years ago it was 90% survival and 10%enjoyment.
Barely noticed the years passing and going from month to month barely staying above water.

Now it’s probably around 40% survival and 60% enjoyment.
Cashed in endowment near maturity and new better paid job.
Plus got rid of (ex) dh who was a cocklodger !

The thing is, I enjoy the mundane stuff.

I enjoy listening to podcasts while I clean, or chatting about the day with my kids while I put dinner on or just enjoying my own company and letting the world wash by while I get the shopping done.

I think, perhaps, living with a chronic illness that periodically renders the 'mundane stuff' out of reach means that I am more aware of the small pleasures within it.

Interesting question to ponder.

based on working hours and there being 16 waking hours in a day I work 25% of my awake time.

But I do enjoy my job much more lately - have gradually made decisions that align more with my values over the last few years.

Agree with others faith, mindset helps. Living in the moment helps too - appreciating everything. I don’t love housework for example, but just finding the enjoyment in the process of making things clean and the headspace mindless tasks offer helps - it doesn’t feel such a chore as it used to when I felt more depressed/purposeless about life.

I don’t really think of life as happy/sad/boring/enjoyable much anymore - it just is. Having an accepting relationship to ‘ negative’ feelings helps.

At the moment I think it's probably 70% survival, 30% enjoyment. We have a toddler who sleeps poorly. If you'd asked me a few months ago when everyone was ill, the toddler (then a baby) not only didn't sleep but pretty much also screamed 24/7 and had done for months, I'd say it was 100% survival. As we leave the the baby years behind us the enjoyment percentage will creep back up... Hopefully

95% enjoyment. I enjoy almost all my life- I am lucky to have a job I love, I enjoy running my household and doing daily tasks of that kind, and can afford to outsource the bits I don’t like. I enjoy spending time with my family and friends. I even enjoy my commute thanks to my podcast habit. I enjoy the exercise I do. I could go on and on and I haven’t even reached the list of things I do purely for enjoyment.

Struggling to think of things I genuinely don’t like. I don’t enjoy disharmony and disagreement eg having to talk to my kids about misbehaviour, although I do it when necessary. I don’t enjoy having tinnitus but I’m making the best of it.

I realise that some of this comes down to definitions. I also realise that a lot of it flows from my good fortune in enjoying my work and the fact that that work allows me to live the rest of my life without anxiety or want.

Same as op

I'm just working to live really

Grim

95% enjoyable. The only bit that I do occasionally worry about is my dc (just normal pre teen stuff). I feel very fortunate that I have a stress free life. It hasn't always been this easy- prob just the past 3 years when we made a big life move.

I’d say

20% survival

70% in the middle - stuff I need to do like my paid job and housework which I don’t actually mind too much but it’s hardly wild fun

10% stuff I actually really enjoy like the fun times with DD and doing my hobbies

Id say about 20% survival (and thats because, as a freelancer, I dont always know where the next pay check is coming from, which is a bit stressful, but it tends to work out), and 80% enjoyment!

Oh I don't know, I'm not sure I'd describe any part of my life as just survival tbh (perhaps very privileged to be able to say so!) I have a very flexible job I mostly enjoy, that's not to say my life is 100% enjoyment, but survival doesn't feel the right word, I am pretty content day to day and the work side of life (be that literal or home admin etc) feels manageable, at the moment, appreciate life is peaks and troughs.

Right now, 85% survival, 15% enjoyment. Everything is so hard, so expensive, and so joyless. I know it hasn't always been like this and I hope it'll improve again before too long but all I can see now is a miserable job in a grim country until I get to retirement age and then a miserable job for less money so I can keep a roof over my head.... assuming the government doesn't move the retirement goalposts yet again before I get there.

90% enjoyable at least. I've deliberately engineered it that way. All my jobs for 15 years have been in or around the things I do for hobbies so they're very enjoyable. When I started getting my career off the ground, and during some of the fallow bits of self-employment, I was earning peanuts so life was survival in that sense, but I still essentially loved what I did. Happily I've got to a place in my career where money isn't a worry.

Having children seemed like it'd tip the balance back towards survival and reading MN has confirmed that. I read all these posts from parents battling to survive in an ocean of chores and wonder why I would ever do that to my lovely enjoyable life.

25 percent survival, 75 per cent enjoyment sounds about right. I love my job and only have one child (don’t want another), some minor money worries but there is wriggle room to spend less and save more, I don’t burden myself with pointless housework like ironing or dusting the skirting board or just do the basics, and like a pp I have come to terms with my house looking like a cluttered toy shop until DS reaches his teens, so I don’t get down about it any more. I feel content, so that even when minor blips come up I just ride it out until things calm again.

About 98% survival and 2% enjoyment over the past 8 months.

• Work, health and relationship problems

I’d say 95% enjoyable. My life is mainly stuff I like doing. I’ve also removed all the negative people from my life which helped me with feeling much happier and free.

It’s sad to read so many people aren’t enjoying life.

Family fit and healthy, no mortgage or debt, and altho working for the NHS can be very challenging and harrowing at times, I generally love what I do. Not sure where the survival bit comes in.

Yeah, I’d say it’s 80% survival. Also a working mum - 3 kids. It’s not affordability or anything for me. We’re lucky to be doing okay… but I’m very stressed much of the time. Possibly because my job is stressful. I’m just doing my phased return after maternity though… I’m not even all the way back up to 40 hours yet.

Love my kids. Live for my weekends. Always behind on my washing.

40% survival
40% enjoyment
20% just flopping on the couch being neither here nor there.

My mood has been worse doing fully remote work. I tend to do roles where I end up working 7 days a week and the hours are long and high stress.

It's not really feeling worth it.

No kids but 98% survival and 2% enjoyment

95% survival at this point and thats likely conservative.

I have a child with complex needs - she has been suffering absence seizures this week and headbanging on walls, especially corner of the walls, culminating in a shiny bruise on her foreheard. When I try to prevent it, she attacks me. Distraction techniques don't always work. She is getting far too big and strong for me to physically restrain her anymore so I called my husband home from work in floods of tears.

She is not at school currently so I don't/can't get out much.

No identity outside of full time carer and no prospects for that changing any time soon