How To Be More ‘Time Affluent’ This Year (Even When It Feels Impossible)
Do you feel constantly time-strapped, with too many items on your to-do list but not enough time to actually do them? You’re not alone: The majority of working Americansreport feeling “time poor.”
The opposite of time poverty is “time affluence” — defined as the subjective feeling that you have sufficient time to pursue leisure and other enjoyable, meaningful activities.
Subjective is the keyword here. Your perception of how much free time you have — and how you use that time — is generally more important than the objective number of hours at your disposal.
“You can have two people who have exactly the same schedule and exactly the same responsibilities, and one lives in time affluence and one lives in time famine,” psychiatrist Gabriella Rosen Kellerman told Well+Good.
In 2021, a team of University of Pennsylvania and University of California, Los Angeles social scientists found that people who had two hours or less of free time per day had lower levels of happiness. But they also found that those who had more than five hours of discretionary time per day showed decreased levels of happiness, too.
“Between two and five hours, the relationship was quite flat,” UCLA social psychologist and behavioral science professor Cassie Mogilner Holmes, one of the researchers, said in an interview on the “Speaking of Psychology” podcast. “And so what that is suggesting is that, except that the extremes, it’s not so much about the amount of time you have. Then the question comes in, how are you spending the hours that you have?”
While time poverty has been linked to negative outcomes like worse physical health, well-being and productivity, time affluence is associated with a number of benefits.
“This feeling of having control and feeling like you have enough time on an everyday basis can promote happiness,” Harvard Business School professor and researcher Ashley Whillans said at an online event for her book, “Time Smart,” according to The Harvard Crimson.
Whillans’ own research has found that prioritizing time over money is linked with greater happiness.
Another major benefit? Feeling time affluent can make you more social.
“There’s lots of studies showing that social connection has huge benefits for our overall well-being,” Yale University psychology professor Laurie Santos, host of “The Happiness Lab” podcast, told HuffPost. “But often we fail to connect with the people we care about. Studies show that feeling a bit more free in time can help us connect better with others.”
Feeling time-rich can also make you kinder to others — and kinder to the planet, too.
“Research shows that we’re less likely to help others when we’re in a rush,” Santos added. “So having some free time can help us become the people we want to be.”
And while you can’t add more hours to your day, there are still ways to increase your individual sense of time affluence.
Spend money to save time.
This is Santos’s favorite tip, she said. If you have even a little bit of discretionary income, consider spending some to buy your way out of tasks you find unpleasant.
“Studies show that spending that discretionary money on getting more free time — think hiring a neighborhood kid to shovel snow or mow the lawn, buying the pre-chopped veggies, hiring help with house cleaning or cooking — can help us feel happier,” she said, noting that this doesn’t just apply to wealthy people.
Outsourcing dreaded chores may feel like an extravagance, Whillans told Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, “but if you removed your most disliked tasks even half the time or when your schedule is especially tense, it will pay off.”
Make a ‘time confetti’ wishlist.
Another tip from Santos: Make good use of the free time you have. Ideally, that’s a long, uninterrupted stretch of leisure time. But in reality, sometimes we only have a few minutes here and there between tasks — like that five extra minutes you get when a work meeting ends early, or the 10 minutes you spend in the waiting room before your dentist appointment. These little scraps of time are what journalist and author Brigid Schulte refers to as “time confetti.”
“We usually just waste that time confetti — think scrolling a social media feed or looking at dumb stuff online,” Santos said. “But using that time confetti wisely can allow us to feel more time affluent and can allow us to make good use of the time we do have available.”
Make and maintain your own running “time confetti” wishlist in your phone’s notes app. This Instagram post from podcaster Liz Moody contains some good suggestions — going for a short walk, calling a loved one, reading a few pages in a book or cutting up some vegetables.
Donate your time to others.
This one may feel counterintuitive. If you’re already short on time, the thought of spending precious minutes doing something for someone else may not be top of mind.
But according to another study Holmes co-authored in 2012, helping another person has a way of expanding your perception of time. Being of service makes you feel effective and useful. And when you feel like your time is well-spent, you perceive it as more abundant.
“Our results suggest that if people instead spent time on others, they might feel less time constrained and better able to complete their myriad tasks and responsibilities,” the authors wrote.
The researchers concluded that when people feel time-constrained, “they should become more generous with their time — despite their inclination to be less so.”
Seek out awe-inspiring moments.
The awe you feel when you look at the ocean, take in a beautiful sunset or attend a concert has a way of expanding your perception of time.
“In one study, researchers showed that compared to reflecting on a happy event, reimagining an awe-inspiring event made people feel less hurried,” Holmes wrote in an article for CNBC. “It also made them behave as though they had more time — making them more willing to volunteer their time for a charity.”
She suggested a few ways to incorporate more awe in your everyday life — like by having expansive conversations, spending time in nature, looking at art or witnessing an accomplishment.
“During moments of awe, absolutely nothing feels limiting — certainly not the minutiae of the day’s schedule,” Holmes wrote.
