Patterns of everyday activities across social contexts

<jats:title>Significance</jats:title><jats:p>Everyday life in modern society often seems unpredictable and disorganized. Much research has demonstrated the structured nature of time, though, by documenting trends in individuals’ time use or allocation. We expand on this by using sequence analysis methods to identify and describe common patterns with regard to how individuals sequence their everyday activities—like working, eating, and traveling—during the course of the day. Using a large collection of time diaries from different contexts, we identify eight common behavioral sequence patterns. The distribution of these patterns holds across a variety of countries and over time. This study provides additional evidence of the highly structured nature of everyday behavior and suggests future directions for time use research.</jats:p>