In a series of articles, I invite you to take a look at the math of shaving. An unavoidable human activity, which takes up a lot of your time (for those of you who shave), gives employment to millions of people and is also an activity that the stock market and financelove. All this to tell you that, far from being a trivial activity, shaving gives you food for thought!
Have you ever thought about how much time you spend shaving? The average time spent shaving with a razor blade is 7 minutes, from shaving preparation to rinsing your face. That's already less than a woman's 10.9 minutes for a leg shave. We also know that 1.3 billion men shave. Some do not shave for religious reasons (7%), others for pure comfort. Even though beards, whether long lasting or "2-3 days", are making a strong comeback in the Western world (but observers are seeing large fluctuations in these changes in habit), we can consider that 85% of men shave at least every day.
How much time is thus spent by humanity each year by shaving? Easy: multiply 1.3 billion by 7 minutes, by 365 and by 85%. Let's add the remaining 15%, who also spend 7 minutes, and consider that they shave every 3 days. So we get 2,823 billion minutes spent for the 85% who shave every day and 164 billion minutes who shave once every 3 days. Let's simplify to 3,000 billion minutes, or (here, I'll let you do the calculations by yourself...) still 2 billion days, or 5.7 million years spent each year shaving by the males of this world.
Let's also specify that a European male will shave about 20,000 times during his life and that by doing the same calculations as above, we quickly understand that he devotes an enormous period of his life to shaving: 8 months per life. On average in the world, due to life expectancy , this figure is more like 5 months per life.
All this inspires me two thoughts. The first is purely observational. With 5.7 million years devoted to shaving, we can build each year ... a whole big city, several enormous dams of the type built on the Yellow River, equip an enormous country with road infrastructure. Of course, I know that I am adding up "apples and pears" in a way. Time is not a monetary unit, what the hell....
But the second thought comes to me precisely from this last observation that "time is not a monetary unit". Think about your daily shave: it's actually a little ritual by which you enter your busy day. And often you "let go" of it for those few minutes. It's all about you. And for those for whom this is not the case, and who experience shaving as a waste of time, I can only suggest that they enjoy that nlost time". Because lost for lost (no, we won't be able to build an orbital station with the time we could save...), we might as well "lose it well". And to lose it well is in fact ... to take it. Yes, take that time.
At Raz*War we have solutions for you to avoid wasting time foolishly looking for your blades for example. Subscribe to our razor blade service at home, for example. Or follow our tips for an efficient shave, requiring only one or two passes. But most of all, we invite you to enjoy the pleasure of shaving! Yes, take advantage of this blessed time where you are at the center of the action (perhaps the only time of the day when you are in front of your mirror) to savor this little interlude of time in front of you.
Pierre,
