I’m pretty impatient when it comes to technology and I’ve often wondered just how much of my time is being wasted while I’m waiting for something to load, or download, or for tasks to complete. Memory expert Crucial.com has done a spot of surveying and discovered that slow tech is responsible for wasting billions of hours every year.
The company surveyed 1,148 Brits, aged 16-65, and found the average person wastes over 39 hours each year (or 6.5 minutes a day) waiting for slow technology to complete everyday tasks. It also found some people wasted as many as 121 hours a year. For the whole of the UK, this equates to a whopping 2.1 billion hours of wasted time per annum.
35 percent of respondents were frustrated by tech running slowly, while 31 percent were annoyed by the length of time their devices took to start.
For fun, Crucial has come up with a list of the top things people would have preferred to have done with this wasted time. Suggestions include.
| Watch TV/a movie | 42% |
| Take a nap | 33% |
| Cook a family meal | 26% |
| Spend more time with children | 24% |
| Go to the gym | 20% |
| Catch up on work | 18% |
| Read my child a bedtime story | 15% |
| Go for dinner/drinks with friends | 15% |
| Go on a date with my partner | 13% |
Roddy McLean, a computer upgrade expert from Crucial.com, said: "Families and couples today have such busy schedules and often find it difficult to make time for each other, without everyday annoyances such as slow-running technology adding to this problem".
There's an infographic detailing the perception vs the reality of our modern tech-life balance below.
Photo credit: Dan Kosmayer/Shutterstock