There’s nothing more annoying than losing the television remote (especially when you’re in the middle of a reality TV binge) but did you know that looking for it could be more trouble than it’s worth?

The Telegraph reports that a new study has revealed that looking for a lost remote control can take up weeks of a television viewer’s time over the course of their life.

Believe it or not, the average television fan will spend more than two weeks trying to find a remote control that has gone missing in action. TWO WEEKS. We don’t know about you, but we’re pretty gobsmacked at the thought of it. We don’t even think we’d spend two weeks looking for our favourite pair of shoes if they went missing.

Anyway, the study revealed that the vast majority of us spend 278.2 minutes (or 4.5 hours) every single week searching for a wayward remote control. Taking these figures into account, this means that over the course of an average lifespan, the number of hours spent looking for a remote jumps to 371.

Simply put, this means that more than two weeks and one day is spent looking for a remote control (you’d think we’d have more important things to be doing in fairness!)

Two weeks searching? We think we'd rather get up and switch stations manually

The study, which was conducted by discount website NetVoucherCodes, also revealed that men spend more time looking for the remote than women. Men spent an average of 18.5 days looking for a lost remote during their lifetime, while us womenfolk usually gave up after 12.5 days of hunting.

So why do our remotes keep going missing? Well according to the survey, children are the biggest culprits. They tend to steal the remote and hide it someplace else when we’re not paying attention (sneaky or what?).

Do you spend a lot of time searching for your television remote?