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org. Okay,

0:55

arthur. I have a question for you.

0:57

Yeah.

0:58

If you had one extra

1:01

hour today, How would you use it?

1:07

How would I use it or how should I use

1:10

it Becca?

1:16

If I had an extra

1:19

hour a day, I

1:21

would spend it sitting

1:24

somewhere

1:24

in nature. Wow. I find

1:26

time to facetime

1:29

my mother.

1:29

If I had one extra hour every day,

1:32

I would spend it walking around my

1:34

city aimlessly. For me,

1:36

sometimes my commute requires

1:38

me to leave when it's dark and then get

1:40

home when it's dark. But if I

1:42

had an extra hour, it

1:44

would be beautiful walk down you

1:47

know, light, sun lit, drenched

1:50

paths with my wife.

1:58

This is how to build a happy life.

1:59

I'm Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor

2:02

and contributing writer at the Atlantic. And

2:04

I'm Rebecca Rashid, a producer at

2:06

the Atlantic.

2:10

How would you use it first? and

2:12

then I'll ask you how you should use it.

2:14

I'd

2:15

use it to work. I

2:16

would work more.

2:18

Yeah. For sure. And and look,

2:20

it's not that bad. I love my work.

2:22

I'm crazy about my work. I dream

2:25

about my work. Mhmm. It's great.

2:27

I I look. I'm working right now. Can

2:29

you believe it? Right. It's the best thing

2:31

ever. That's true. But it doesn't mean

2:33

that endless hours of work are gonna

2:35

give me what I need because it's a well

2:37

established fact

2:39

to any listener of how to build a happy

2:41

life that I'm kind of a work

2:43

addict or a success addict or

2:45

something like that or whatever

2:47

the pathology tends to be thinking

2:49

back to the episode of Donald Lemke. What

2:52

should I do with the hour? I

2:54

should use it in communion to

2:58

build love in my life. I

3:00

should use it to pray, to read

3:02

scripture, to spend

3:04

time with my wife because now

3:07

we live alone, now that we're empty nesters

3:09

-- Mhmm. -- to talk to

3:11

one of my kids, to call one of my dear friends

3:13

on the phone, that's what I should

3:15

do with it. And, you know, maybe I

3:17

would actually. You know, come to think of

3:19

it. When we're done here, I'm gonna gonna call a friend

3:21

instead of going back to work. The

3:23

how you would use time and should use

3:25

time is the big struggle.

3:27

Right? I think especially since the start

3:30

of the pandemic, our

3:32

relationship with time has changed so

3:34

drastically. There's either

3:36

too much time that you don't use

3:39

wisely or you feel

3:41

crunch for time in a way that all the things

3:44

you would want to do are

3:46

no longer an option. there's

3:48

no right answer. But I'm curious, are

3:51

you applying yourself in a way that's

3:54

useful in every waking moment?

3:56

When

3:56

you have a when you have a time problem like the

3:59

coronavirus epidemic

3:59

gave us all, where we became incredibly

4:02

unstructured we could

4:04

use our time much, much

4:06

more according to our own desires than we were

4:08

able to before. It sounds great, but it turns out

4:10

that it separates people more or less into

4:12

two groups. You can call them the strivers

4:14

and the fritters. You're

4:17

you're and and again, you can't necessarily

4:19

tell them apart in the workplace. when there's

4:21

things that you have to get done and there's an

4:23

exoskeleton that's called your

4:25

workday in the office. You

4:27

gotta get your done. And so you're responsible professional

4:29

and you do it. You don't just, like, waste

4:31

all your time and not go to the meetings and people

4:33

are waiting for you. You you do those things. Right.

4:35

But when your time is yours, you

4:37

figure out which is your vice. Now

4:39

the world pats you on the back when you're a

4:42

stripper. Congratulations.

4:43

It's unbelievable.

4:45

So

4:46

it's a problem when

4:48

relieved of the exoskeleton

4:50

of the traditional workplace. Your work

4:52

sprawls across your entire schedule. That's

4:54

my problem. The fritters are a

4:56

little bit different. When you've got that extra hour,

4:58

it's just too hard to get to thing when you

5:00

just have to get your work done. So a lot of people

5:02

have found that they fall behind. They get a lot

5:04

less done. They dooms scroll

5:06

a lot. Right. And if you waste it,

5:08

we'll be unto you because that's

5:10

that's the perfect pattern for actually

5:12

fittering away the day.

5:18

Many of us are stuck in our kind of vicious

5:21

cycle with time.

5:23

Our expectation, our hope, is

5:25

that time is in our control and we'll

5:27

use it wisely, whatever that

5:29

means. But it doesn't work that

5:31

way. The reality is that

5:33

many of us don't really know how to use our

5:35

time at all. How

5:37

can we bridge the gap between how we

5:39

use our time and how we want to use

5:41

our time? Let's

5:43

dig into the research on why people like

5:45

me overschedule themselves and become

5:47

too disciplined. While others

5:49

feel like the days, months, and years

5:51

are trying to slipping away. I

5:57

think

5:57

everyone should go to therapy. I don't

5:59

want it.

5:59

I've got it millennial.

6:02

I am

6:04

My name is Ashley Williams, and I'm an assistant

6:06

professor of business administration

6:09

at the Harvard

6:09

Business School and my research folks

6:11

is on time, money, and happiness. Ashley

6:14

Williams is a colleague of mine at the Harvard Business

6:16

School and the author of Time Smart.

6:19

how to reclaim your time and live a

6:21

happier life. You know, a lot of

6:23

research is

6:23

research and we study the things that we

6:25

struggle with And as a happiness researcher,

6:27

I was doing all of this academic research

6:30

when I started my job five years ago

6:32

on the importance of prioritizing time

6:34

for happiness for personal relationships.

6:37

Meanwhile, my relationship

6:39

was totally falling

6:42

apart. Ashley studies

6:44

one side of the time problem. the

6:46

one that busy strivers face, those

6:48

who try to make the most out of every

6:50

waking moment. And you know who

6:52

you are. She's a fellow

6:54

happiness researcher whose work covers

6:56

time poverty, a term she

6:58

uses to describe the modern epidemic

7:00

of people with too much to do and

7:02

not enough time to do it.

7:03

Ashley walked us through her concept

7:06

of time traps, the traps that motivate

7:08

us to spend almost all of our time

7:10

on work and productivity. So

7:12

I

7:12

wanna figure out what explains this

7:15

and what

7:15

to do about it.

7:21

So I had

7:21

this partner of ten years. We

7:24

were gonna move to Boston, start a new

7:26

life together from Bank COVER, and

7:28

this person left me in Boston

7:31

after three weeks because they

7:33

said that I was spending all my time

7:35

and work. and that there was

7:36

no relationship to be there

7:38

for.

7:39

And meanwhile, I

7:41

was giving talks all over the

7:43

country on the importance of valuing

7:45

time. I was

7:47

inside crying about

7:49

this like dissolution of my

7:52

most important relationship up to that

7:54

point in my life and

7:56

then preaching about the importance of

7:58

putting time first. eighty percent

7:59

of working adults through part feeling time

8:01

poor. Like, they have too many things to do

8:04

in a day and not enough time to

8:06

do them. This affects our relationships,

8:08

our physical health,

8:09

our ability to feel like

8:11

we're making progress and personally important

8:13

goals

8:13

These are the time traps that can

8:16

make us time poor. One of them is this

8:18

busyness as a status symbol.

8:20

This cult of busyness that's

8:22

pervasive in the United states,

8:24

in particular, where if

8:26

we feel like we have any time

8:29

in our calendar, we feel like

8:31

a failure, we feel lazy,

8:33

when we see our colleagues having a lot of

8:35

things in their calendar, we confer to those

8:38

people high status. Wow. If they never have a

8:40

spare moment, they must be really important

8:42

and valuable society. My

8:43

data suggests that the most time poor among

8:46

us are, in fact, those who are struggling to make

8:48

ends meet, have done research in Kenya,

8:50

in India, in the US

8:52

among single parent households. And we do

8:54

see that individuals in those groups who

8:56

make less money are more time

8:58

for because the system is working

9:00

against their time affluence. They

9:02

live further away from their places of

9:04

employment. They have shift schedules that are

9:06

constantly changing. They have less reliable

9:08

access to transportation and

9:10

childcare. So this is a

9:12

whole other conversation, a whole line of

9:14

work where I'm trying to

9:16

move the policy conversation on

9:19

not only thinking about

9:20

reducing financial constraints, but also

9:22

thinking about reducing time constraints

9:24

to help those with less

9:27

Thrive as well. And

9:28

it's interesting, you know, here in the United States, you go to a

9:30

party, you meet somebody in the icebreaker is. What do

9:32

you do? Which means, what do you do for a living?

9:34

What do you do to spend your time? And it's like, yeah,

9:36

I have a CEO I work eight hour weeks. People

9:38

think you're a big shot. In Spain, the icebreaker

9:40

question is, where are you going on

9:42

vacation? it would be kind of

9:44

odd, almost intrusive, maybe irrelevant

9:47

to say, how do you make your

9:49

money? Right? And and

9:51

yet, you're suggesting that this is really

9:53

not about money. It's really about time. It's

9:55

really about the fact that we're so busy,

9:57

which is a way to show ourselves

9:59

and others. that were highly in

10:01

demand. And so the root of this

10:03

problem philosophically well, is

10:05

philosophical. Isn't it? because it's

10:07

the philosophy of how we value ourselves. Right?

10:09

Isn't it the at the root of what we're talking about

10:11

here?

10:11

Yeah. This doesn't happen in European

10:14

countries like Italy where Actually,

10:16

it's the opposite. People have

10:18

more vacations, seem to be doing

10:20

something

10:20

right in life. I've

10:23

talked to so many colleagues about my

10:25

findings, And they say

10:27

things like, well, I thought, you know,

10:29

when my kids moved out and went to

10:31

college, that I would

10:33

finally get around to doing those havies

10:35

that I always had wanted to do.

10:37

And instead, I just filled

10:39

those additional hours with

10:42

work. And I don't know

10:44

why. And then we would have these

10:46

conversations about how productivity has

10:48

become our habit. And we

10:50

don't even know how

10:52

to enjoy our free time.

10:55

We've lost this habit.

10:57

And they asked me, how do

10:59

I start to

11:01

pursue a passion

11:03

so that I don't feel every

11:06

spare moment I have with

11:08

work. because

11:08

that's all I've been doing. And it

11:11

is like we have to almost retrain

11:13

ourselves to

11:14

have leisure as a habit so that

11:16

our defaults are not

11:18

work

11:19

emails, work meetings. But

11:21

instead, our defaults

11:24

are family. friends

11:27

exercise active leisure

11:29

activities. And we really,

11:31

especially in North American culture,

11:33

need to be pushing against work

11:35

as our default mode of

11:37

operating. For happiness reasons, like your

11:40

For happiness reasons. Let

11:42

me get back to this. really

11:43

interesting question of you.

11:45

So you were thinking about time

11:47

and then you experienced the

11:49

bitter fruit of not having enough time

11:51

for your personal relationships. See, yo, no

11:53

doubt it was more complicated than that.

11:56

But did you make any life

11:58

changes pursuant to that

11:59

really

11:59

terrible experience?

12:01

Yeah. But I I think my

12:03

life changes don't sound that

12:05

dramatic. I'm just trying to

12:07

adjust a little bit around the margins.

12:09

to make sure I have time for things that matter

12:11

to me outside of productivity.

12:14

So I don't work on the weekends

12:17

very much anymore. I have

12:19

a kid who's one years

12:21

old. I have a

12:23

husband that I love. I

12:25

also don't work for the first hour

12:28

in the morning.

12:29

I will use that time to invest in

12:31

myself. Read, meditate,

12:33

go for a walk, exercise. That

12:36

first hour is mine. not my

12:38

employers. And

12:40

as a function of those two rules, I

12:42

have to be a lot more careful about

12:44

what I say yes and no to. but

12:46

I've tried to almost have a

12:48

quota strategy. I'm not hard and

12:50

fast about this, but I

12:52

will work on one paper at a

12:54

time.

12:55

where I'm really

12:56

working on it every day, not

12:58

fifteen papers that I'm sorta working on

13:00

kinda all the time. So

13:02

I think The experience

13:04

of being at the lowest point in my

13:06

life and trying to put some of these

13:08

strategies into practice are

13:10

about small things that I do every day

13:12

that are nonnegotiables for my

13:15

happiness. You're

13:16

clearly putting your work within boundaries.

13:19

And this is the key point that you're making is that work is

13:21

within boundaries because you're setting

13:23

up your budget and

13:25

you're living within your budget. treat it like a

13:27

scarce resource the way that you would if

13:29

you're on a fixed income because you're really on

13:31

a fixed income. What time? So has

13:33

it hurt your work or is it made your

13:35

work better, made you more efficient? Is there

13:37

cost? Howard Bauchner: So

13:38

one thing that I learned early on and there's

13:40

research to substantiate this,

13:43

is

13:43

that it is better to

13:46

compare yourself to yourself as

13:48

opposed to compare yourself to others.

13:50

So for me, I think something

13:52

I did was really heavily guard

13:55

my attentional

13:57

resources as well. What

13:58

am I going to pay

14:01

attention to in terms of other people's

14:03

successes. because in my

14:05

field, there's no good

14:06

enough. nothing you're gonna do is gonna

14:09

feel like enough. It's gonna be enough. It's

14:11

gonna guarantee success and awards and

14:13

accolades in terms of net

14:15

productivity. Yes. I do get less

14:17

done now. Absolutely, especially since

14:19

having a kit. No question.

14:21

I am not as fast.

14:24

but I also don't hold myself to those

14:26

same standards as when I was working all the time.

14:28

And I think that's really key for

14:30

my own feeling of

14:32

satisfaction. My ideal self

14:34

looks different now. There's research on this

14:36

too. My ideal self used

14:38

to look like working all the time, being on

14:40

a plane every week and publishing

14:43

as much as humanly possible. That

14:45

was my ideal self, and my actual

14:47

time used looked pretty close to that.

14:49

And then I realized that might be good on

14:51

one dimension of my life productivity

14:53

and really hurt other dimensions

14:55

of my life. well-being social

14:57

relationships that I know as a

14:59

happiness researcher that you know --

15:01

Mhmm. -- matter a

15:02

lot for happiness. So

15:05

I changed my ideal.

15:07

My ideal now looks

15:09

like

15:09

publishing a couple of

15:12

impactful papers on projects I

15:14

care about that I think are gonna matter,

15:17

not traveling very much and making sure

15:19

I have time to spend with my friends and

15:21

family and investing myself every

15:23

day. So I also had to change

15:25

the aspirational goal. I

15:27

had to change what my ideal

15:29

self looks like. so that

15:31

my time used now is matching a

15:33

different ideal than what my ideal was

15:35

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16:13

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16:17

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16:19

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16:21

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templeton dot org.

16:40

For my

16:42

last book, I was interviewing this woman who

16:45

was doing what you were doing five years ago that bamey

16:47

for carpet never stopped. And

16:49

and she's confessing to me that

16:51

she's got a a cordial relationship with

16:53

the husband. You know, she doesn't

16:55

know her adult kids very well. She

16:57

drinks too much. She hasn't been to the gym in a long time. And

17:00

furthermore, that her young colleagues don't trust

17:02

her decision making because it's not to Chris as it

17:04

once was. She's like, what do I do? And I said,

17:06

you don't need to tell me what to do. You need to use

17:08

your time differently. You know, than you

17:10

are. And I said, why don't

17:12

you do what you know you need to do?

17:14

And she's she

17:14

kinda stops and says,

17:17

I I guess I'd prefer to be special

17:19

than happy. How

17:20

much of that is going around?

17:24

at

17:24

least she admitted it. I feel like

17:26

something that's very difficult is

17:29

that to have this realization. Right?

17:31

You have to understand what

17:33

you care about and want, like truly

17:35

what you value. Maybe

17:37

for this woman that you talk to,

17:41

she

17:41

did truly value being the richest

17:44

and

17:44

having this productive life more

17:47

than she valued. gaining or

17:49

improving in these other areas of life. And

17:51

she seems like she's actually somewhat

17:53

self aware about that. Right?

17:56

my economist colleagues say write down a

17:58

model, Ashley write down a model of exactly

17:59

how I should spend my time to be happy.

18:02

I say I can't do

18:02

that because I don't know what

18:05

you value. So for us to be spending time in

18:07

the so called right ways, we have to

18:09

know what we truly value.

18:11

So we have to do that self awareness

18:13

reflective component

18:16

first. And then once we know what we

18:18

truly value, research suggests

18:20

that the more that our lives on

18:22

a regular basis look

18:24

like our ideal. So what

18:26

your last seven days looks like

18:28

in a time diary

18:29

and how close that is to your

18:32

ideal time use. Minimizing

18:34

that discrepancy is hugely important for

18:36

life satisfaction and for the amount

18:38

on average of

18:40

positive food you experience on

18:42

a regular basis. Now for a lot of

18:44

people, they might say they wish they had more free

18:46

time and they could relax more and spend more

18:48

time with their families, but they don't actually

18:50

know

18:50

how to do Using your time in

18:53

leisure is

18:53

a very special thing.

18:54

It's, you know, you look at it philosophically.

18:58

Aristotle made a big comparison or

19:00

made a big distinction between work,

19:02

recreation, and leisure. Now, work

19:03

is productive activity. We all know that is

19:06

Recreation is a break from work to make you

19:08

ready to go back to work. Leisure

19:11

is in and

19:11

of itself worth pursuing.

19:14

Mhmm. Now, Joseph Peeper, the great

19:16

twentieth century philosopher, said that

19:18

leisure is the basis of

19:20

culture. I mean, these are people who elevated leisure.

19:22

And yet, you

19:23

gotta know how to

19:24

do it. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, absolutely.

19:26

So it's

19:28

something that we do have to build a habit

19:31

around, and that's where trying to

19:33

change ten, fifteen minutes, thirty

19:35

minutes seems a lot more possible

19:37

and achievable. Going back to behavioral

19:39

science literature, you want to be thinking

19:41

about setting a concrete

19:43

goal. And part of the reason in my

19:45

research, we often trade money

19:48

for time. So we'll go after money instead

19:50

of going after time as money is concrete.

19:52

We, like, know the value of a

19:55

thousand dollars. And we know how to count or

19:57

track three hours, five

19:58

hours, ten

19:59

hours, and turn that into productivity in

20:02

our minds. does

20:04

it mean to have more free time?

20:06

That is an abstract concept. We're

20:08

just having more leisure time even mean

20:10

or look like. So when we're trying

20:13

to actively set ourselves up for success

20:15

in these domains that are more abstracts like

20:17

spending time with friends and

20:19

family. We need to concretely write

20:22

down what that means. We like to

20:24

maximize measured mediums. This is worked by

20:26

Christy at the University of Chicago. We

20:28

go after the things that we can count and track. That

20:30

is the way our brains are

20:33

wired. So we do that for work. Why can't we

20:35

do that for our leisure time too?

20:37

Setting a goal of one

20:39

hour of exercise active

20:41

leisure is particularly good for positive

20:43

mood, active leisure, things like exercising,

20:46

socializing, volunteering fifteen

20:48

to thirty minutes. mapping out what thirty minutes more

20:51

of social connection time looks

20:53

like for you and being very specific

20:55

about it and putting it in

20:56

your calendar. We need to be a little bit

20:58

careful with that suggestion because soon

21:00

as we start counting our leisure, we enjoy

21:02

it less. And at the same time, of

21:05

course, I mean, exactly the contrary. You can overschedule

21:07

your leisure in such a way that it becomes a

21:09

task. You know, I was a CEO before, and

21:11

and it was just

21:13

It's a grind,

21:14

man. I mean, it was I missed

21:16

a lot of my kids childhood. I just did.

21:18

But at the same time, I made a commitment, so

21:20

I get up in the morning. I exercise every

21:22

morning for an hour. I go to Catholic mass

21:24

every morning with my wife. And I

21:26

do travel most weeks. I travel about,

21:28

you know, I make about fifty weekly

21:30

trips a year. and that's a lot, but

21:32

I'm I'm never traveling on the weekends. I probably

21:34

missed three weekends a year and I don't

21:36

work at night. And

21:38

part of the reason is because I learned all

21:40

these things that you learned it thirty

21:43

two, I

21:43

learned it fifty five. And so,

21:45

you know, will be up to me. Nonetheless,

21:47

my quality of life has dramatically

21:50

increased exactly putting those boundaries

21:52

in place. Now when I schedule

21:54

my leisure too rigidly,

21:56

I find that I start to get stressed

21:58

out, when things start to impinge on

22:00

it, which is one of your points as well. You

22:02

gotta stay flexible on these things. Part

22:04

of the benefit that you're getting

22:06

cognitively and psychologically, is more

22:09

flexibility in your life and less rigidness in your

22:11

life. Right? Yeah.

22:12

I love the research that shows

22:15

that if you schedule too

22:17

many leisure activities in a day,

22:19

it literally feels like work and it

22:21

sucks you out of the present and then you worry if

22:23

you have enough time to drive

22:25

across town and meet your friend

22:27

for brunch after you've had

22:29

coffee with another friend or family

22:31

member. And so you wanna actually

22:33

exactly capitalize on this idea of

22:35

building in flexibility. So if

22:37

we start to be too rigid with our

22:39

personal goals, that makes them feel like

22:41

work. And basically, what my

22:43

research shows is that when you're

22:45

in the experience of doing something, you

22:47

have some free time you

22:49

wanna do activities that you say

22:51

are intrinsically motivating, that you feel

22:53

like you're doing because you enjoy

22:56

it. that's

22:56

how you're gonna capitalize on leisure.

22:59

It doesn't matter as

23:00

much what the activity is, and there are some

23:02

leisure activities which generally

23:03

are better for well-being, like,

23:06

exercise,

23:06

socializing, volunteering tend

23:08

to be better on average

23:11

than things like passively

23:13

drive activities watching TV, resting,

23:15

relaxing, which aren't as enjoyable,

23:17

aren't don't produce the same

23:19

gains in mood. But It

23:22

also matters how you feel about

23:24

that activity. So really what

23:26

matters is whether you feel like you're doing the leisure

23:28

experience because you

23:30

want to or you feel like you're doing

23:32

it for some other reason.

23:34

So these people who are walking around

23:36

convincing themselves to go

23:39

to church because it's good for their

23:41

productivity, are not gonna

23:43

enjoy the experience of church. To the same

23:45

extent as someone who's going because

23:47

they

23:47

truly enjoy it.

23:48

how about, you know, we've touched on this a

23:50

little bit, these semi leisure activities.

23:53

You know, there's leisure and then there's

23:55

leisure. Remember, Aristotle says there's work,

23:57

there's recreation, and this nature. And recreation is to

23:59

get you ready to work.

23:59

And so, yeah, restorative to what?

24:02

Restorative to life, no, restorative to go back

24:04

to work. And a lot of people, you know, I'll

24:06

say, why do you work out so They say it's

24:08

just great for my work. But

24:10

what about people who

24:12

are

24:12

using work as a pretext for

24:15

leisure? Are they sucking the

24:17

life and happiness out of their

24:19

leisure by turning it into just

24:21

recreation.

24:21

When you're in the moment of the

24:23

leisure experience, you

24:24

will enjoy it less

24:26

if you think you're doing it. for extrinsic

24:29

reasons. And extrinsic motivation

24:31

is, definitionally, you're doing

24:33

something because someone else told

24:35

you, or you're doing it for an

24:37

external reason, like, you

24:39

think you should because it will be good

24:41

for your productivity. You think you should get

24:44

more fame. We get more power or whatever down the down

24:46

the line. And a lot of the studies will assume

24:48

that spending time with your family is intrinsic

24:50

and going to work for money is extrinsic, but that might

24:52

be exactly the opposite. Is there a

24:54

difference in time scarcity and

24:57

busyness of status between people

24:59

my age and people, let's

25:01

say, on their early twenties today?

25:04

my data suggests that we

25:06

get better with time as we

25:09

age. So this is also consistent with Laura

25:11

Carson's work on Societe Select activity

25:13

theory. We start to gravitate toward things

25:15

that are meaningful as we get

25:17

older, and we're less likely to seek out do

25:19

this novelty seeking exercise

25:21

And so in my data reliably, people

25:24

who are older tend to be

25:26

more likely to value time over

25:28

money and happier as a result.

25:30

and part of what's driving that isn't

25:33

simply the realization of what matters

25:35

to us. It's also that

25:37

we're typically more financially secure

25:39

So there is this very real component in

25:41

my data, whereby financial insecurity,

25:45

not feeling optimistic about our

25:47

financial futures, drives this need to fill every

25:49

single moment with productivity.

25:51

And that is more common among younger

25:55

people

25:55

with school

25:56

debt, trying to move up the career ladder,

25:59

and research suggests

25:59

that we undervalue

26:01

our future time. can also

26:03

make it difficult for us to choose

26:05

time in the future when we're planning

26:07

our schedules. We know that the value of

26:09

five hundred dollars is gonna be

26:11

as good net well, okay. We might have to

26:13

inflation adjust these days. But okay. The basic

26:16

idea is that the value of five hundred

26:18

dollars now is gonna be the same now, three

26:20

months, six months, a year from now. That's how we

26:22

think about money. We just know it's gonna

26:24

have value across time. That's

26:26

pretty invariant. Now when it

26:28

comes to time where, like, time right

26:30

now really matters. I'm so

26:32

busy over a while, a million things to

26:34

do. time in three months. Nah, I don't really

26:36

need more time then. Like, my calendar

26:38

looks free compared to now. Six

26:41

months even even freighter.

26:43

So the extent to which we value

26:46

or

26:46

give our lives meaning through

26:48

work

26:49

directly is correlated with how

26:52

time poor we feel and the

26:54

extent to which we fill our

26:56

calendars as a

26:58

way to give our lives

27:00

meaning. Now say something to

27:01

our listeners here who might be saying, I

27:04

don't know what I intrinsically enjoy.

27:06

I can't think of anything intrinsically

27:09

enjoyable to me because I've been so

27:11

extrinsically motivated for so long.

27:13

I'm a homoeconomicist. I'm

27:16

just I'm

27:16

a machine. What do you tell that person on

27:18

the on the the voyage of discovery? It

27:20

sounds like you had to go through this, Ashley.

27:23

Yeah. Do a time audit at the end of

27:25

the day. Ask yourself what things did

27:28

you do across the day? And how did

27:30

you feel while you were engaging those

27:32

activities? and then look at which activities

27:34

brought you the most positive mood.

27:36

You could also do this through a gratitude,

27:38

so there's research on this showing that

27:40

people who are Take time to reflect them what they're grateful for

27:42

and tend to be more self aware. So at

27:44

the end of every day, just think of

27:47

a few things that made you

27:49

feel great in in that day. Maybe that

27:51

was a quick conversation with the

27:53

neighbor. Maybe that was, in my

27:55

case, hanging out with my kid and thinking

27:57

that was pretty great. maybe it was listening

27:59

to a really interesting podcast on a

28:01

topic you hadn't heard before. And

28:03

then you'll be like, oh,

28:05

it seems that I must enjoy those

28:08

things. I should probably try to do more

28:10

of them. It seems simple, but

28:12

honestly, it wasn't really until I

28:14

started to create some separation

28:16

in my life such that I wasn't just getting

28:18

up every single day working

28:20

and then trying to decompress at the end of

28:22

the day by drinking because let's be real.

28:24

That's why happens, there was no space

28:26

in that schedule that I used to have

28:28

of work, work, work,

28:30

drink, go to bed, Work

28:32

work

28:32

work work, go to bed to even have a thought

28:35

about what in that day did I

28:37

enjoy because I wasn't even taking that

28:39

a second pause, reflect, and

28:41

think about what was bringing me

28:43

joy and satisfaction on

28:45

any one particular day.

28:47

Yeah. is

28:48

also good for work. Right? Because it's gonna give you

28:50

a sense of the things that work

28:51

that you love and enjoy. And maybe you should try

28:53

to do more of those and less of all the

28:55

other stuff.

29:05

Thank

29:05

you to our how to listeners who helped make this

29:07

show what it is.

29:08

We ask how you would spend one

29:11

extra hour per

29:11

day doing something intrinsically

29:14

rewarding. And here's what you

29:17

said. If I had

29:18

an extra hour each day, I would

29:20

go home to my studio apartment.

29:23

I would close the door, put

29:26

on the little boat lock to make sure I'm safe,

29:28

and then I would just sit in that silence

29:30

and do absolutely nothing.

29:34

But I think just that within life,

29:37

through all these things you need to do,

29:39

just to survive and and maintain

29:42

some level of relative sanity,

29:45

like eat, which means you have to cook food

29:47

and sleeping and

29:49

connect with people, which means driving your car

29:51

to see friends and calling your parents

29:53

and doing all these things.

29:56

that

29:56

guess we tell ourselves we wanna do

29:58

it because we have

29:59

to and in a way it creates

30:01

happiness, whatever that is. But

30:03

like, I feel like all of that keeps

30:06

us from actually, like, sitting in the moment and

30:08

thinking, like, what is happening? Why are we

30:10

here? If you look back in

30:12

the

30:12

old days before we were so unbelievably

30:14

distracted by tech, we were doing

30:16

something in those days too. You know, when I rode

30:18

the subway in the nineteen eighties in New York

30:20

City, I always had something to do with me. I

30:23

wasn't just I'm gonna go on the subway

30:25

and stand there doing nothing.

30:27

Mhmm. I had a book. I

30:29

had a newspaper. I was, you know,

30:31

whatever. I was I was listening to

30:33

my to my walkman. Remember those? Yes. And

30:35

and I have to say I get

30:37

the sentiment to the

30:38

collar, which is here's what I would do if I

30:40

had an extra hour. Well,

30:43

guess what? You have ten minutes where you could

30:45

do that, and you probably

30:47

aren't. And that's the

30:48

difference between would and should.

30:51

wouldn't should are very different when it comes to

30:53

our time. So the question is, what's the

30:55

disconnect between what we feel like

30:57

we should do? and what we probably would

30:59

do with that extra hour. And that has everything

31:01

to do with our expectations for

31:03

ourselves. And this is one of the reasons

31:05

that meditation really

31:07

hard for people who are beginning

31:09

practitioners, people who are sitting in meditation,

31:11

and the only direction

31:13

that they get is Think of nothing.

31:15

You know, empty your mind. Well, it's hard

31:18

to

31:18

do. Why is it

31:19

so hard? because we're not

31:21

made for it. Humans are not wired

31:23

to do nothing. my colleague and

31:26

friend, Marty Seligman, who teaches

31:28

who's one of the pioneers in the science

31:30

of happiness field, who teaches the University of

31:32

Pennsylvania. he says that

31:34

we shouldn't be called homo sapiens. We

31:36

should be called ourselves homo prospectus

31:38

because our state of nature is for

31:40

our brain to engage and all of

31:42

this incredibly complex stuff about how to build

31:44

a better future. What am I gonna eat for dinner? What

31:46

am I gonna do for a living next year? What am I

31:49

gonna say to my spouse? and

31:51

and that occupies us so very, very much that even when

31:53

we're trying to do nothing, we're not doing nothing.

31:57

Ashley Wilkins

31:57

told us about how to use our

31:59

time in

32:00

a smart way. That

32:01

means scheduling these things that are

32:04

ordinarily unscheduled. How funny we

32:06

go through life and say, I'm

32:08

gonna treat my happiness as a nice to

32:10

have. And if I have a little bit of extra time, I'll

32:12

think a little bit about it. No.

32:14

No. This is series business.

32:16

Put it in your schedule. Put it in

32:18

your schedule absolutely every single day. Learn

32:21

how the science works and then take the

32:23

serious time that it takes. Be time smart

32:25

is Ashley willing calls it and and and take the time to

32:27

do that work because the payoff will be

32:30

potentially greater than the payoff or anything else

32:32

you could do in that time.

32:35

That's

32:37

all for this

32:39

week's episode of how to build a

32:42

happy life. episode

32:43

was produced by me, Rebecca

32:45

Rashid, and hosted by

32:46

Arthur Brooks,

32:48

editing by AC Valdez and Claudine

32:51

Ibbay.

32:51

Fact check by Anna

32:54

Alvarado, our engineer

32:55

is Matthew Simonson.

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