One assertion that has become more and more popular in recent years is that our brains aren't wired to focus for a full eight-hours every day. But with our free time shrinking from, on average, seven hours in 1955 to less than three hours a day in 2013, how are we mixing free time with leisure?

MRY have coined the phrase micro-leisure to describe how certain generations, such as millennial’s, are now taking micro-moments on their smart devices to create free time. In fact nearly 87% of people from this group, born between 1980-2000, state that their smartphone never leaves their sides. This leaves it possible for them to take those micro moments during the day, in the region of around 17 minutes for every 52 minutes that they work.

But this constant on society, that we now live in, has given rise to some issues for people. Nearly 47% of people feel pressure to respond to messages in a prompt manner. Contradictory to the stat that 87% of people can’t put their smart devices down is another fact that 49% of users do agree that smartphones have made it difficult to focus on one task. So even though we feel like we can't put down our phone we are still aware of a needling sense that we can't escape its influence. 

App developers and marketing companies are no longer reliant on the golden hour as the lines between professional and personal time become more and more blurred. The golden hour itself refers to that time in the day where a break between work and play is possible that was once thought to exist around the 5PM mark. But with the always-on nature of our lives it is now more difficult to distinguish between when your work starts and a break actually occurs. Perhaps a correlation exists between this perceived increase in the instances of micro-leisure time and the download figures for apps. Apps like Pokerist, Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds and Clash of Clans , which are targeted towards casual gamers, have all posted impressive download numbers over the last number of years.

With society moving away from the traditional concept of the golden hour and micro-leisure opportunities becoming more important for time strapped work force it will be interesting to see how smartphone usage becomes more and more ubiquitous.