Week 2,396: 80% of My Life Has Been Work – Here's Why That Matters

So far, I've lived 2,396 weeks.

I reflected. I crunched the numbers.

It turns out, 80% of my life has been spent working.

My first job?

Before I even turned 10, weekend shifts starting at age 9, according to my Social Security statements.  

At the time, it didn’t feel like “work.”
It felt like being helpful.
It felt like someone trusted me to contribute.
It felt like something meaningful.

That early feeling never really left. I kept showing up.

And now?
I've lived 2,396 weeks, which is about 58% of an average 80-year lifespan.
That’s over 16,700 days.
More than 134,000 hours of sleep, hundreds of seasons, and countless moments both ordinary and extraordinary.

But one number stopped me in my tracks:

🧮 1,924 of those weeks—about 80%—have been spent working.

Crunching the Numbers

Let’s break that down:

• From age 9 to 19, I worked part-time weekends and holidays. That’s roughly 572 weeks.
• From age 20 onward, I’ve worked full-time. That’s 1,352 weeks and counting.

And while not every week looked the same—some were 60+ hours, some were all-nighters on project sites, and some were deep dives into Lean, Scrum, and team coaching—they all had one thing in common:

They were anchored in showing up to do the work.

Not just any work.
The kind that builds.
That shapes spaces.
That moves people.
That makes lives better.

What Do You Do with That Kind of Data?

When 80% of your life has been devoted to work, it begs a deeper question:

Is this work worth my life?

If I’m going to spend the majority of my one and only life in this arena, the arena better be just.
It better honor people.
It better respect time and effort.
It better build something more human.

That’s why I’m so passionate about changing how we work in construction.

That’s why I teach teams how to apply Scrum in the field.
That’s why I wrote Construction Scrum.
That’s why I started The EBFC Show.

Because I’ve seen what happens when we treat workers like machines.
And I’ve seen what’s possible when we lead with respect, collaboration, and continuous learning.

Scrum and Lean aren’t just systems—they’re value statements.
About how we treat people.
About how we spend our finite time.
About how we build better—not just projects, but lives.

The Takeaway: My Why

This reflection didn’t make me regret the 80%.
It made me double down on my why:

If we’re going to spend this much of our lives working,
then we deserve to do that work in a way that respects us, challenges us, and makes life better—for everyone involved.

So I’ll keep showing up.
To teach. To build. To improve.
Not just for outcomes, but for people.

🎧 Listen on The EBFC Show

I dive deeper into purpose, time, and how we can build better together on recent episodes of The EBFC Show.

👷 Ready to change how your team works? Check out the EBFC Scrum Community of Practice where I teach weekly, and let’s start building smarter, healthier, and more human systems.