diff --git a/Doc/library/datetime.rst b/Doc/library/datetime.rst
index 16ed3215bc2c1a..7cdead303f8212 100644
--- a/Doc/library/datetime.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/datetime.rst
@@ -1535,7 +1535,7 @@ Instance methods:
 
       or by calculating the timestamp directly::
 
-         timestamp = (dt - datetime(1970, 1, 1)) / timedelta(seconds=1)
+         timestamp = (dt - datetime(1970, 1, 1)).total_seconds()
 
 .. method:: datetime.weekday()