On an average day, Mongolians spend their time across 3 main areas: personal needs, work, and leisure. According to the latest Time Use Survey by the National Statistics Office, Mongolians spend 51% of their day on essential personal needs, 33.8% on work, and 15.1% on education and leisure. 

📸 Daily Snapshot

The reality? Mongolians actually spend 40% of their day sleeping, 20% working, and 20% on leisure. A plot twist on the “balanced” formula! Let’s break it down. 

• 💤 Sleep Rules: Mongolians sleep 9.5 hours daily, 2 hours more than South Koreans, taking up a hefty chunk of the day.
• 🏢 Work Mix: About 4.6 hours are spent on paid work, while 3.5 hours go to unpaid tasks like cooking and cleaning.
• 📑 Minimal Education: Surprisingly, education gets only 32 minutes or 2.2% of daily attention, a low share in an increasingly competitive world.
• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Free Time Focus: Of the 3.1 hours of free time available, 51% goes to social media. The rest is split between sports, art, and social activities.
• 💅 Personal Needs: Essential activities like eating and self-care take up to 2.7 hours or 11.3%.

🙎‍♂️🙎‍♀️ Gender Gaps and Family Demands

Men and women in Mongolia show distinct patterns in time allocation. Men clock around 7 hours and 59 minutes daily on paid and unpaid work, but women add an extra 54 minutes to that. Notably, women also handle double the amount of unpaid work as men, balancing household and caregiving duties alongside other responsibilities.

• 🤶 Mothers with 3 children, in particular, dedicate 6.3 hours a day to unpaid work, which is over 114% more than women without children and 153% more than fathers of 3.

While sleep and scrolling are prioritized, there’s little time left for learning and growth. Could this be a signal to rethink how time is spent?