Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
The people sitting in this room are some of the poorest in the world,
and I can tell this without even looking at your bank account.
What I'm referring to isn't a scarcity of money,
but rather a scarcity of time.
Over 80% of working Americans today report feeling time-poor,
like they have too many things to do in a day and not enough time to do them.
These rising rates of time poverty have crushing effects on our happiness,
our social relationships, and our physical health.
Time poverty silences our laughter, steals our joy,
and depletes our personal well-being.
So where do these feelings of time poverty come from,
and what can we do to overcome them?
The most obvious explanation for these rising rates of time poverty
is that we simply spend more time working or completing household chores
than in previous decades.
Yet there is very little evidence for this idea.
Men and women have more time for leisure than they did in the 1950s,
thanks in part to a few modern miracles.
Instead, time poverty today is caused by our constant connection to technology.
Our iPhones, tablets, and laptops create "time confetti" -
fragmenting our leisure into small, distracted minutes of time
that are easily squandered and lost.
My data suggests that time poverty
is also caused by our obsession with work and making money.
We are taught and incorrectly believe
that money, not time, will bring greater happiness.
Even people with 10 million dollars sitting in the bank make this mistake.
We've all heard the saying "Money doesn't buy happiness,"
and it's true.
The best data suggests that money protects against sadness
but doesn't buy joy.
When our car breaks down,
money provides a solution to this very specific stressor.
Yet true happiness demands an investment of our attention and our time.
OK, so if you're sitting here thinking,
"Professor, tell me something I don't know,"
I get it.
The solution to time poverty is simple:
Make decisions that allow you to have more free time,
even if it comes at the expense of working and making more money.
I'm a happiness researcher.
I've a PhD in behavioral science.
I wrote a 150-page dissertation
on the link between time-stress and unhappiness.
My life's work thus far has taught me this one simple truth:
Prioritizing time is really hard.
Here are photos of me working while on vacation:
[Italy]
on the beach,
[Cancun]
in the locker room of a spa.
[Spa]
In fact, the one time I was caught actually enjoying myself on vacation,
my friend took this photo and posted it to social media with the caption
"Proof you sometimes do things outside of the office!"
as if to capture an event even more rare than seeing an elephant in the wild.
(Laughter)
To be clear, these photos were not taken to memorialize perfect vacations - no.
These photos are more like the Instagram equivalent
of catching your doctor taking a smoke break
before telling you that you have blocked arteries.
(Laughter)
Just like we know that exercise is good for us,
we know that time is our most valuable resource.
And yet we fail to prioritize it, undermining our happiness and health.
So what can we do
to overcome these overwhelming feelings of time poverty?
I have the power to make you all less time-poor right now.
It's true.
(Laughter)
I could leave the stage and give you 4.75 minutes back.
(Laughter)
But I'm not going to do that.
(Laughter)
I don't trust you.
You would squander that free time,
perhaps by passively scrolling on your phone until the next talk starts,
or if you're anything like me, answering just one more work email.
It isn't our fault that we fail to prioritize time
or that we lose moments of free time.
Our brains get in the way.
Human beings are pretty much allergic to leisure.
Researchers call this phenomenon "idleness aversion."
I mean, let's be real -
when's the last time someone asked you what your plans were for today
and you cheerily replied, "Nothing"?
We also think we're going to have more time in the future
than we do in the present.
I like to call this bias the "Yes ... damn!" effect,
and it works in life a little bit something like this.
Monday:
"Hey, Ash, can you help me move Saturday?"
"No problem."
Tuesday:
"Hey, Ash, want to go to dinner on Saturday?"
"Sounds great!"
Wednesday:
"Professor Whillans, I have a paper due Monday,
and I would really appreciate your help on Saturday."
"Of course!"
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Saturday - damn!
Oh, what was I thinking?
When the future becomes the present,
we often wish we could take back the things we said yes to.
It is clear:
Our societies and our minds are conspiring against us
when it comes to time.
We are taught that money is our most valuable resource,
our free time becomes time confetti
thanks to our constant connection to our cell phones,
and we say yes way too often,
in part because we think we're going to have more time in the future
than we do in the present.
But luckily for us,
just like people who are physically fit,
the time-rich among us make small, simple decisions in their everyday lives
that allow them to have more and better time.
The time-rich among us prioritize time over money.
No matter how much money they make,
they're willing to give up some of their money
in order to have more and better time.
They're also likely to take all of their paid vacations.
Now, this seems obvious, but many of us don't do it.
If your boss were to put a giant stack of monies on the table in front of you,
you wouldn't walk away from it.
But by failing to take all of your paid vacation,
that's essentially what you're doing:
You're walking away from a gift of time.
They also spend more time savoring their daily experiences.
My collaborator and I have data showing that the French spend more time eating
and are less stressed and happier as a result.
In contrast, Americans spend more time choosing their food
than actually enjoying it.
(Laughter)
To be clear, scrolling Grubhub for hours
is not a path to greater time affluence or happiness.
They also spend time engaged each day
in activities that we know are good for happiness:
socializing with friends and family, volunteering, and exercising,
even if just for a few minutes.
As it turns out, giving away our time for free by volunteering
is one of the best ways to feel like we have more of it.
Maybe they have more time for these activities
because they're also willing to pay
to outsource their most disliked tasks to others.
My data suggests that simply spending as little as $40
to outsource our most dreaded tasks to others
can really pay off in terms of happiness and stress.
Lastly, the time-rich among us keep time affluence to-do lists.
Each day, we are rewarded with small moments of free time,
like during our morning commute
or while standing in line at our local supermarket.
The time-rich among us don't squander this free time;
they capitalize on it.
They keep lists with activities
that they can complete in these found moments,
like texting their friend, calling their mom, or reading an e-book.
So the next time you feel compelled
to take that "What Celebrity Do I Look Like?" quiz on the internet,
try texting your best friend instead.
It can be hard to prioritize time,
in part because unless we are paid by the hour,
it isn't always easy to measure what the value of our time is worth.
A $10,000 raise is easy to understand.
However, the value of an additional 30 minutes of free time
isn't quite so simple.
But we can make time-related choices easier for ourselves.
I work at a business school,
so the only way I can get my MBAs to care about happiness
is if I put it in a currency that they care about and understand:
money.
But what I use in these calculations isn't money per se
but rather the income equivalent of happiness,
or what I like to call "happiness dollars."
[Happiness Dollars]
I define happiness dollars as the income equivalent
of the happiness that you'd experience for making a time-related choice.
Now, of course, the numbers that I get in these calculations
will depend on how much money you make.
And as it turns out, people who make less money
actually benefit more from making time-related decisions.
What we can see in these calculations is that simply shifting our mindset
from prioritizing money to prioritizing time
produces the happiness gain equivalent of making $2,200 more per year.
Outsourcing our most dreaded chores to others might feel frivolous,
but we can see here that it really pays off.
Outsourcing our most disliked tasks, like housecleaning or grocery shopping,
produces a happiness gain of making nearly $13,000 more per year.
And if we add up all of the activities that I just mentioned -
vacation, savoring,
spending more time engaged in happiness-producing activities,
creating time affluence to-do lists -
we can actually make ourselves happiness-rich.
Who doesn't want that?
OK, so I'm sure some of you are sitting here,
thinking about how to game the system:
"I'm just going to outsource my most disliked tasks to someone else
and then spend this additional free time working and making money
while all these other suckers focus on free time and happiness."
Not so fast.
Some activities are so unpleasant that they actually feel like a pay cut.
So if you spent all of your time
that you gained by outsourcing your most disliked tasks to others
working,
this would actually produce a net loss in terms of happiness.
It can be hard to wrap our minds around the concept of happiness dollars.
We aren't used to thinking about our happiness in monetary terms.
However, the purpose of this exercise
is to see that being as careful with our time as we are with our money
is an investment that can pay off for happiness.
Time is hard to account for.
It is easily spent, squandered, stolen, and lost.
To overcome our overwhelming feelings of time poverty,
we need to start shifting our attention away from work and making money
to having more and better time,
such as by savoring our daily experiences,
planning for our time as carefully as we plan our money,
and holding ourselves accountable,
such as by creating time affluence to-do lists.
Our happiness and the happiness of our planet depends on it.
Thank you.
(Applause)